However, it seems that tiny numbers actually accept or spend these coins, such as posting them in their donation links if they are a content creator.
BitPay, one of the leading crypto payment processors, publishes regularly the numbers of transactions per coin on this platform. The most recent numbers from July 2024 are:
- Litecoin - 34.31%
- Bitcoin - 24.97%
- Ethereum - 11.25%
- Bitcoin Cash - 8.83%
- USDC - 5.22%
- Dogecoin - 4.97%
- Polygon (MATIC) - 4.46%
Source:
Bitpay (
archived version)
It is widely known that LTC is very popular (in relation to its market cap) as a payment tool. And you're correct at least if we look at Bitpay: the coins you mention don't even show up in this top list.
There are other numbers from other merchants which show that Monero is also quite strong in the "payment" category. Like shown
here (Shopinbit) or
here (Coincards). The latter has also a relatively high Solana participation. But BNB and XRP don't appear on any of these stats.
In general however I agree with those writing that just the cryptocurrencies mentioned in the OP are known more as "utility coins" (gas) for smart contracts and a tool to create tokens on them. ETH is the only one strong in both "market segments". Toncoin seems to be used mainly in the Telegram ecosystem.
Here is from Coincards.com you linked to:
#XMR: 34.4%
#BTC (Onchain): 25.96%
#USDC: 20.20%
#ETH: 9.84%
#LTC: 2.49%
#Solana: 2.31%
#Dogecoin: 2.09%
#LightningNetwork: 2.08%
#USDT: 0.58%
I think these lists prove the point I was making, which many 10 coins are NOT substantially exchanged in general market environments outside of exchanges. Thanks for your link.
I do see Solana on that list so I suppose it does have some adoption I didn't know about. People don't pay for things using XMR, Toncoin, or BNB, though apparently do for Solana. And yes there is certain niche utility many coins like BNB coin being used for a website on the BNB website. However, that would seem to make the value of the coin as the underlying discount. I don't think BNB has $75 billion dollars of pending discounts to their services.
If the value of a coin isn't broad market spending such as the Coincards.com list above, then it has very little transactional value. A lot of people make a mistake to say that non-backed currency has NO value, which is false. It still has transactional value according to the total transaction volume. But of course there is also speculation value, and as discussed utility value like the BNB website discount coin. Some coins have other value like Filecoin.
Personally I think most coins have mostly speculative value. I think the only coin that is priced for mostly transactional value is XMR. It has a market cap of something in the neighborhood of $3 billion, and probably does have billions in annual transaction volume. Of course I'm not counting mere exchange volume as exchanging from one coin to another doesn't reflect creation of economic value in the way that buying food or VPN service is.