Cryptocurrency companies just spent millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads. What’s harder to say is how much crypto investors spent on game day.
Vast wealth has been created in cryptocurrencies, which globally now have a value of nearly $2 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. While that pales in comparison to many other asset classes, it has risen quickly. The global value of crypto grew by nearly $1.5 trillion last year, compared with the S&P 500’s rise of nearly $9 trillion in market value, according to FactSet.
Crypto wealth might be harder to spend in some key ways than gains from rising stock or house prices, making its impact on overall economic activity more difficult to predict. But it’s time to start contemplating how that wealth filters through the rest of the economy.
Some crypto wealth could now be filtering through to spending on a daily basis. Though only some merchants accept crypto directly as payment, firms like Coinbase Global COIN -1.47% and PayPal Holdings PYPL -1.50% are making it possible to pay with it via typical instruments. These are cards or digital wallets funded by crypto holdings. Visa has attributed about $6 billion in payment volume to crypto-linked debit cards from October 2020 to the end of 2021. That sounds big, but for now is still a drop in the overall bucket. Visa’s global debit volume increased by over $1 trillion last year.