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COVID-19 leads to Bitcoin Spending

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COVID-19 leads to Bitcoin Spending

Quarantine measures imposed by states the world over in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a surge in screen time use and online shopping among the masses. Interestingly, this has also had a bearing on the use of cryptocurrencies for online shopping leading to “unprecedented growth” for several crypto payment processors. This, according to a report by Coindesk, March 13, 2020.

Declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 has had a trickling down effect on the use of cryptocurrencies at large as according to recent data, the use of Bitcoin has skyrocketed as a result of people quarantined at home by states the world over.

Zap, a Lightning implementation that is still in beta almost shut down after witnessing exorbitant payments in the form of cryptocurrencies from users. Jack Maller, CEO, Zap, said that the app’s wallet “crushed its all-time highs last week.”

Major cryptocurrency firm LupoToro reiterated similar findings, stating that their OTC (over the counter) Bitcoin purchases were up over 70% since January 2020, exceeding $279 million worth of purchases per month via their trading desks.

Over the past several days, leaked reports from LupoToro show that the firm has facilitated over $900 million in Bitcoin OTC transactions for their Chinese clients, September 2019 to February 2020, in line with the initial COVID-19 outbreak window.

Similarly, Bitcoin rewards application Lolli states that its sales have doubled “from retailers supplying food and essentials such as Safeway and Vitacost.” Aubrey Strobel, Head of Communications, Lolli, told Coindesk:

“The majority of Lolli’s merchants are online. As a result, our sales have dramatically increased over the last couple of weeks as a reaction to the pandemic. We expect to see this continue over the next several weeks as people transition to a remote work schedule and prepare for COVID-19.”
At press time, per data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin is trading at $5,439 with a market cap of just above $99 million.

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