December 2024 Crypto Payment Statistics: Nano Leads, Monero Rises

December is our second month of payment statistics across a variety of cryptocurrencies. Below we share the updated figures (with last month’s figures in parentheses) and a quick analysis of how usage for each crypto has continued or changed from November. If you’re a merchant considering which cryptocurrencies to integrate, these numbers might help guide your priorities.

Transaction Count Distribution

We included all deposits of $0.10 and up. The transaction count for December breaks down as follows:

• Nano (XNO): 66.8% (77.8% last month)
• Monero (XMR): 15.8% (8.4% last month)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH): 3.0% (3.0% last month)
• DASH: 1.7% (1.5% last month)
• Bitcoin (BTC): 2.2% (1.3% last month)
• Litecoin (LTC): 2.7% (1.4% last month)
• Dogecoin (DOGE): 0.4% (0.4% last month)
• Solana (SOL): 2.0% (0.9% last month)
• USDC: 2.3% (2.6% last month)
• Banano (BAN): 3.0% (2.8% last month)

Or in pie chart format, for easy sharing:

Transaction Volume Distribution

Here's how the overall deposited volume for December compares with November:

• Nano (XNO): 68.3% (51.3% last month)
• Monero (XMR): 15.7% (22.2% last month)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH): 2.7% (6.1% last month)
• DASH: 1.9% (2.7% last month)
• Bitcoin (BTC): 3.8% (7.6% last month)
• Litecoin (LTC): 3.8% (3.17% last month)
• Dogecoin (DOGE): 0.2% (1.0% last month)
• Solana (SOL): 1.4% (1.9% last month)
• USDC: 1.6% (3.2% last month)
• Banano (BAN): 0.5% (0.8% last month)

Or in pie chart format, for easy sharing:

Takeaways on Transaction Volume

We're happy to report strong absolute growth for almost all our supported cryptocurrencies this month. The total volume of transactions increased substantially, with almost every cryptocurrency seeing more usage. Within this growing pie, Nano gained even relatively, expanding its share from 51.3% to 68.3% of the total volume.

Key Observations

• Nano (XNO) had serious growth, starting as the most used already but growing even relative to the rest. It's clearly our community's preferred payment method. We obviously like Nano - it's what we started with and what we hold our reserves in, but as we said we're surprised that it grew this hard.
• Monero (XMR) showed strong growth in transaction count with it nearly doubling. The shift in its volume-to-transaction ratio suggests (or we hope?) that it's being used by more people that want to try out our service with small amounts - that's a guess though, since Monero is nicely private.
• Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) both maintained strong positions, each handling 3.8% of total volume, with both coins surprisingly being used for relatively large transactions. We would expect Litecoin to be used mostly for smaller ones given the lower fees and Bitcoin for relatively larger ones, but that's not what we're seeing.
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH) continues to serve as a reliable payment option, maintaining a steady 3% of transaction count but dropping in volume in relatively terms.
• DASH relatively grew in number of transactions but they were smaller than previously, which means that in terms of volume it's losing out a bit.
• USDC, including the ETH and ETH L2s, plus Solana (SOL) are really underperforming from what we expected. We were thinking these would be some of the most used chains, but so far they're just not. We still think we might be missing something, but it appears that even many that are using our API for on-chain bots are paying in something else which is interesting..
• Banano (BAN) showed encouraging growth in transaction count, reaching 3% of transactions and continuing to out-punch some far bigger coins in this crypto jungle.
• Dogecoin (DOGE) maintains its presence in our ecosystem, particularly for smaller transactions with its overall volume decreasing not just relatively but also absolutely.

From next month on we can start turning this into a line chart which the geek in us is excited about and might convince us to finally put some more effort into creating a prettier chart, and we can start seeing how these trends evolve over time.

See you next month!