BitPay has released payment statistics that reveal Bitcoin makes up over 90% of the payments it processes. Behind it are Bitcoin Cash and Ether, with market shares ranging from 3%-5% and 2%-3% respectively.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has increased the most in nearly two and a half years as some miners are turning their machines back on. Two difficulty decreases after the block reward halving have made it profitable for them to mine again.

There are now over 8,000 Bitcoin ATMs throughout the world, allowing users to buy and sell cryptocurrency in 73 different countries.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• BitPay Reveals Bitcoin Makes Up Over 90% of the Payments it Processes
• Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty Made Its Biggest Jump Since Early 2018
• Number of Bitcoin ATMs Throughout the World Surpasses 8,000

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $9,500.11 (0.05%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $2.46 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $234.59 (0.70%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $717.86 million. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 3,139.54 (0.79%).

BitPay Reveals Bitcoin Makes Up Over 90% of the Payments it Processes

Newly released payment statistics from BitPay show that Bitcoin is the number one payment method used with the firm, as since November 2019 BTC has maintained a 90% market share of all payments processed, by payment count, through its platform.

Behind Bitcoin was Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptocurrency created through a hard fork of the original network in August 2017, with a market share ranging between 3% and 5%. Behind Bitcoin Cash was Ethereum, with a 2.5% to 3.6% mark share, followed by stablecoins like Binance’s BUSD, and Centre’s USDC. Notably, XRP had a 1.2% market share in March and April.

 From January to April, BitPay processed roughly 390,000 transactions, averaging 98,000 per month. BitPay is a significant player in the cryptocurrency payments processing space, having facilitated $1 billion in crypto transactions last year.

Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty Made Its Biggest Jump Since Early 2018

Bitcoin has seen its mining difficulty – a measure of how hard it is for miners to find new blocks – post its biggest increase in nearly 2.5 years, as it is now at 15.78 trillion after rising 14.95%.

This makes it the biggest difficulty jump since January 2018, which saw a larger spike thanks to the 2017 crypto market bull run, which saw bitcoin’s price hit a near $20,000 all-time high. The recent increase comes after two consecutive difficulty declines, following the halving event on May 11, which reduced block rewards from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block.

The halving event initially forced some miners to halt operations, which led to a hashrate and difficulty decline. After the difficulty dropped, these miners were likely able to once again compete to find blocks on the network.

Number of Bitcoin ATMs Throughout the World Surpasses 8,000

According to Bitcoin ATM monitoring website CoinATMRadar, there are now over 8,200 cryptocurrency ATMs located in 73 countries throughout the world. Most Bitcoin ATMs allow users to buy and sell BTC and altcoins for cash, although there are some only working with the flagship cryptocurrency, and only allowing users to buy.

While different ATMs support different cryptocurrencies, these machines often support purchases and withdrawals in Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR,) XRP, Dogecoin (DOGE), and Tether’s USDt stablecoin.

The number of Bitcoin ATMs throughout the world has been steadily rising, as in May 2018 there were 3,000 machines. By November 2019, the number of crypto ATMs was above 6,000.

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