Prominent billionaire investor Tim Draper insists that the moment will come when women start pushing up the price of Bitcoin as more retailers begin to accept it as a more cost-effective payment method.
Tim Draper is a Bitcoin (BTC) investor himself. Last week, he told host Scott Melker on YouTube's "Wolf of All street" that women could be the key to pushing the price of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, to $250,000 apiece.
He reasoned that as more store owners began accepting bitcoin as payment, "all of a sudden, all the women will have bitcoin wallets and they'll be shopping with bitcoin."
"And then you're looking at bitcoin going above my estimate of $250,000."
According to Draper, it is in the retailer's best interest to start accepting bitcoin as soon as possible. He argues that most shopkeepers have tight profit margins, so lower transaction fees could make bitcoin more attractive compared to partnering with big credit card companies like Visa or MasterCard.
According to CreditDonkey, merchants incur an average credit card transaction cost of up to 2.9% in store and 3.5% online, respectively, per transaction. By comparison, the average fee for a bitcoin transaction is $1.40, according to bitcoin data compiler BitInfoCharts.
The benefits for retailers are clear, Draper suggested. Women "dominate about 80 percent of retail spending," he said, and retailers opting for bitcoin could save a lot of money on paying credit card companies. According to The State of Consumer Banking and Payments by research firm Morning Consult, women account for 30 percent of all cryptocurrency owners in the United States.
The level of adoption that Draper hopes may not be too far away, as Morning Consult found that about 24% of U.S. households own cryptocurrencies, a 2% increase from July 2021.
If Draper is right, it will set off a chain of events that will confirm Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach's prediction that global payments system SWIFT will cease to exist within five years. Michael Miebach made this startling prediction last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos.