Digital Currency Past Present Future - Bitcoin's Road to Mainstream Adoption #2 (December)

Synopsis: The price of bitcoin is highly correlated to its rate of adoption. The more people use the cryptocurrency, the higher its price would be notwithstanding its limited supply. This monthly post attempts to track the adoption rate of bitcoin as it goes mainstream.

Let's look at some historical facts to help us level set:

• Since its creation in 1990, the internet took 5 years to reach 16 million users. By the 10th year, there were 361 million users and the 20th year - 888 million;

• It took about 50 years for the telephone to connect 50 million users. The television hit this goal in 22. It wasn’t until 12 years 'till 50 million people were using the plastic money called debit card. Paypal smashed the record at 5 years, but Facebook put all to shame when it shuttered the record in just 3 years. Oh, and Angry Birds - 35 days.

Below is a snapshot of the major inventions:

So where are we with bitcoin?

Bitcoin is no Angry Birds or Facebook. It's more serious than social media craze since it involves money. As of the end of December, there are about 21.5 million bitcoin and altcoin users (based on the number of distinct wallets per below). During December alone, about 2 million new users were added, almost double than the previous month. This number, however, does not account for the users involved in the trading of bitcoin futures which was launched in later part of December (this is no reliable way of capturing this figure at this time).

NOW, to help us measure how far off the world has adopted bitcoin, let's use the Technology Adoption Life Cycle Model. This chart is broken down into 5 buckets: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. With an estimated 7.6 billion people worldwide, you can see in the chart below how many people falls under each category.

With 21.5 million people using bitcoin and altcoins as of December 2017, this puts us at the very early stage of the Innovators phase. However, if we account for the bitcoin futures which allow institutional investors to invest into bitcoin, we could probably be at the end of the innovator's phase. With more bitcoin futures plus the possible launching of bitcoin and altcoin ETF in 2018, this will pave the way to cross into the next stage - Early Adopters.

Here's a closer look of the bitcoin milestones:

Bitcoin's and altcoins' going mainstream is no longer a question of "IF" but rather "WHEN". Following are interesting information & statistics based on survey results performed by Coindesk:

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
https://blockchain.info
https://www.internetworldstats.com
https://www.coindesk

See Also Related Posts:
Digital Currency Past Present Future - When Bitcoin becomes-the-Digital Gold

Disclosure: This post does not intend to provide investment nor does it represents that the securities or services discussed are suitable for any investor. Investors are advised not to rely on any information contained in the article in the process of making a fully informed investment decision.

IF YOU LIKE THIS POST – UPVOTETHINK OTHERS WILL LIKE IT - RESTEEMSOMETHING TO ADD - COMMENTWANT TO SEE MORE - FOLLOW.