Bitcoin Forum

Critical mass in this sense means what it will take for bitcoin to sustain and grow to become the most used currency.

Is the critical mass 1% of all transactions? 0.1%? 0.01%?

To me value is most important. If price for bitcoin is low then there is no use for it at international trade. And it was supposed to be internet money.

Most used currency where?  The US? The First World? The whole World?  

It is pretty strong now, 4 years without being hacked, market cap having crossed a billion. No question it's growing.  

We have to spend much more time formulating the question before we can begin to answer it.  

its passed nearly all the markers but once the governments accept it as legal tender get ready for liftoff

I think you'll have to look at the total market value of all outstanding bitcoins measured in dollars. Right now we are around $1bn, which makes Bitcoin a very small company so the price acts like a penny stock. At $100bn we are a large company, but probably still very volatile, at $10T the value can be compared to something like gold (so probably still somewhat volatile) and only at $100T we are in the range of the world's reserve currencies.

If you want to know at which price Bitcoin has acquired enough critical mass to be able to grow indefinitely, then the value could be much lower. I'm thinking of $10 million here, because that would be enough value for the participants (miners and developers) to keep investing time and value to the project. Now that we are well beyond that point, I can confidently say that Bitcoin won't go away for many, many decades.