Bitcoin Forum

People say we missed the train... but yet most people don't understand what bitcoins are let alone even know about it, and its still in it's early stage. Some say it has potential to increase in value 1000x more... but some say that will never happen. So do you guys think people who invest now are still the "early adopters"? Why can't I ever be a part of explosive gains?? :(

We are definately early on. Actually bitcoin is still geeky even among geeks and some mainstream coverage every now and then haven't changed that.

http://susanlucas.com/it/images/categories.gif

I think we're only just leaving the "Innovators" phase ATM. Once mining is out of the general public's hands we'll be in the "Early Adopter" stage.

Nice chart but are you sure buddy? It looks like we're finishing the early majority phase and going down hill for a while :'(


 

We won't know for a while I think. Technically speaking, I'd say early adopter still at this time.

There are less than a million people who own significant amounts of Bitcoins (i.e more than equivalent of $500 in BTCs). If we talk about an extreme-bull scenario, then we can expect more than 1 billion people owning Bitcoins (may be by 2030). So that makes all of us "inovators".

"early" is relative.
To other bitcoin people, someone from 2013 is late to the game.
To the rest of the world, we are early adopters...

Do you have a reference for that number? It looks way pumped to me.

Just a wild guess... Read somewhere that there are some 3 million BTC wallets.. Calculated based on that. 0.1 million to 1 million might be an accurate range?

agreed, still very early.. maybe we're in 1996-1997 in terms of the internet. bitcoin is not going to be as ubiquitous as the internet though. what i like about bitcoin is that most of us are regular nobody/joes.. so it has a grassroots feeling.

1 Bitcoin = $10,000.00 USD in about 5 years. Maybe less. (Maybe more.)

We are still amongst the early adopters I think but that phase is slowly ending

One can only hope that we are still very early.  I saw bitcoins for the first time when they were at 50 dollars each.  I wanted to invest but didn't... Now I bought my first coins a few days ago :D

Either exiting innovators moving into early adopters
Or exiting early adopters and transitioning into early majority over the next year or two

Early adopters!

This chart is about the number of people involved in the technology, not about the Bitcoin price.
While Bitcoin may fail before reaching early majority, you can be sure it hasn't reached it yet.

If purchased at ~$900 USD, in about two weeks, or more, you'll recognize a positive ROI.

I see us at the low end of the Innovators curve.  There are 7 billion people on the planet and while Bitcoin has some press exposure, there are essentially no users yet.  Even if a tiny island somewhere adopted Bitcoin, the value would shoot over $10000 instantly.  As for what would happen if a particular industry or a large economy started using Bitcoin, I'd get repetitive strain injury from typing zeroes.

early as i said

I think it's impossible to tell what stage we're at. Face it guys, we all know where we want to see BTC going, but nobody knows for sure what the future will bring... If I do have to put BTC somewhere on that graph, I'd say we're nearing the end of 'innovators'. We're there because BTC is getting media attention and new people (not just geeks ;)) are gradually joining in. These new people often don't have a full grasp of the whole BTC concept though, so to put us in 'early adopter'-phase, I'd say we need some more general awareness of what BTC actually is and how it works, not just knowing it exists and investing because people smell easy money (which it not really is anymore, one coin has become too expensive for that...).

So in my opinion, the only way is up and you're still really early if you join in now. Where this will end (if it ever ends, let's hope it doesn't) is impossible to tell though. One coin might we worth 10k in a few years, it could very well be worth peanuts in a few months. Rollercoaster ride baby! :P

This graph is a Gaussian curve, not a trend line (i.e., the y-axis has nothing to do with time). It says nothing about what "phase" we are in, unless you extrapolate how many people will use Bitcoin eventually to how many current users there are.

Further, given that it distributes the population exactly by standard deviation and mean it is basically useless subjective posturing. Funny how serious people tend to take anything that looks like a graph, however.


Speak for yourself... :P

However, before you feel too sorry for yourself think about those poor folk who sold after the first big crash in 2011. It was VERY doom & gloom on these forums back then. Don't think that if you had just been here in 2011 you'd be a millionaire, because it was a much tougher decision whether to get out or keep the faith. Glad I chose the latter, because regret is a b*&!%.

today we are not very early adopters but early adopters. dont worry: cryptocurrencys have to go a long long way to get mainstream, far away from any significant adoption. i dont know ANYBODY who knows what bitcoin is. maybe you are lucky and meet someone who has heard of it. and the best: wallstreet and big players are just coming in the next years.

Bitcoin started in 2009, and it's only 2013. It will be over 100 years until the very last of the 21million coins gets mined. If you look at it that way, BTC is still in its infancy.

Still early adopters.

We are still early adopters. Bitcoin is becoming more popular recently. Getting more coverage on the news and therefore encouraging more people to invest. Because of the price varying from prices tells us that there isn't near enough people investing. Whoever invested into Bitcoin before it stabilises are early adopters.

The fact that Bitcoin still gets major price flunctuations, tells that Bitcoin has still a small community, since minor occurrences really bumpmthe value.

According to that chart, if we are currently less than 16% of the total number of people that will use Bitcoin, then we are still in early adopter phase.

We could even still be in the innovator phase if we are less than 2.5% of the final total. Imagine if "only" 10% of the world population ends up using Bitcoin. That's 700 million people.
There are certainly less than 17.5 million Bitcoin users worldwide currently.

Unless you own a crystal ball, there`s no way to tell where we are at right now. Bitcoin could stagnate from this point on and forever remain a niche currency for crypto geeks and devious online transactions, which means we could even be in the `late adopters` phase right now. In the small chance that bitcoin becomes a major, global currency, then certainly we`re still early on the curve. It`s anybody`s guess still, so let`s try not to delude ourselves.

 At the moment I believe the vast majority of people think that bitcoin is something that they will never be able to understand. As time goes on and people become aware that its not all that tricky to deal with and also younger generations which are more technologicly inclined will  help in the Bitcoin going more mainstream. The early adoption phase could possibly last for anothert year or so I believe "if it actually makes it as a curency"

towards end of innovators beginning of early adopters. very few people own any bitcoins at all and only a handful more have even heard of them and *bothered* to understand. most are dismissive of it comparing it to tulip bulbs (which they never bought themselves) or beanie babies (which you'd have to be stupid to consider anything worthwhile)

if bitcoin still exists in 10 years or w/e, you'd be seen as early adopters

to me, anyone that started after the $2 2012 collapse isn't an early adopter

similarly, I suppose a lot of people that were around pre-2011 would consider anyone that started during the "boom" around mar-may of 2011 not an early adopter (re: about the first time bitcoin got some mainstream press)

I also would say we don't know where we are because we don't know the future, if btc makes it big and runs for 200 more years, then yeah we're really really early still. Based on the fact that most people don't know what it is and the software is still a little rough, I think we're still in the early stages assuming it will keep going a long time.

I think we are early on i have only met a few people that knew about bitcoin before i told them. But as always im trying to get everyone involved !!

I can't see bitcoin being worth peanuts ever, well unless someone with 100k bitcoin sold to the bottom. Too many people have invested millions into this, and I dont mean just buying coins.

"one coin has become too expensive for that" - this is a psychological barrier holding back bitcoin adoption. 1 mBTC is worth $0.72. If we started trading in mBTC, we would have a second wave of early adopters. Selling your new ps4 and not even getting a whole bitcoin for it is a bit disheartening when in actual fact it's completely fair. Getting ~800mbtc sounds/feels like a better deal.

There is enough growth potential to make ordinary people millionaires. So, early enough. Don't worry about your precise placement.

I agree with this.

May I add, the adoption by peoples and business is still very thin atm, growing very quickly, but only a very small percentage of poeples know about BTC.  The years to come will be very interesting !

I almost got in when it was under $1.  I'd consider that the innovator stage. If bitcoin gains widespread acceptance then looking back this time would be considered the early adopter phase.   Remember,  that technology changes fast and something better could replace bitcoin entirely either in the near or distant future. Or bitcoin may share the space with several technologies.

I think I first heard about "early adopters" and "missing the boat" when we hit $1.

Ask your Mom if she knows about bitcoin. The day she says yes, the early adoption phase is over. Kinda like the day she friended you on FaceBook.  ;D

And just imagine if you had invested in facebook before the general public even knew about it? That's us.

I think that we are still in the early adoption phase but not for so long.Because now you can read in the mainstream media about
bitoin at least once a week.

Thinking about it I guess we should use two scales
One for media penetration
One for user adoption
Media penetration is starting to become bigger and users catching up

today just as good as few years back.  

global awareness is only increasing along with demand. demand will skyrocket btc prices into again unbelievable highs. supply.. heh, the supply is going to be in a huge deficit, it will be provided only by those taking partial profits from past years accumulation and, in my opinion, mainly by bitcoin related businesses having immediate cash expenditures along with partial employee salaries of these companies being converted from btc to traditional fiat for day-to-day living expenses.  in a few months today's rates may look pale low, like a $10/btc less than a year ago.  i would not underestimate bitcoin even if slams back to rates we had a short while ago, which in my view is very unlikely today having current news developments such as China and US Senate Hearing. i wouldn't not be surprised if next year some major online retailer would start accepting Bitcoin, and surely Ebay/Paypal must be thinking how can they get piece of an action.

i would not advise to convert all savings into bitcoin, but investing some small, insignificant amounts for an average person into bitcoin every month may render great returns in future, amounts that easily spent on some useless crap on a routine basis.

Haha no way in hell ;D

For that to happen BTC must climb to 100.000$ in a few months. I wouldn't bet on that.
Can you imagine everyone here being a millionaire? It just doesn't look right  :P

Are we still early adopters?

Easy. Go out on the street and ask 10 people if they've ever heard of Bitcoin, then ask them if they own any.

If five or more say they do, we're past the early adoption stage.

I think what OP is referring to is the difficulty we're at to generate more of them coins.   I believe that somewhat correlates to the value of BTC.  Having passed 11.5M BTC we are over the equilibrium and the difficulty isn't slowing down one bit.

I'd say we are late in the mining game.  It's the early adopters and innovators that made the serious fortunes.  Generating insane amount of BTC with GPUs.  Those days are gone.  It's gonna take very refined chips today to mine the future.

As far as the value of BTC is concerned... well, the sky's the limit.  By the time all 21m coins are out there, just 1btc will be worth a fortune and folks will trade with satoshis. :)

If this is to happen it will happen much sooner since after some time only a few bitcoins will be left for mining.

Right now there are only 12million BTC available to go around yet you can find and buy a bitcoin pretty easily so I think this means to me that there are well less than 12 million people right now who all want to hold at least one bitcoin. 

How many of you would sell ALL your coins and not keep just one?  Probably very few..We'll know when we are no longer in the early adopter phase when it becomes hard to buy a bitcoin and people are only buying or selling fractions of a coin.  If we start dealing in mBTC I could see the price going much higher very quickly.

I started bitcoining in 2012, and wouldn't call myself an early adopter. I almost always try to let others work shit out and read reviews and other discussions before dipping my own toe in. If I were qualified to be beta testing stuff, I'd be getting paid.

I saw bitcoin when it was $5. But I couldn't buy a lot. ... Oh well, you can still buy now.

Yes, everyone that owns a single Bitcoin today is an early adopter.

What most people actually don't understand is that Bitcoin is not the only digital currency. But this is changing and very very rapidly. Bitcoin is like the web crawler of the early 90's, we still don't know who will be Google.

Yesterday for the first time, Max Keiser talked about Litecoin on his show. As Bob Dylan one said, "the times they are a changing". This is good website for tracking the changing times: http://coinmarketcap.com/

I would suggest we are not yet even at the "I" in innovators. Probably less than a millionth of the needed infrastructure and institutions required have been built. When you compare what the bitcoin protocol is capable of with what we have, you quickly realize we have barely scratched the surface.

Future generations will envy us and look back with amazement. They may even read the words we type here on the forum as class assignments.

Yes we do. Bitcoin is google. Actually it is google - yahoo - bing - lycos and altavista together.

I think the chart should be taken not as a representation of innovativeness in bitcoin per se but as of the concept of cryptocurrency in general. The world will evetually stop using paper and plastic cards as a medium of exchange, but this won't necessarily be under the domain of bitcoin. The concept will be inherited to whatever inhabitants of the world that still need their exchanges be encypted but smart enough to have a decentralized system about it. Such a system will probably be a highly evolved version or versions of bitcoin. So yes, I think we are in the early innovators phase, along with holders of any other type of cryptocurrency.

I pity them already :P

Q5: What is the Thai name of the one known as goat?
Q6: Name the exact aristocratic limits first proposed my rpietila
Q7: What was the original name of Bitcoin's Savings and Trust?
Q8: Write a short essay about Atlas and why he's an idiot

:D

I can almost see it. "Okay kids, today we will learn how to spot a troll and why you should listen to SoapyThePig about the blockchain".

Yeah and graduate dissertations might be about btc-e's trollbox!

Bitcoin right now is like the 90's Internets... We are at the very bottom of the technology adoption S curve (probably we still are innovators), so expect it to grow during 5 to 10 years..

http://gjdaoustedtech.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/adoption-curve-1.gif

http://i40.tinypic.com/15zg2p.png

Now, let's take as example Facebook. If bitcoin could potentially reach 1 Billion users like facebook, taking into account current users and current monetary mass, then you can quickly come up with a guesstimate of 1 bitcoin = $1M (I'm not saying it will reach it). Bitcoin right now (after this week's spike) should have around 600-800k users.  User adoption is the real deal. More users = more market cap = bigger valuation. (1 User = 1 person, 1 organism, 1 company, etc)*

http://i41.tinypic.com/fm1egi.png

Bitcoin, like other technologies/products, seems to be following a pattern defined by viral diffusion (logistic function):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHUPPYzzZrI

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Logistic-curve.svg/320px-Logistic-curve.svg.png

So growth, user adoption and valuation are deeply related... For instance, rpietila's growth/valuation model with a linear regresion shows we are at the bottom of an exponential curve:

https://i.imgur.com/15HtMYm.png

The wallets stats usage shows we are at the bottom of an exponential curve...

http://i40.tinypic.com/2ccl3wi.png


The questions remains... where is the top of the S-Curve? Here there are some attempts by forum members to fit user adoption + valuation + logistic function (viral diffusion pattern)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=322058.msg3525760#msg3525760
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArD8rjI3DD1WdGhDN3FBWFptTlZTREN0cFkxZ3JHTnc#gid=13


TL'DR: If btc ever makes it, then expect it to grow A LOT, so chillax, we ain't seen shite yet.

In early 2013 I owned about $150 worth of bitcoins, and it seemed like everyone else in this forum was suddenly a millionaire.  You should go back and read the threads from April to see what happens when a few dozen people suddenly realize that they are all rich.

If 2014 goes anything like 2013, I know what side of the fence I want to be on.

We are all "early adopters" imo. We are not even close to seeing bitcoins full potential at this stage. It is just growing bigger and bigger day by day.

In two years it will be funny to read old threads like "Are we still early adopters", between other threads like "Is 100.000 still ok price to buy in?"

Great post.  Deserves highlighting.  Thank you for the work & summary.

First decent post on the subject in a while similar to Turr Demesters presentation on bitcoin in graphs :)
Talking about the S shaped curve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7LQu-eIOO0
I did forget Maloney's rule using that scale we are arguably in the former still as we have yet to make the transition defined on the scale
Thanks for that

I think we're somewhere at the middle of the S curve, almost to the top.

Great post man, thanks for your contribution.




wat?

If nothing else, this thread will serve as a fantastic case study in mass delusion for future generations  :)

Yes, it's going to be really interesting for my heirs to reflect on how deeply delusional the fiat currency system was during the time of their great patriarch.

Check out this survey of big money managers.  Given the responses, I'd guess that anyone buying now is still an early adopter and at the very bottom of the S-curve.


http://blogs.reuters.com/unstructuredfinance/2013/11/22/what-the-money-managers-and-the-fog-of-bitcoin/

Just to nitpick, how can you be at the "bottom" of an exponential curve? One of the features of an exponential curve is that it looks like this no matter how you scale it. Technically you can just show that we are in an exponential curve, somewhere. The graphs gives you no information about how long it's going to continue.

(Not being bearish here, just anal.)

We are definitely early adopters, no question about that.  The only question is will BTC remain a viable option to get into the majority.

My anecdotal input is that amongst my friends there are now 2 people (that I know about) I know that have actually made a move (one around the $200 mark the other is just about to get in). This is despite me basically spamming my newsfeed on Facebook with bitcoin related propaganda. As well as mentioning it to several people who *should* have the cajones to take a punt on it (but haven't).

So form my limited sample, I think we are just hitting early adopter phase :)

A lot of people have heard about Bitcoin by now.
Very few have actually tried it.

IMHO the innovation phase was from 2009 to late 2012 and the beginning of 2013 period marked the transition to the "early adopters" phase. We are still there.

Same here. I just convinced one of my friends to get his feet wet although i 'm constantly talking to everyone about bitcoin. Actually i think he was convinced by the price and some of the latest pr buzz but anyway  :P

(anecdotal) I work for a super high tech company in silicon valley. Everybody's got PhDs in computers and physics and stuff. Over beers I brought it up with coworkers and most didn't have any idea how it worked and were highly skeptical, echoing the FUD you see from the dumb press articles ("what if the creator decides to take all the money", "what if bitcoin 2.0 comes along", "what if everybody stops believing all at once and the price crashes" ... actually that last one is not a bad objection but large numbers of adopters continually works in our favor)

We are *way* early still. Whether that means enormous spikes in price I don't know, but we are definitely "geeky for geeks" as someone said earlier.

I LIKE this guy!!!  :o :D :)

I think we are innovators, considering that states have just now started discussing the issue.
Perhaps ending innovation phase-beginning early adoption phase.  :)

The number of bitcoin "users" , people who actually buy and sell things with bitcoin has barely doubled in the last year.
The whole blockchain holds 27 mil transactions , 1/5 of visa's daily transactions.

It's still the begging.

Sigh. Why do I keep reading speculation forum, same shit over and over again.

It looks to me like the market want's to correct for a while, but whether entrants now are early adopter's or late adopters all depends of course on what is to become of Bitcoin. As far as 'early innovators' go, that point has well and truly past. It was the point where probably most of us thought "that sounds interesting, I am going to mine a few coins on my gfx card" or even, "I am going to invest 1000GBP in Btc, but at over 7 GBP per coin, I am going to wait in the price to drop, in the meantime, I will just spend hundreds of Btc on SR"

If Bitcoin goes on to receive mass adoption, we here would definitely be amongst the early adopters. For that to happen though, price must stabilise and for price to stablize, this mass speculative bubble must surely correct, hopefully over an extended period. Thus encouraging people to spend their Bitcoins other than hoarding them. The last thing that Bitcoin needs however is yet more flash crashes or massive price spikes.


Could have used the same argument based on exponential curves back in April 2013 and also in July 2011.

Now April 2013 looks like a small blip on the exponential rise, whereas July 2011 barely registers.

great thread. great curves. thank you.


we have reached now the market cap of rovio.


they are the inventors of a similar breathtakingly disruptive technology :


fkn ANGRY BIRDS


please note:
we are in the earliestpossible stage of "early adoption"

Where are we now on this curve  ???

early adopters?
for me i dont think so that we are still early adapters.
since for me i can say you are early adapters when you buy
or get you btc when it is only below $100.
but even saying this.. i think bitcoin prize as of today  is
still immature. but this is only my speculation.
so still goodluck to us.

IMO we are innovators. Bitcoin is still difficult to use and there are only few users. The technology is still being built.

I don't we are in the category of late adopters nor are we the early adopters. Considering the price right now in 2015, 240 is still considered cheap as some sizeable fund can still get you a lot of bitcoin. But we are not considered early as well. The biggest luxury enjoyed by the early adopters is the low mining difficulty part.

During the dark days of 2012, there were several times where it made much more sense to buy coin vs mine it, even at those low difficulties. Obscurity and death by irrelevance was quite palpable then. Almost sounds familiar, but back then we had the soothing salve of being unknown to the cruel outside world. 

Yep, usually it has been better to buy than mine.

I was mining through late 2010 and most of 2011 - CPU for 1 block, then GPU for ~15 blocks. Even back then people were saying it made more sense to buy BTC than mine it, and they were right. The amount of money I spent on a GPU I could have bought 400 BTC and avoided any increase in electricity costs. Instead I mined 800 BTC and sold most of them to pay for electricity (and the GPU). It was a useful experience - I learned a huge amount about Bitcoin in general, and mining in particular - but it wasn't the most cost-effective way to obtain BTC!

Difficulty was much lower back then, but so was BTC/USD.

I think that the time of explosive gains by bitcoins is passed forever and will never come back again. But some trading with altcoins and some pumps and dumps can give good profits, at least it is safer than gambling though.

We are still the "lunatic fringe" slowly getting to become 'innovators'
Say, 1 mil bitcoiners is still 0.015% of Earth's population or 0.1% of OECD countries.

I still consider myself as an early adopter, given that bitcoin is still in its infancy and not much businesses are present that accepts bitcoin. I wonder what the scenario would be when we reached the early majority phase.

damn, those were the days...

taking the total of bitcoin mined into consideration. I think mt gox sped up the train a little bit. 2015 would still be very early if mt gox didn't happen.

Bitcoin may not succeed and become what we want it to be but.....

Considering the % of the worlds population that are aware of & own/use bitcoin then I'd say we could still be early adopters.

If bitcoin doesn't succeed then you can totally forget what I've said but if it does then even owning 1 bitcoin could make one a very rich man. This is all pointless at the moment though because we don't even know if bitcoin will gain mainstream adoption.

The current amount of people who are actually using Bitcoin is very low, yes. If you just look at that, then I agree with you that we can still consider ourself early adopters. The thing is that not every one is interested in it while they kinda know what Bitcoin is. For mass adoption there need to be a certain demand for the average Joe's to use Bitcoin alongside fiat currency. If that doesn't happen, then they won't see the need to use Bitcoin.

Most of use are using it and not building it, thus early adopters.

Majority of very early adopters have cashed out their holdings at nice profit.Yes,I will say this is second wave of early adopters and Bitcoin still is more something technical than just currency.In few years after widely adopted and accepted then we will see real value which will be surely high than now.So we can say ourselves early adopters of Bitcoin.