Bitcoin Forum

A lot of people talk about "mass adoption" and "mainstream adoption" as a milestone for Bitcoin and crypto. How do you personally define these? Have they occurred yet?

Personally my definition of mass adoption is that when something is used for almost anything for daily basis and a lot of people knows about it and uses it.

I define mass adoption when the average Joe uses it, when Moms go to the supermarket and pay with BTC.
When it becomes commonplace and nobody asks "Bitcoin? What are you talking about?" and when it becomes easily accessible and spendable by everyone.

Far to be the case today. Even to spend your bitcoins we still struggle to find the right shop or have no choice to buy a gift card via a middleman.
The day we will be able to deposit and store our BTC in our bank account is very far.
When I will be able to pay food with BTC I will think: "It's starting"

If 1BTC is equal to 1 million USD it wouldn't mean the mass adoption is here if the thing is the same as today. I mean its value doesn't matter.
I give a decade before the "mass adoption" will be there

In my understanding mass adoption is usage of bitcoin in daily life. This shouldn't be limited within specific region, services and so on. It needs to have acceptance and usage same as the traditional fiat we use at present. We should not go in-search to spend our bitcoin, there arises a situation we spend on need without difficulty.

Mass adoption is still on the way for crypto world as only 1-2% of global population is using it at current like internet have users in 1990's.When Bitcoin and other alts will be common and essential as smart phones then it will be counted as mass adoption.It can be in any form like investment by large group of people but for me personally if btc transaction are carried out on regular basis similar to fiat then it will be regarded as mass adoption.

When normal adults who are not techie and children easily recognised Bitcoin as source of payments and used them for buying their stuff without any hinderance then it is actual adoption.

To put this in (very rough) perspective, according to my random Google searches, 3.6 billion people have smart phones in 2020. My guess is 200-500 million people have some sort of crypto currency in 2021.

When it becomes feasible and an attractive substitute for fiat or any other payment methods. Unfortunately, Bitcoin as its current form doesn't justify the replacement or even a substitute for most brick and mortar stores (perhaps LN can be but most merchants actually prefer on-chain TXes). The adoption for digital services is there, mostly due to the fact that Bitcoin TXes are harder to reverse than MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, etc. The waiting time for a confirmation is also not much of a concern.

Unfortunately, the nature of cryptos makes the value quite volatile. If it somehow stabilizes some time in the future, then more people would consider exploring it as a currency rather than a speculative investment.

Personal definition if mass adoption:

When we can use bitcoin in our daily life to buy anything from the market. 

If has not occurred yet and I don't see it happening anytime soon. Obviously we can use crypto powered debit card from Bitpay or Polispay to replicate the same situation, but that's an indirect use if cryptos with a middleman involved.

Mass adoption will occur when the abive mentioned scenario will happen without a middleman.

My personal opinion, mass adoption means people know it. Whatever it will be used, as investment only is already ok for me. At least people know what purpose they have bitcoin especially if can give them profit. Don't need to be used as payment option is ok because as payment will be hard because of fees and some other reasons.

When i can pay with cryptos that retailer actually accepts it. With current systems i am paying in cryptos and they get fiat money.
Or when something major is running on permissionless blockchain using smart contracts. And i mean something really MAJOR. Not some testing projects that end up using couple tx for testing purposes.

Somehow it did. The mainstream adoption is when the financial institutions and the usual individual are also adopting and buying it. That's how I define the mainstream adoption because it includes us unlike before that people are only thinking that bitcoin is only used in dark web, deep web or any illegal transactions. But now it's already used for most transactions that we're having today that we can also transact with the use of cash and other payment options.

Can you buy whatever you want in almost any store around the world and pay with bitcoin? If the answer is no then we have not reached mass adoption if the answer is yes then we have reached it, that is the kind of level of adoption that we want, and it is obvious we are nowhere close to that level of adoption as bitcoin is being used mostly as an asset to speculate with and as a store of value, but do not worry, the day will come in which this will be true and we will be completely free to use our bitcoin as we want.

Hopefully, it will. Mass adoption will only take place if bitcoin will come to an event where it will be accepted and used by the public on a large scale. This means if bitcoin will be already used and accepted as a common payment method in various outlets, then we can say that bitcoin has already achieved its main goal.

For me, mass adoption is not when everyone uses something, but rather when there is such a possibility. Naturally, the elder part of the population would probably stick with fiat, use banks, and it doesn't matter much.
What matters most - is simply the ability to purchase stuff in average stores, pay for transport, restaurants, basically, everything we pay for with credit cards nowadays.

Adoption is actually becoming a utopia, adoption was for the common people, the working class, and they are the ones who get the least bitcoin in practice.

In fact, bitcoin is concentrated in a few users in its BTC unit and satoshi still allows small investors or common people to obtain their share, it is the decimal part that will always be available but leaving the market manipulation to a few based only in its price.

So if a massive adoption had happened with common users, we would have the possibility of making an economic-social change, where everything will be integrated into the Bitcoin concept.

In reality, the opposite is happening now. We ask that institutions, banks, businesses, governments, investors accept us, and some call this mass adoption, when they seem to be asking for help. The adoption was a right of the Bitcoin to grant rights in third parties mainly "the establishment" to access the bitcoin, not to beg for "adoption" as is happening today.

In reality it is not about more adoption, it is about the benefit provided by those who come under that "figure" and in what way they accept the idea of ​​bitcoin as it is.

Comparing the past and this current years then it cant really be denied that we've gone so far in terms with that, there are merchants and big companies had integrated nor considered bitcoin
to be part of their payment system.

Tesla (recently revoked) and Paypal and lots of more which does signify that adoption is on the move.We might not really ending up into a certain extent
where we can spent our coins on every corners of the world but at least we are seeing some of them are already accepting.

We are heading into that full adoption scale and remember that we are just a decade old.

Mass adoption would defer based on personal preference, an average enthusiast from an underdeveloped countries wouldn't have similar aspiration like that of the enthusiast from developed countries.

Mass adoption to some has to do with the government recognizing bitcoin as a currency and not just a speculative asset. Many new investors all want this, because they don't get understand what they have invested into and only here for the money.

While some won't care what the government says and sees mass adoption as the possibility of various shops and businesses accepting bitcoin in exchange of their service and the goods.

Not really. Real mass adoption has to be Decentralized Mass adoption for the security or safety of true cryptocurrencies... Not masses/users on centralized platforms that are controlled centrally, or platforms controlled by small group of privileged  people who know themselves or can contact each other.

 Once anyone can easily run full node and easily/safely transact with other network participants in p2p manner, then you know the True Mass Adoption has come  

Mass adoption refers to the time where cryptocurrencies are widely accepted and being used by the public on a large scale. Also, it is the time when cryptocurrency is generally used as a means of exchange for payment and trading without any restriction given by the government. It was like news about BTC and any cryptocurrency-related issues are being discussed in public not only on internet.

There was a time in which I thought the older section of the population will never use bitcoin and we needed a generational change for bitcoin to actually get to the point of being used massively, but taking into account the pandemic and how the elderly adapted to those circumstances and how they began to use payments online when many of them have never done so gives me hope that bitcoin could reach this point sooner rather than later, unfortunately that will require an enormous economic crisis, one that seems inevitable at this point.

Well those two words are different to each other.
Mass adoption is when it is almost normalized to be used/utilized as an alternative or primary entity.
Mainstream adoption would be when you see/hear it almost in everyday discussion or you could see it in every media channels. It could be from your television, radio, social media platforms, etc.

One example I could think of for mainstream adoption but not mass adoption would be when you can almost see BTC price equivalent to USD in your local news along with every currency.
Mass adoption is obvious.