Bitcoin Forum

A Billion People Will Be Using Cryptocurrency in 5 Years: Brian Armstrong

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The world of money is revolutionizing in front of our eyes. Cryptocurrency is creating new paradigms for alternative payment systems and decentralized banking. There is no doubt that the user adoption of various cryptocurrencies is rapidly increasing. The cryptocurrency industry has become more fluid as the borders between it and mainstream finance continue to blur. At the same time, regulators are spending long hours at work to regulate the booming circle of crypto-enthusiasts.

It could be one of the prime reasons why Brian Armstrong believes crypto-adoption will increase at an astronomical pace in the next half-decade.

The Coinbase chief executive was responding to a question about cryptocurrency’s international outreach at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, to which he predicted that 1 billion people would eventually be using cryptocurrencies in the next five years.

Armstrong believes a growing number of cryptocurrency companies will contribute to the overall crypto ecosystem growth. These companies, under a regulated environment, will issue their tokens backed by their respective market caps. In a way, these institutionalized digital assets will prove to be an alternative investment system in addition to equities.

“It makes sense that any company out there who has a cap table should have their token,” Armstrong said. “Every open source project, every charity, potentially every fund or these new types of decentralized organizations [and] apps, they’re all going to have their tokens.”

Coinbase, the U.S. company Armstrong heads, is one of the world’s largest bitcoin and altcoin exchanges by trading volume. They have only recently entered the U.K. markets to tap the growing crypto-user base in the country. Previously, it had been working actively in the U.S. and Europe, and it has amassed over 13 million users to date. That makes it 32.5 percent of the overall crypto-users — arguably, anyway.

Armstrong plans to expand Coinbase to more global territories. They have recently announced their plans to open new offices in Africa.

In the long run, Armstrong believes they will function like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), with “probably” millions of tokens in their portfolio.

“We do feel a substantial subset of these tokens will be securities,” he said. “Our approach has always been to be the most trusted [cryptocurrency exchange] and the easiest to use. So we want to be the legal compliant place where you can start to trade these tokens that are classified as securities.”


Source: https://www.ccn.com/a-billion-people-will-be-using-cryptocurrency-in-5-years-brian-armstrong/

If a billion people do end up in crypto by then, which I don't believe in the slightest, it'll be due to the one thing Coinbase hate more than anything else - Bitcoin.

With this very stat on the head of Mr. Armstrong, the coinbase is trying to cook something for the future no one knows whether good or bad ;) only time will tell.

Yes a billion people more pulled into the cryptospace to be tricked, scammed and broken after they lose everything. But some people will make it alive hopefully hehehe. The world's markets always end with winners and losers and the cryptomarket is no different. Everything is fair and everyone is fair game hehe.

Also, the cryptospace is already becoming cyclical like a traditional economy, I reckon. If you lose money now, you have a chance to make it in the next cycle.

I think Patrick Byrne (Overstock CEO) made a similar prediction about mass tokenization and a fundamental shift in the way securities issuance and trading is done. I was annoyed at the time because of the proliferation of scam tokens, but they're probably right. A billion people in 5 years seems a tad outlandish, but it's not outside the realm of possibility either.

 
If not for Bitcoin's reliability, no one would have any faith in altcoins and certainly not in any tokens built on top of them. It's the monument of stability underlying the entire economy. Deep down, even Brian Armstrong knows that. But Coinbase is in the business of capitalizing on hype, so we shouldn't be surprised when they chase altcoins and tokens.

Hype looks a lot better and lasts a lot longer if you hype the thing most likely to wind up fulfilling it. You can be positive about BTC and all other manure you attempt to force on to people at the same time.

Presumably there's some sort of voiced policy about not being too positive about Bitcoin. I'd love to see a rundown of why other than it not doing what they wanted it do in terms of scaling.

I think the main part comes from the fact that Bitcoin has lost a tremendous amount of interest amongst noobs due to its steep entry point. Yes, you can buy a fraction of a whole coin, but people aren't interested in that.

It's a psychological battle that makes decent exchanges become shitcoin exchanges. You can use $1000 to buy 0.15BTC or you can use $1000 to buy a giant stack of much cheaper coins with higher short term gain potential.

The same basically applies to Ethereum. It has grown beyond the point where noobs no longer care about it and have shifted to EOS and all other smaller tokens. Bitcoin is the least speculative coin of them all.

And many other predictions have been stated that the bitcoin price would reach $50k. And none of that happened. I really do not see eye to eye with those predictors. Everyone can predict, either you are an expert or not. Perhaps, they predict the growth of bitcoin because they want more people to buy some bitcoin so its value increases. It is a fact that more people will start to use cryptocurrency, but I doubt that in five years, 1 billion people will start using it.

Yes, it is one of their strategies to persuade people to still be positive about the market because many have left since the bear market especially those who lose a lot buying near all-time high of bitcoin. Given the situation right now, people are not so encourage to invest in cryptocurrency but a news like this would light a hope that somehow those losses would become profits in the years to come.


I doubt that as well but who knows, maybe it would come true. There are 7.6 billion people in the world currently so it may mean that majority of the countries would have already adopted cryptocurrency. It may be less likely but then again, bitcoin keeps surprising us.

1 in 8 people by then, is it now? As much as a believer as I can be, it's really difficult to see that many people using crypto, unless the definition is an extremely loose one.

Take away the traders/speculators, the ultra-holders who see crypto as an investment, the people "owning" Bitcoin on any number of exchanges, the merchants using Bitpay and their ilk who don't have a crypto wallet... and we have a smattering of maybe several hundred thousand actual users.

Yes, I'm being unscientific. But so's Armstrong.

If we change 5 years to 7-10 and 1 billion to 500 million, then it will be an optimistic, but achievable prediction, in my opinion. Bitcoin can get a lot of popularity if governments and banks will keep fighting cash. People love cash because so many of them want to get some shadow income, or buy something illegal/restricted, or are just worried about their privacy. They are the potential users of Bitcoin as a currency, we just need to communicate to them that Bitcoin and cash have many similarities.

He'll be betting on unwitting usage which is indeed the most successful, easy to spread and comes with a glossy coat, wet nose and the waggiest tail you've ever seen.

If those numbers are correct (and I personally believe they are very close to reality) then all the existent crypto-users amount to 40 million which is a bit over 0.5% of the world population. Can crypto be used by 5%? Absolutely. Can it be used by 10%? I think eventually, yes, but that will take more than 5 years imo.

Also I agree with above posters that no one would use any alts if there were no such thing as Bitcoin which can act as a model for successfully overcoming difficulties.

I don't even think a billion people are connected to the internet let alone using cryptocurrency.

There probably will be something like that figure using crypto eventually, but maybe not within five years. I'd say we're looking at least ten years plus, but that doesn't mean it will be bitcoin (or any of the other existing cryptos either). I think within ten years some country will probably at least experiment with issuing their fiat-based currency on their own blockchain, but it probably won't be in the spirit if bitcoin and will be one where they can issue more coins at their own volition like they already do with fiat.


Lol. Facebook alone has over two billion:


Internet users:

 

If you actually think those two billion are all real people then I've got a bag full of "lol"s to give you.

But yeah I was being facetious with the number, I know there are a 2-3 billion on the internet...but do you honestly think a full ONE-THIRD of the people online will use cryptocurrency???

I don't really expect this to happen, to be honest.

With the current adoption statistics, I think that it's safe to say that probably 0.5-1% of the globe currently use bitcoin at the moment, and that would be a pretty optimistic estimate given that most of these people are not actively using bitcoin, but rather using it as an investment vehicle.

Unless we see a global hyperinflationary crisis in the next 5 years which would potentially prompt many people to active adopt BTC, I think that it's not a likely scenario that we'll see such high adoption of crypto. I think it will happen eventually given time, but half a decade is way too little of a timeframe for this to occur realistically. Don't forget that Brian Armstrong owns a major bitcoin business in coinbase, which means that he is probably biased.

I think it's possible if you expect growth to be exponential rather than linear. I assume Armstrong is drawing on the idea of growth curves like the S-curve. Once you "cross the chasm," adoption rate can go vertical.

The vast majority of television adoption happened over a period of five years or so. That's the most optimistic case, but if you look at recent examples like the internet and mobile phones, the rate of growth can be quite staggering:

https://i.imgur.com/2iz1Rnx.png

I thin the chances for exponential adoption are lowering with each year, because nowadays new things get picked up really fast. Most of the people have heard about Bitcoin already, but for various reasons they've decided to not get involved. Volatility and fear of a bubble are probably the biggest reason, but also there are other downsides like Bitcoin's unforgiving nature and complex interface, or undetermined legal status. Together they simply make it not worth the risk for average joe. I'd be happy to see even 5% of world population as active users and 5% more as infrequent users or hodlers.

Nah. It's zilch to do with unit bias. Their Bitcoin volume will still dwarf everything else.

It's something to do with politics. Coinbase probably want to align fully with legacy finance and BTC is the one coin that'll put up a fight against that. If they could drive everyone into centralised bitch coins they would and they'll give it a try.

It's not really a particularly unrealistic goal in the long run, even though it is unlikely that it would be achieved in that period of time.

If we take a relatively optimistic estimate of 30 million bitcoin/crypto users (which is more than the amount of active addresses on the bitcoin network right now according to bitcoininfocharts without accounting for duplications), then it would essentially mean a 30-35 times increase in the number of crypto users in the next 5 years. But in fact, active users would be much

Even if we take into account that a new bull market will likely emerge in the next 5 years, I don't think that adoption on such a massive scale is ready to happen quite yet. Unless merchants start accepting bitcoin everywhere and awareness increases drastically, even a figure like 100 million adopters would be unlikely in half a decade.

I don't say that it is impossible but it will surely depend more on people having a investor's mindset rather than people thinking cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment. Because let us face it cryptocurrencies now are acting like a investment opportunity rather than a currency itself as if that being a payment method is only a 2nd feature for it. If majority of the countries have some sort of wake up call to people to become investors I know they will see cryptocurrencies as a big opportunity and be one of their options to invest with.

I think you make a good case for why adoption rates for some technologies look like an S-curve. Regardless of social awareness, adoption is very slow at first -- whether because the technology is expensive, hard to use, paradigm-breaking, requires additional infrastructure, etc. At some point, adoption goes vertical. It's not immediate. That's the S-curve model.


Personally, I think Bitcoin's trajectory is more binary than that. As long the technology remains secure, I lean towards mass adoption.

1 billion "using" as in buying stuff with crypto or paying wages in crypto or whatever other purposes won't happen, not in 5 and not in 10.
Just like you I simply can't understand how hodling some BTC in a paper wallet for years would mean usage.

If we count BTC users as people who have made a transaction in the last 30 days...then the number is at most 6 millions, and far more likely well below 500 000.



I don't know if bull markets help with daily usage.
They do raise the price by a factor of x but on the actual usage, the effect might be negative as people will tend to just hold their coins and stop using them as a currency.

So we might have x30 holders after a bull market but surely not even x3 in daily users...

This is the graph with BTC daily transactions over two years

https://i.imgur.com/Izl5uI6.png
Of course the drop might be because of exchanges finally batching transactions, but still, we're not going up anywhere near the required rate.

Well there's probably no way to know how many people truly use Facebook and that's another debate entirely, but let's just say there's a "shitload" using Facebook regardless of how many of those are actually fake profiles or not. They probably have millions of fake accounts just from bounty spammers on this board alone LOL.


I didn't say they would for certain, but it depends how we look at this or what 'crypto' eventually evolves to become. Imagine if most governments decide to issue their own fiat currencies via their own blockchains, then those would also become 'cryptos' and if so then a billion users wouldn't seem so much. These coins certainly wouldn't be decentralized or in the spirit of bitcoin but by definition they will still be cryptocurrencies. Who knows where bitcoin will go in the future either. Imagine if there's another huge economic crash and this leads many to seek alternatives to their crashing fiat currencies that many governments have devalued to worthlessness before (like Zimbabwe & Venezuela just to name a couple).


These sorts of economic crises could and do happen though. Also lets not forget bitcoin has the potential to be a worldwide, border-less currency. I've always wanted a currency like this that you could spend anywhere in the world years before I even heard of bitcoin and I think many others would like something like this because exchanging money for local currencies is always a hassle and you often get ripped off by exchange rates. There's no reason why this couldn't happen. For sure I'm being optimistic but I don't think there currently would be a better currency than bitcoin for a currency you can spend anywhere in the world just as long as you have an internet connection.

Bitcoin will continue getting more adoption, and factors like better user experience, protocol improvements and lowered volatility will certainly help, but there are some fundamental problems. People often like to stick to one product and ignore alternatives for a really long time, they just don't see the point in trying new things if old things work fine. I feel like the same will happen with Bitcoin - most people will ignore it because they are satisfied with banks.

The same here, for me next years will be better and better if we will compare them to last 3/4, market is still developing and lots of changes will come in future months or years.

This is good. Hope the crypto currency will be as popular as the Visa and Master card, and the bitcoin price will go to at least 50 K USD.