Classifying the waves of bitcoin adoption by demographics

[jehst]

1. 2009-2010: Cryptoanarchist wave. Slashdot readers. Computer engineers.
2. 2011: Silk Road wave. A very famous Wired article introduced bitcoin to geeks.
3. 2013 (April): Halving wave. The severe 2011 bubble crash + the halving made bitcoin extremely undervalued at the end of 2012. The reduced supply, oversold condition, and growing demand from Silk Road and SatoshiDice sparked another bubble.
4. Nov. 2013: China speculator wave. A good old-fashioned Chinese bubble.

Note: In my experience, all of these waves have consisted of a plurality of youngish males from around ages 25-35 with a majority of bitcoin users being males between the ages of 18 and 45.

Potential Remaining waves

5. Private wealth/institutional wave: risk-averse millionaire households, retirees, women, and the baby boomer generation will finally be advised to allocate a small portion of their wealth in the new asset class of digital currencies. They will invest through their mutual funds and brokerage accounts through notes and funds such as the Winklevoss ETF, which will in turn be held by Technology ETFs, which will in turn be held by mutual funds. This is the first wave that will include many women, folks over 50, and a majority of hedge funds, investment banks, trust funds, and other financial institutions. Many of them will be investing in bitcoin indirectly. Anyone who has money will be in bitcoin whether they know it or not. With GBTC and the first exchange-traded notes already live, Tim Draper buying bitcoin, and a handful of hedge funds buying bitcoin, we have already dipped our toes into this wave. But heavy duty ETFs in the US, Japan, China, and Germany are necessary for this wave to seriously begin. The timing looks very good here: the Winklevoss ETF was filed in Summer 2013 and the next block halving comes in Summer 2016. With 3 to 4 years being the likely time-frame for the Winklevoss ETF to launch, these two things could happen at the same time.


6. The Central Bank/Government wave: One by one, the Central Banks of the world add bitcoin to their foreign currency reserves. The Bank of China, for example, stocks up on every major currency and commodity around. Bitcoin will just be another thing that it buys. Eventually, people might borrow their native currencies and sell them for bitcoin on a large enough scale that it could be harmful to those currencies (i.e. speculative attack). Central Banks will buy bitcoin not as an investment but in order to protect their currencies. Having a large enough reserve of bitcoin will be just as important as having enough reserves of Swiss Francs or oil or whatever. This is the first wave that will include governments buying bitcoin in earnest (and not just seizing them and selling them in relation to criminal activity). Governments, in aggregate, will own millions of bitcoin.

[thejaytiesto]

It's pretty accurate in my book. What's funny is, I used to be a slashdot reader and the day that they mentioned Bitcoin I may not have paid attention because I don't remember reading about it back in the day. I found out about Bitcoin when it was in the news for a while because it surpassed Gold in price. We are all still early adopters anyway, we are lucky to be here right now.

[franky1]

point 5 Winklevoss trust. buying baskets in allotments of 2000 coins a time,
definetly will be a price riser

point 6.
... um no just no..
they will make their own coin

[brg444]

point 5 Winklevoss trust. buying baskets in allotments of 2000 coins a time,
definetly will be a price riser

point 6.
... um no just no..
they will make their own coin

Bitcoin is the only crypto-assets with gold-like features. They will undoubtly accumulate it as reserves.

In fact it's more likely they eventually use these reserves to spawn their own fiat-crypto.

Enters the Bitcoin standard.

[franky1]

Bitcoin is the only crypto-assets with gold-like features. They will undoubtly accumulate it as reserves.

In fact it's more likely they eventually use these reserves to spawn their own fiat-crypto.

Enters the Bitcoin standard.

42coin is rarer....

[jehst]

point 5 Winklevoss trust. buying baskets in allotments of 2000 coins a time,
definetly will be a price riser

point 6.
... um no just no..
they will make their own coin

They can also make their own coins. But they will also add bitcoin to their reserves. Once again, this would not be to replace their currencies and it would not be an investment. It would simply be something they add to their reserves like copper or oil or whatever. They will own a basket of digital currencies containing coins that have reached a certain market cap and volume as they would then be considered to be economically significant resources.

Btw, if the Chinese government released a freely exchangable blockchain based currency that was redeemable for gold, I'd buy some. It would be a great currency and it would probably trade at a premium to gold and outcompete bitcoin. But is the Chinese government bold enough to release such a currency into the world? I don't think so.

If governments create a coin where they control the mining process and can reverse and block transactions (as Ecuador is doing) those coins won't outcompete bitcoin and I will not be buying any.  

[brg444]

Bitcoin is the only crypto-assets with gold-like features. They will undoubtly accumulate it as reserves.

In fact it's more likely they eventually use these reserves to spawn their own fiat-crypto.

Enters the Bitcoin standard.

42coin is rarer....

Also worthless because people don't trust it for fundamental reasons.

Has nothing to do with rarity.

[jehst]

Bitcoin is the only crypto-assets with gold-like features. They will undoubtly accumulate it as reserves.

In fact it's more likely they eventually use these reserves to spawn their own fiat-crypto.

Enters the Bitcoin standard.

42coin is rarer....

Also worthless because people don't trust it for fundamental reasons.

Has nothing to do with rarity.

Right. The number of units is arbitrary.

Digital currencies are measured by a combination of market cap, volume, and security. If you filter out premined, non-mineable coins and coins with <$10,000 daily volume and <5 million USD market cap, there are really only a handful of coins.

[OROBTC]

point 5 Winklevoss trust. buying baskets in allotments of 2000 coins a time,
definetly will be a price riser

point 6.
... um no just no..
they will make their own coin

Bitcoin is the only crypto-assets with gold-like features. They will undoubtly accumulate it as reserves.

In fact it's more likely they eventually use these reserves to spawn their own fiat-crypto.

Enters the Bitcoin standard.

I have to agree w/ franky1 here.  Why would foreign central banks hold BTC as a RESERVE asset, that would somewhat be counter to their claims of acting to stabilize their currencies (while lying about it).

If foreign central banks need an alternative to other currencies, it is ready now: gold!

And, any central bank can just prepare to "Ctrl P" (print money)...

[chennan]

point 5 Winklevoss trust. buying baskets in allotments of 2000 coins a time,
definetly will be a price riser

point 6.
... um no just no..
they will make their own coin

Yeah, there is already a "Fedcoin" out there that pretty much says it will be backed on "government" and I think some assets so it remain more stable in price..

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/fedcoin-rising-1424312468

I'm sure there is a lot better information on Fedcoin, but this was one of the first Google search results for it. Governments might try to "challenge" Bitcoin in a way with this alternative, but I don't think a lot of people are going to fall for it. Most people who believe in the government (which isn't much) tend to not really think for themselves and will do whatever they are told. I think the younger generations will be more influential in the world and prevent this when the time comes around when the Feds try to really push Fedcoin as a legit world currency.