What stage is BitCoin at

[gaoxing]

Early Adopters or Early Mainstream....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

[gmk80]

Assuming that at some point it will be adopted by every person on every corner of the planet, I would say we are still in the very early stages.

[hawk196]

I'd assume its at a very early stage and it has a long way to go yet

[smackdaddy]

Not even early adopter. It's barely past "proof of concept", and it remains to be seen if another crypto-currency idea gets released that does everything bitcoin does without some of the attack vectors and other flaws.

[ironwolf]

Extremely early adopter. These are exciting and risky times. Only the bravest need apply.

[bonkers325]

i dont think bitcoin is going to make it out of this "beginning stage" unless some valid form of trading where nobody will be beat is built in.  like some sort of built in escrow system

[muyoso]

I don't think there is going to be an early mainstream phase.  I think it jumps right from early adopters into a place where only people who have spent tens of thousands on rigs can mine bitcoins at any sort of a acceptable rate.  I think by mid summer the difficulty will be so high that a large percentage of miners will quit, but a majority of the computing power will stay because its concentrated among a few "power" miners.

[PaZer]

Innovators! 100%.

[im3w1l]

I'd say early adopter

[wegotpickles]

I'd say late in the innovators phase or early in the early adopters, but i think we have a chance of reaching early majority within one or two years time if the government doesn't crack down on us.

[spazattack1]

Not even early adopter yet methinks

[Trypa]

Pre-early adopter :-P

[TKE406]

Let's think about this like real BitCoin enthusiasts. There is currently around ~6.5M BitCoins in circulation. This is out of a total 21M that is going to be the final number.

So all of you who say we are in the early adopters phase are underestimating how fast this has spread. Remember things do not have to go so smoothly as on a graph. How many people decided to play the BitCoin game in this MONTH OF JUNE? Think about it...

[soades]

The baby has just been birthed, requires constant care

[PaZer]

even if in may and june there was a "run" on bitcoin. in the world most of the people have no clue about bitcoins. most printed press didn't mention it yet same as broadcasting, only few articles, I made some research.
Also mining is for freaks only. a normal human has no chnace to mine asf....

[taqistan]

I just arrived to the party, and I feel like I got here late.  Good to know most people think we are still in the early adapter phase.   

[JeevesNZ]

Let's assume, pulling numbers out of my ass... that the potential user market for bitcoin is 1 billion. Hell, lets make it 500 million.

1% of 500 million is 5 million.

I struggle to think that even 5 million people know about bitcoin.

I'd say it's at the early adapter phase

[shamathana]

its all over slashdot, so it should be known by quite a few ppl

[qwk]

its all over slashdot, so it should be known by quite a few ppl

All over slashdot. How many people in your neighbourhood follow slashdot?
When I think about it, probably by far less then one percent of the people i know personally have ever even heard of bitcoin, let alone might feel any urge to try and use it.

[Bezza]

I just arrived to the party, and I feel like I got here late.  Good to know most people think we are still in the early adapter phase.   

Exactly how i feel. I read about BitCoins a while back and now i just wish i had gotten in on the action earlier!

[Shad3dOne]

I think we are still at the toddler stage... lots of minors(pun)..not enough market sales.

Once BitCoin is more widely accepted for goods and services, I think we'll be in the early pre-teens..right now we are in the terrible twos.

-Shad3d

[sofadigger]

we may be past that early stage, big mining farms are starting to take over casual miners, if the btc value doesnt rise as expected, it won't be worth the electricity cost in a couple of months

[deadon]

Very Early innovation

[done]

Beyond early. Plenty of time to do anything you choose to do with bitcoin. I hope everyone who reads this thread will do someone special for the community.

[Perof]

Seems like if the competition can be held back this venture will be a positive and rewarding experience for all who can avoid being hacked .

From my perspective bitcoin is in it's developmental stage.

Waiting for the user friendliness to set in....