If Forbes.com publishes an article, I don't think that necessarily means Forbes.com stands behind the article. This
article for instance was written by Chris Kline ("Co-founder and COO at Bitcoin IRA"). Given his job description,
of course he has high hopes for Bitcoin next year.
His number his arguments
1. Bitcoin’s Adoption Will Explode In 2018
2. Formal Regulatory Oversight Will Flood The Market With Institutional Money
3. Disruption Of The Status Quo Will Continue
(Forbes.com doesn't show the last 2 pages, so I can't see the next arguments)Although I agree #2 can result in a large flow of money into Bitcoin, I don't expect #1 to happen. Bitcoin doesn't scale, blocks are full, transactions are expensive, and it simply can't handle more new users. Bitcoin currently has
less than 25 million funded addresses. Most of them hold less than 0.001
BTC, which currently isn't even enough to pay the transaction fee you need to use it.
That leaves just over 11 million addresses in use. I don't know how many addresses the average person uses, but it will be at least a few. That leaves at most a few million people who own Bitcoin, and this has pushed Bitcoin to it's limits for a long time already.
Without a scaling solution (Lightning Network?), Bitcoin's adoption simply can't grow much.
