[2019-09-09] A Billion People Will Be Using Crypto in 5 Years: Brian Armstrong

[timerland]

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.

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[Harlot]

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.

[squatter]

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

[stompix]

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.

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.

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 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


Of course the drop might be because of exchanges finally batching transactions, but still, we're not going up anywhere near the required rate.

[guybrushthreepwood]

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

Lol. Facebook alone has over two billion:

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

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

[hatshepsut93]

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

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.

[Yurkov]

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[dreamhouse]

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.