Early adoption stage

[chriswilmer]

It's super early. The crazy thing about Bitcoin is that the higher its value is, the more useful it is. I always thought it was insane that a year or two ago there were institutional investors who said "it's too early to buy into Bitcoin, we're going to wait for it to get bigger"... that seems like the worst investment strategy possible, but there you have it. The last "investors" to come to the table will be central banks (20 years from now), who will want to have Bitcoin reserves, once it is "big enough."

[nakaone]

I will never get why people argue by the price of 1 Bitcoin - have you seen the market cap? It is less than 8Billion, I think that is less than M1 of Mazedonia....

[bitrider]

Early adoption phase was single maybe double digits. Like with anything, the more people know about it and the more mainstream it goes, the less profit you can get out of it.

Not sure what really early adopters think about btc? Are they still in? Or sold and enjoy the money or invested in something else the public did not heared about it.

And bitcoin @100.000$ is so absurd if we can't even pass 600. Maybe 100.000$ when you can buy an lollipop with that amount of dollar in next future.

And yeah I'm very pissed that i bought @685 and can't pay out at the moment without an loss of 10k

Wrong thinking on all levels. I'm sorry. You are confused and sad and obviously should not be invested in bitcoin. If you are concerned about $100 fluctuations in price over a couple of months, you do not have what it takes to ride this dragon. I'm shocked that you put so much cash into something you obviously do not understand or appreciate. Get out as soon as you can. Really. Really.

...for the rest of you who are actually interested...here is a pretty picture...(sorry for the giant size - did not have time to format )





I suspect we are just moving out of innovators phase and into early adopters - on this chart. This year 2014 & 2015 will be the early adopter years. There is often a "gap" in the tech adoption in this phase - before the user interfaces get worked and made human friendly and a killer app or two shows up. This gap can sometimes lead to widespread doubts about the survival of the tech and a temp collapse in investment.



I believe we will blow through that gap because we have so many talented & passionate people on the case.  However I don't think we will hit early majority until mid to late 2015.

[spiderbrain]

...for the rest of you who are actually interested...here is a pretty picture...

+1 it's still very much early days, like 1997 for  the internet. If we take that standard adoption curve, less than 0.1% of people have bitcoins, so we are completely at the start. One of the things which interests me is how bitcoin solves counterparty risk problems in international banking. I think it's likely that bitcoin will be used for early experiments that try to solve this before being replaced by something more mature a few years later. I also think that it will replace a lot of online credit card transactions and offshore banking shenanigans.

That said, a vaguely stable price, or a mature futures and options market (which will lead to that), needs to be in place before all of that starts to happen. A the moment people are slowly realising what cryptocurrencies are and what they might lead to. The strange thing is you get to own a percentage of the future global money supply now, before most people realise that's what it is. Maybe bitcoin falls apart before then, but cryptocurrencies are here to stay. If MtGox is anything to go by, there will be plently of warning before bitcoin is replaced, if one is paying attention.

Saying that people losing coins at exchanges or whatever is a reason why bitcoin won't work is like saying "my friend had a computer virus, computers will never take off" -  in 1990. But how low will bitcoin go on the way there? Very low, perhaps, place your bets if you like.

[aminorex]

Considering that bitcoin is all but unusable, the mind boggles to consider what the value will be once it is easy to use for any fit purpose.

[BitOnyx]

Well we are at mining stage. I wouldn't use financial terminology for it since it is impossible to compare bitcoin to anything else (even though many people think it is ponzi, securities, traditional currency)

[Arghhh]

People who think Bitcoin is nearly maxed out at $8 billion market share are either bad at economics, math, history, or all of them.  

[600watt]

People who think Bitcoin is nearly maxed out at $8 billion market share are either bad at economics, math, history, or all of them.  

uhh,  and i thought is was other way around:




 

[Wilhelm]

more like, wait 20 years and open your wallet to find hard drive has crashed, pc has been hacked and long stolen, USB thumb drive is corrupted, paper wallet damaged in fire/water/bleached by sunlight/eaten by mice/disintegrated by time, etc.

Pessimist 

Well what's the difference with paper fiat? Btw all fiat is already rotting due to inflation.
BTC wallets require maintenance so HODL doesn't mean you don't reprint your paper wallet or put your data on new thumb drives.

[pdawg]

we will be looking back at this time and wishing we were buying $600 btc hand over fist....

[Arghhh]

People who think Bitcoin is nearly maxed out at $8 billion market share are either bad at economics, math, history, or all of them.  

uhh,  and i thought is was other way around:




 

Lololololol

2011 just called and they want that image back (and their $2 Bitcoins).

[the_poet]

My opinion is that we've left the very early phase and are now early adopters. In the coming months the price will reach low $x,xxx and the massive media coverage will help bring a lot of the public in.

I always use myself as a very good metrics: I first heard about Bitcoin in early 2013 and everytime I read an article about Bitcoin I thought you people were just a bunch of nerds who needed to get a life. As soon as I started reading about price increases, I started to convince myself it was just a bubble bound to burst. All this until last december when Bitcoin reached ATH and I started to slowly change my opinion: "perhaps the bubble won't burst" -> "it's possible that it isn't a bubble at all" -> "I could give it a try" -> "it's an opportunity". So, on early January I decided to finally signup for an account at BitcoinTalk.org and spent the whole night reading (I went to bed at 5:30 AM). Now, 2.5 months later and totally on the other side of the fence, I like to call myself a proud HODLER and make fun of those who disregard Bitcoin as a "stupid tulip-like bubble".

[Ekaros]

Considering that bitcoin is all but unusable, the mind boggles to consider what the value will be once it is easy to use for any fit purpose.

Will it ever be easy to use?


I think bitcoin will stabilize on lower price level in future, there might be one or two bubles on the way, but generally it's most likely to end up as nerd-currency with a few use cases...

[the_poet]

However, in order for the masses to adopt Bitcoin:

#1 it needs to be much easier to use

#2 submultiples have to be used: people want to buy whole amounts of things, not tiny fractions. One of the things that kept me from buying Bitcoin was the fact that I thought only whole coins could be bought. And I'm sure many people who'd like to jump in have the same misbelief!

[jubalix]

- Governments are writing legislation about and holding publicized meetings about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is already starting to collide with and meet resistence from the establishment.
- If you go into a room at least a few people know about bitcoin.
- There are several news articles every day about bitcoin.
- My Facebook friends are now into Bitcoin.
- Bitcoin is often on the front page of Yahoo Business/Finance and other news pages, and often on NPR.
- Bitcoin exchanges are getting ready to launch in wall street.
- Tens/Hundred of thousands of businesses have already adopted Bitcoin, including major mainstream online retailers.

The "early" phase is over. This might not be the "final" phase but I don't think it's the early phase because there is such a large awareness and adoption already.

The reason the market cap is so small is because people have CHOSEN not to use it. We are not even guaranteed that bitcoin is "the future of money" so your logic of the relation of bitcoin's market cap to angry birds and to some potential market cap of quadrillions of dollars is based on a false premise. Maybe the realistic future of bitcoin is only to reach the market cap of Google or Facebook, in which case we've already realized 1/50 - 1/20 of it.  Or maybe the fair market cap of Bitcoin is the market cap of Western Union, which it's already at.

awareness  != adoption

also do you see legislators getting themselves in a bundle over angry birds. Nope.

BTC tech, can actually take away a massive amount of state power, and the fact they have make announcements on it says everything. I mean all of the large govt financials had to take drastic action to stop the bitcoin blackhole from sucking every last bit of value from the RMB.

Alot of people have hears about BTC now sure, vaugley....but very very few own it. Even fewer are not Hodling.

You are seeing the smallest tip of ice berg right now and the modern state is the titanic.

[Dafar]

We are not early adopters... people who bought in at 2011 and 2012 might be... but not us. We are more like late minority


Everyone saying we are early adopters are hoping for another 10x-100x profits... which will most likely not happen. I want it to happen more than anything else but I'm just being realistic. Good luck getting to $1T market cap with all the FUD, lack of security, regulation and overall understanding of what the hell bitcoin is. Maybe in 10 years... but I so wish I was an early adopter and got in last year or 2 years ago. Your only hope of ever seeing those kinds of profits again is through a time machine.

[bitleif]

We are not early adopters... people who bought in at 2011 and 2012 might be... but not us. We are more like late majority.

I would say we are early adopters. People who bought before mid-2013 are innovators IMHO. We are definitely not in the early majority yet.

[gentlemand]

We are not early adopters... people who bought in at 2011 and 2012 might be... but not us. We are more like late majority.


Everyone saying we are early adopters are hoping for another 10x-100x profits... which will most likely not happen. I want it to happen more than anything else but I'm just being realistic. Good luck getting to $1T market cap with all the FUD, lack of security, regulation and overall understanding of what the hell bitcoin is. Maybe in 10 years... but I so wish I was an early adopter and got in last year or 2 years ago. Your only hope of ever seeing those kinds of profits again is through a time machine.

You appear to be a bit dispirited today. 2009-2012 types are sub micro stealth adopters.

I've no idea about orders of magnitude higher, but when one ATM machine arriving in an entire country still gets people excited I think we can assume it's still unbelievably early days.

There's a universe of difference between a regular person hearing the word Bitcoin, then actually vaguely figuring out what it is, then deciding it's worth taking the plunge, then creating a wallet and buying some or being paid some. That might be a process of several years for most.

I'll state it again - if you're posting on here you're so attuned to Bitcoin that it's very hard to conceive of what the non-infected world makes of it. It's still a drip in a swirling ocean.

[Peter R]

It all depends on the adoption-saturation level.  

If growth stops now, new users are laggards.  

If eventually 10% of the population become bitcoin users (assuming < 0.1% currently have), then current bitcoin adoption is at less than 1% of the saturation level.  This would mean that new users are innovators (or earlier).  

This is the case with all technology, by the way.  You can only tell if you were an innovator or a laggard (or somewhere in between) with the benefit of hindsight!

[Dafar]

We are not early adopters... people who bought in at 2011 and 2012 might be... but not us. We are more like late majority.


Everyone saying we are early adopters are hoping for another 10x-100x profits... which will most likely not happen. I want it to happen more than anything else but I'm just being realistic. Good luck getting to $1T market cap with all the FUD, lack of security, regulation and overall understanding of what the hell bitcoin is. Maybe in 10 years... but I so wish I was an early adopter and got in last year or 2 years ago. Your only hope of ever seeing those kinds of profits again is through a time machine.

You appear to be a bit dispirited today. 2009-2012 types are sub micro stealth adopters.

I've no idea about orders of magnitude higher, but when one ATM machine arriving in an entire country still gets people excited I think we can assume it's still unbelievably early days.

There's a universe of difference between a regular person hearing the word Bitcoin, then actually vaguely figuring out what it is, then deciding it's worth taking the plunge, then creating a wallet and buying some or being paid some. That might be a process of several years for most.

I'll state it again - if you're posting on here you're so attuned to Bitcoin that it's very hard to conceive of what the non-infected world makes of it. It's still a drip in a swirling ocean.

I am. I'm down 90% on some of my Alt coin investments (on a significant amount of money), down nearly 40% on LTC, just barely up on BTC since I joined last Sept/Oct. I'm still a believer of bitcoin, but I'm going to remain pessimistic on my financial situation until I see the dough. I have a strong superstitious theory that I am just unlucky when it comes to money and investing (which has been proven over and over again), so I have doubts that I will be fortunate enough to ride another price explosion. It must be an amazing feeling. I live vicariously though you guys who have experienced that.