What's preventing bitcoin from worldwide adoption?

[Nerdy doctor]

Bitcoin remains to be adopted by every country in the world for various reasons. Here are my thoughts on why..

1. Government policies: Most government and financial institutions round the world seem not to want bitcoin cause of the financial freedom it gives to its users. They would want to control and tax the flow of finances of individuals and they probably fear the anonymous nature of its transactions. Some policies even go as far as criminalizing its use.

2. Scammers and fraudulent practices: Scammers have found bitcoin as a safe haven cause of its transactions being anonymous. Also, terrorist groups among other sources get funded by bitcoin also cause of its anonymous nature. Fraudulent practices and transactions are made with ease wth the use of bitcoin.

3. Fluctuating value: The value of bitcoin isn't steady as it rises and falls. The uncertainty in the price and value greatly hinders the general adoption worldwide.

4. Awareness: Nearly not enough effort on creating and spreading positive awareness on it as some government and individuals alike is hell bent on spreading negativity around and poisoning the minds of prospective users. People need to be aware and understand what bitcoin is really about and be awake to its uses.

5. Information hoarding: You could get lots of information about anything on the internet including bitcoin. But the internet can be misleading to newbies cause you could get right and wrong and also misleading information on the internet. It puzzles me that people with an in depth knowledge of bitcoin would purposefully hoard and keep information to themselves. You may think people don't hoard information but in reality, people do. It irksome just thinking about it. If people could share information, newbies won't readily fall prey to scammers.

These are my thoughts on what's preventing bitcoin from being adapted worldwide.

[franky1]

the three main things that are hindering world wide adoption are:

1. over 50% of the world are on low income. meaning their minimum wage is less than half of the minimum wage of developed countries

this is important because if the transaction fee is ~$1.60 (lows over $1 highs over $3 at time of post)


where for instance people do not want to be paying an hours labour just to make a transaction.
nor do they want to be paying 10% fee just to spend say $16 funds. ..  meaning they wont use it to buy things for $2-$15 which could be a few days worth of wages or a whole weeks worth of groceries for millions of people
..
there are many corporate/political aligned people in the community that do not want bitcoin to be used by the poorest nations. do not want bitcoin to be used for daily use. they make many silly excuses that are meaningless in the 21st century, but they really try hard to dissuade people from using bitcoin and instead try to off-ramp people into other networks

they want expensive fee's and other things that make it less useful. all to advertise their other networks as the replacement/upgrade people should move over to.

2. aside from the fee cost.. lets take the 'blockchain size'
ethereum is younger yet it is 1tb blockchain, yet no one is crying about their utility causing problems. many many developers have done alot of things to add features to ethereum and make it useful for many things. yet certain people dont want people using bitcoin that is much older but under half the size. they dont want daily use, they dont even want majority to be full node network backbone nodes. they try to mis-inform people to be leacher nodes pretending to be seeder nodes of block data.  they want value locks and then playing around with other networks that dont have the same security as bitcoin

3. aside from the silly excuses of why certain people think bitcoin should not be used by the masses
lets take the altnet argument
there are multiple networks all trying to steal the user-base of bitcoin by calling their network bitcoin[something] whether its pegged networks/forked networks/ or just name fame stealing networks. this dilutes the userbase over multiple networks and makes less people use the actual bitcoin network.
many then lose faith in the actual bitcoin network due to issues with the pretend 'bitcoin' networks. giving the real bitcoin network a bad name,
yep certain people pretend to adore bitcoin while trying to say that bitcoin is broke and people should use something else.

if over 50% of the world cant see value in using bitcoin because the fee is over an hours labour, and the bitcoin developers dont want to actually make it cheaper but do false advertising like making older transaction formats 4x more expensive and then call their new feature a 3x discount(end result is overal fee is higher then before) then those developers have not made improvements to make it useful for the 'unbanked' populations.
if the overal only feature benefit of the same new feature is just to create a format that allows offramping to other networks. you start to see that certain people in the community dont want mass adoption of bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The main reason is the first one, IMO. If they cordially approved it, it'd probably knock the rough edges off the rest of the problems.

2. Scammers and fraudulent practices: Scammers have found bitcoin as a safe haven cause of its transactions being anonymous. Also, terrorist groups among other sources get funded by bitcoin also cause of its anonymous nature.

There's nothing completely anonymous in the internet. Only levels of anonymity. Even though Bitcoin does provide a decent level of anonymity (if used properly) it's still not used in criminal activity as much as the media say. Studies[1] show that nearly 1% of the total transactions can be linked to anything illicit. There's also no studies which show that the ban of cryptocurrencies reduced criminality.

[1] https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoin_in_Illicit_Finance.pdf (page 4)

[...]

Yes, franky. The reason why it's not worldwide adopted is the block size. Sure, franky.

[franky1]

blackhatcoiner.. atleast get out of your house for once. get on a plane and travel the world

actually speak to people outside of your little cabin.
i have been to africa and asia.. and their issues are not the blockCHAIN..
the blockCHAIN issue is your silly altnet group and your fanclub of idolising devs that want off-ramping with the silly excuses that it is blockCHAIN size thats the issue.

asia has the highest speed internet. they dont care about blockchain size
like i already exampled. ethereum is gaining mainstream adoption and its chain size is 1TB
people are not crying about ethereums 1TB size.. but you and your altnet loving buddies jump into as many topics as you can, pretend that 400gb blockchains are too much and 2mb blocks are too much,
and mention how you dont want to see people buying things for $3 on bitcoin..

friggen youtube uses more bandwidth in 30 seconds then bitcoin uses in 10 minutes.
nearly every online game uses more bandwidth and space then bitcoin does
do you see them crying. no.. so accept that your desire to hinder utility on bitcoin is the reason bitcoins utility is hindered

its YOU guys that are the ones saying bitcoin shouldnt/cant scale.. yet it can.
YOU guys are the ones that dont want bitcoin used for mainstream usage like buying a $3 product at a whim
YOU are the idiots that dont want bitcoin to grow. YOU are hindering bitcoin growth

and no dont you even dare try to start advertising your altnet by pretending that it is bitcoin. dont even try to pretend that your altnet is the solution people should move over to. and no dont even try to convince people to prune their bitcoin node because you want people to think there is no harm in decreasing the amount of full nodes(centralising the full nodes(InitialBlockDownload seeder))

yes im calling you and your buddies out yet again.

especially when you and your buddies want to pretend its government caused issues.. when you lot cant even be bothered to read any government legislation properly.
yes i know you hate walls of text. but get used to it. my posts are like 1% of what legislation is. so if you dont like my post lengths than you must really hate reading legislation.. but thats your problem you need to get over, and start reading more

.. you and your buddies have pretended that america wants to kill bitcoin adoption by requiring KYC at the bitcoin-core wallet level, or where you and your buddies have said that core devs and even asic owners need to become MSB'brokers' to collecting KYC and report every user to authorities.. all false but you believe it to be true
 when that is not even a thing that is ever mentioned in any legislation in either US or EU..

so before trying to blame governments. look at your own actions and emotions of how you describe bitcoin when you try adverting your other network. and then you might see where the issues actually lay

[bittraffic]

Agree wth the above, worldwide adoption is next to impossible when government doesnt like that to happen. Everyone may hope BTC will be adopted everywhere but government will also do everything to prevent. CBDC is coming, thats what they want whether we like it or not.

Not everyone can afford BTC. Even if its adopted widely, the poor will have a hard time owning BTC. You can't reason that they can buy $20 fraction of BTC when they don't even have a job. The option, memecoin 😅

[hyudien]

Bitcoin remains to be adopted by every country in the world for various reasons. Here are my thoughts on why..

1. Government policies: Most government and financial institutions round the world seem not to want bitcoin cause of the financial freedom it gives to its users. They would want to control and tax the flow of finances of individuals and they probably fear the anonymous nature of its transactions. Some policies even go as far as criminalizing its use.

In my opinion, the problem is because we live under the flag of a country that has rules and laws regarding social and state life. And until now we are still lucky to be able to buy Bitcoin without worrying about being put in jail by the authorities as an act of money laundering. While you are right we are still being watched and continue to be controlled, but at least in the country where I live bitcoin is not banned. In fact, the government facilitates access to trade and invest in Bitcoin.

Like it or not, we take the safe path, because we don't live in El Salvador where the government system is very pro-cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

its YOU guys that are the ones saying bitcoin shouldnt/cant scale.. yet it can.
YOU guys are the ones that dont want bitcoin used for mainstream usage like buying a $3 product at a whim
YOU are the idiots that dont want bitcoin to grow. YOU are hindering bitcoin growth

Why don't you scale it? Take the damn code, make your edits and convince people to use it. Bitcoin Cash-ers did it, switch to it to avoid all this hustle and bustle. No... You'll stay, because there's something keeping you. Something unique, that you can't find it elsewhere.

To avoid any misunderstandings: I don't say that changing the block size is necessarily a bad decision; we may have to, in the far future. Understand that it's the imposing way you want to implement your proposal, that I disagree with.

[Pmalek]

1. Government policies: Most government and financial institutions round the world seem not to want bitcoin cause of the financial freedom it gives to its users. They would want to control and tax the flow of finances of individuals and they probably fear the anonymous nature of its transactions.

The governments don't want to give a free pass to ordinary people. You will pay your taxes and you will obey our commands. That's what they say. That's why so much effort is put on deanonymizing Bitcoin and crypto users. They want to tax you and know who you are to tax you some more. And they play the financing terrorism card very well. I expect that more and more nations will start exploring government-controlled digital currencies.   

2. Scammers and fraudulent practices: Scammers have found bitcoin as a safe haven cause of its transactions being anonymous. Also, terrorist groups among other sources get funded by bitcoin also cause of its anonymous nature. Fraudulent practices and transactions are made with ease wth the use of bitcoin.

Cash is also anonymous. Criminal activities didn't prosper with the introduction of Bitcoin (it was there forever), just like global warming didn't get worse due to POW mining. But that's what they will tell us. 9/11 happened without Bitcoin. Drug trades, prostitution, and slavery were also financed with those beautiful and innocent dollars.

@franky1
It's the people who use Bitcoin that you should blame for the transaction fees. There is no reason to pay $3 for a transaction when you can pay $0.10, unless we are talking about multiple inputs and outputs and/or legacy addresses. Their fear or somehow losing their coins if the transaction doesn't confirm in the next block causes over paying. But if you think $1 or $3 is bad, have a look at the Ethereum blockchain since you mentioned it a few times in your post. 

[n0nce]

I would say it highly depends on the region. Though generally, points 1 and 4 will be the most prominent ones.

Technically, even if everyone would like to use BTC for everything, you can't get 'worldwide adoption' without the ability to get paid in BTC directly and paying your taxes in BTC, because then you'll always need FIAT as an intermediary for these tasks, kind of breaking the definition.

But lately, I noticed point 4 to gain a lot of importance, as I perceive a high amount of people that do know about cryptocurrency, think they're 'late to Bitcoin'; there's just in general a big lack of education in this field. It appears most people believe in these assets as only usable for mere speculation and a way to make quick money.

When I explained to a friend recently, that he can't only invest in cryptocurrencies (he is doing this for a year or so now, despite me trying to explain to him that it's not a good idea), but also use it to transact anonymously, quickly and cheaply worldwide, it was a huge eye-opener for him, since he actually needs to do these types of transactions from time to time. He literally hadn't grasped that this is possible and actually Bitcoin's main purpose until that day.
I don't think he's the only one though, as we see lots (actually increasing amounts) of disinformation spread online and elsewhere.


Regarding transaction fees, I found these online explorers for tx fees always pretty misleading. I rarely pay more than 1sat/vB (around $0.09 USD). The other day I waited for almost 12 hours to get it confirmed, but it went through, even though the day peaked at over 20sat/vB for a 1-block confirmation. $0.09 is not an insignificant amount of money in some countries (equivalent to ~50 cents in some places), but for small purchases they can definitely opt to use Lightning, no matter how much franky1 hates it...
And don't forget that alternatives such as international bank transfer or WesternUnion cost 5-10$ to send and take multiple days to arrive. 12 hours and $0.09 is nothing in comparison.

[dothebeats]

Government policies and awareness IMO are the greatest challenges as to why we are not there yet.

Of course, governments would like something that they can control and easily monitor, so they will certainly stick with fiat and banks, and try to limit the usage of cryptocurrencies by imposing lots of regulations that does not benefit the user.

On awareness, not everyone has access to such information albeit the current technology that we have. Poverty still lingers on a huge percentage of the world, and with it comes poor education which hinders people's ability to grasp information more easily. Sure, they may have heard about bitcoin and all, but what do they do with the limited information that they have if they can't put two and two together in the end?

[romero121]

All the mentioned points were preventing bitcoin from worldwide adoption. Region and the salary is much concerned when it comes to the low adoption. Everywhere people who earn good to are into bitcoin usage whereas the rest just wish to invest, but they weren't able to do it for different reasons. As said in one of the quote, half the world population is living with an earning of less than a dollar. For them what we're talking about is far.

Even now the unbanked population around the globe counts in billion. We're talking about bitcoin which is beyond banking. In terms of getting adoptive to bitcoin is easier than banks. Banks are financial service providing centres where support is given by persons. With bitcoin it is the technology that need to be learnt. In different countries this will vary, and the third world countries mostly stay on the top. So many similar factors affect the worldwide adoption, and to this it'll take atleast 30 more years.

[OgNasty]

I think the main thing preventing adoption is that people are set in their ways and Bitcoin is new and scary.  A lot of people don't want the responsibility of having to safeguard their own coins, or even learn about the process.  They've heard horror stories about keeping funds on an exchange and don't trust themselves to store it themselves, so what are they to do?  Many people like this would likely only get exposure to Bitcoin through things like ETFs in their retirement accounts.  Over the years I've given friends quite a bit of BTC and it almost never fails that they lose their keys or some other thing that caused them to lose their Bitcoin.  The average person is definitely not ready to have their finances in their own hands...  There are still folks paying financial advisors to set their money in index funds...  People have a long way to go when it comes to financial knowledge and I don't see schools doing their part.  For this reason, I think it would realistically take generations before everyone got on board with cryptocurrencies. 

[Flexystar]

There is also one more reason behind this, blockchain is open and using the same technology every government is now trying to improve their own banking systems, trying mint their coins and what not. I think it’s disadvantage being the open source for blockchain and in the long run government correctly saw this opportunity to have their own assets but obviously centralised one.

The only upper hand they got is naming it as crypto currency and added the security policies as it’s government regulated.

This is obstacle for the main stream adoption of existing crypto. People still trust government and not public volatile unregulated coins.

[stomachgrowls]

There is also one more reason behind this, blockchain is open and using the same technology every government is now trying to improve their own banking systems, trying mint their coins and what not. I think it’s disadvantage being the open source for blockchain and in the long run government correctly saw this opportunity to have their own assets but obviously centralised one.

The only upper hand they got is naming it as crypto currency and added the security policies as it’s government regulated.

This is obstacle for the main stream adoption of existing crypto. People still trust government and not public volatile unregulated coins.

Not that truly and obstacle but you do really get some point though which is somewhat already anticipated that government wont really be just doing nothing without making their own.

Plus having that bad publicity of media towards crypto then it would really be adding up more on the possible slowdown of adoption/recognition but for people who are really making out
some in depth review and research would be the ones will able to see the beauty of decentralized crypto compared into these coins been made by government.
Yes, it could have some advantage in terms of being secured and monitored but we know on what its heavy cons.

[kaya11]

Bitcoin remains to be adopted by every country in the world for various reasons. Here are my thoughts on why..

1. Government policies: Most government and financial institutions round the world seem not to want bitcoin cause of the financial freedom it gives to its users. They would want to control and tax the flow of finances of individuals and they probably fear the anonymous nature of its transactions. Some policies even go as far as criminalizing its use.

A country without taxation is a weak country, tax is one of the major players running a country, if there is no tax then where would they get their funds to make roads and other facilities needed by the people? In some cases there are countries that have oil and other recourses but still the country has taxes. An example that country has a failure government is Somalia, there are warlords in there and if you tax them it would be your end. Also the money to support their army is from illegal activities such as mining, in some cases drugs and again it destroys the core of a country-it's people.

2. Scammers and fraudulent practices: Scammers have found bitcoin as a safe haven cause of its transactions being anonymous.

Even if Bitcoin never existed, still these fraudulent activities are present. There are so many heist that happened and they have managed to get away with it. So it doesn't really matter whether crypto is available or not.

[tabas]

A mix of bad news about bitcoin and those scams that are happening in the altcoins kingdom as well. When people read news about "hack" in a defi or NFT. They'll include bitcoin as the major part of it so instead of going through with the news and read the entire information that it's a project hacked that's not related to bitcoin, people who don't understand cryptocurrencies will get to think that it's bitcoin that was hacked or at least part of it and that becomes a major concern and worry for them.

[laurenB7742]

Bitcoin remains to be adopted by every country in the world for various reasons. Here are my thoughts on why..

People want to control it, basically, one thing that supports this prevention is the strong desire to influence others.
The government plays a very delicate role in this regard.

You know, wealthy and powerful people have been ruling and exploiting this world from the very beginning, this is the eternal policy of the world. Those in power now will always want to control the weak. Bitcoin is something that has given people freedom from slavery, everyone can benefit equally here, and they can make themselves financially free.

But it poses a serious threat to the government and the conventional banking system. And you know they both survive based on the current banking system.

So it is understandable that people at the government level would not want Bitcoin to be adopted easily. They will always want to establish authority

[Viscore]

Agree wth the above, worldwide adoption is next to impossible when government doesnt like that to happen. Everyone may hope BTC will be adopted everywhere but government will also do everything to prevent. CBDC is coming, thats what they want whether we like it or not.

Not everyone can afford BTC. Even if its adopted widely, the poor will have a hard time owning BTC. You can't reason that they can buy $20 fraction of BTC when they don't even have a job. The option, memecoin 😅

As long as the government will not fully regulate the use of bitcoin, its worldwide adoption will always be impossible. The government controls the people, so whatever its rules and laws, people should always comply with it.

However, bitcoin is also hard to adopt because it also lacks the opportunities to spend it. Its hard to find physical stores that accept bitcoin, and so people always prefer to use fiat. And also, because of the fear and confusion of the people due to its price volatility, bitcoin makes it too hard to adopt.

[GeorgeJohn]

The aspect of government, i will say each country government have their method of governance, so since some countries had legalize the adoption of cryptocurrency that means it's base on the country principle in cryptocurrency and especially bitcoin what is really their views about bitcoin.

Some government seems cryptocurrency as avenue of extorting government financial project or budget, so in same vain, some people saw it as a means of involving into secret money laundering, which is embezzlement of fund's, and some government elements, the same time saw it like currency that can't be control by their sector or arms that can also disvalue fiat currencies.

so i think that should be one of the factor's that makes some country government intensively castigating and downgrading the potentiality of cryptocurrencies and especially bitcoin.

[franky1]

its YOU guys that are the ones saying bitcoin shouldnt/cant scale.. yet it can.
YOU guys are the ones that dont want bitcoin used for mainstream usage like buying a $3 product at a whim
YOU are the idiots that dont want bitcoin to grow. YOU are hindering bitcoin growth

Why don't you scale it? Take the damn code, make your edits and convince people to use it. Bitcoin Cash-ers did it, switch to it to avoid all this hustle and bustle. No... You'll stay, because there's something keeping you. Something unique, that you can't find it elsewhere.

To avoid any misunderstandings: I don't say that changing the block size is necessarily a bad decision; we may have to, in the far future. Understand that it's the imposing way you want to implement your proposal, that I disagree with.

im imposing it?
do you even know the word impose
(hint: put a restriction in place).. sorry but i suggest relaxing the restrictions..
im not the one ACK/Nacking commits on bitcoin cores github
but when you look at those that do ACK/NACK and then you look at their idea's of what and who and how much bitcoin should be used for. you can easily see which way they lean

your chums want to impose the limits and impose restrictions that people should not use bitcoin for daily use. yep you dont want people buying coffee on bitcoin(basically $3 amounts)
yep you dont want anyone in under-privileged countries where their entire days wages should not be used on bitcoin..

heres you saying that bitcoin cant go mainstream/global.. i excluded the part where you then advertised your altnet as the solution.. but by you just talking in a topic its obvious your altnet advert wil pop up somewhere in your posts

Buddy, transactions included into blocks can't handle the entire world for global adoption whether they extended the block size or not.

You can't really believe that broadcasting a transaction every time you want a coffee is a solution, because this isn't VISA. This is the Bitcoin network and decentralization costs.

The same people who believe in the so-called “global adoption” are the ones that see Bitcoin as a currency and believe in its “noble principles”. While I do get their enthusiasm, I think this is very much missing the point. Sad truth, but Bitcoin can't have a global adoption

i could quote many many more. and even quote your chums before you saying the same scripts you say word-for-word. but its easier for anyone that is interested to just look at your forum profile post history and do a simple search..

sorry but its your chums that are imposing, and not wanting to scale BITCOIN any time soon. all so that your chums can advertise some other network that people should move to first.

yep you love the idea of getting people to move to other networks, you and your chums very narrative every time is to not change bitcoin for the benefit of extending bitcoin use. but change it only to extend feature useful for other networks. and any changes that people do want on the bitcoin network. your narrative is to tell people to fork it off and start a new network and convince people to use it.

your narrative is not original and its not even your original mindset. you are just copying your chums narrative.
..
funny part is there are THOUSANDS of topics of people asking about "when will bitcoin go mainstream" and "how to scale BITCOIN" but only a dozen topics specifically about your altnet.
(even though you try to inject multiple advertisement attempts into many bitcoin scaling conversations)
..
you do not want value transactions of ~$3 even if it was one million people doing it once a week
you think anything of the price of a pizza($15) or a coffee($3) is not worthy of bitcoins utility.

yep thats YOU saying under-privileged countries daily wage for 10 hours labour is not good enough to be permitted in bitcoin.

but before finding some old script to recite..
take this one single thought.. and take some time to process it independently of what you think your chums want you to say..

what you see as being a single coffee.. 2 billion people in the world see as their daily/weekly salary
just take a long and hard thought about what you are proposing when you want to restrict usage of bitcoin
country             population      10 hours at $0.30c or less/hour
niger                24.5m            30c*10=$3
Mozambique     31.5m            28c*10=$2.80
kenya               53.7m           28c*10=$2.80
india                1.38BILLION  28c*10=$2.80
ghana              31m              23c*10=$2.30
uganda            45.7m            20c*10=$2.00
Bangladesh      164m             9c*10=$0.90
tanzania          59.7m             9c*10=$0.90

i didnt list them all. but maybe this will help you snap out of your script of thinking your impositions that restrict india's 1.3billion peoples daily use is something worth atleast thinking about