Bitcoin vs Internet adoption. Bill Gates was trolled about Internet in 1995

[thecodebear]

Bitcoin is still in its 90's-internet era. Internet was promising but it wasn't until the 2000s that the internet took off with marketplaces like Amazon, search like Google, and social media like Facebook. Bitcoin is still in its early era like the internet was in the 90s.

For Bitcoin the big things (like marketplaces/search/social media for the internet) are going to be (1) govts and financial markets normalizing it as an investment/store of value and then (2) L2 solutions spreading and major merchants adding bitcoin as a payment option using L2.

The first thing may or may not get started very soon if ETFs get approved, and in the US now starting in 2025 their will be fair accounting rules for corporate ownership of Bitcoin which is another step toward the first thing I mentioned. After that we're still going to need the major govts of the world to put forth common sense regulations and safeguards for the industry to normalize it for the masses and make people stop thinking its some weird internet scam.

The second thing is gonna be on a much longer timeframe because unlike the internet its unlikely a single startup is going to suddenly bring in hundreds of millions of people to using bitcoin for purchases like how amazon, google, and facebook popularized their respective major use cases of the internet. For Bitcoin to become a major payment options is going to require lots of merchants both online and brick and mortar to start accepting Bitcoin. But before that we need LN to be further developed and ideally other competing L2's to be developed and mature.

So while Bitcoin's huge investment potential has so far kept it up with internet adoption in the early days, and through the rest of this decade it may continue to roughly keep up with internet adoption as the things in my #1 above happen, #2 (payments) is going to likely take a lot more than the decade it took the internet to go from experimenting with use cases to having taken over the world with some of its major use cases. I expect we'll see Bitcoin fall off the internet's adoption pace next decade as Bitcoin has to go through the hard slow work of going from a currency to save in, which doesn't require anything beyond being able to buy/sell/own it, to being an actual widely adopted payment option which requires a immensely more growth of the ecosystem.

[legiteum]

For Bitcoin the big things (like marketplaces/search/social media for the internet) are going to be (1) govts and financial markets normalizing it as an investment/store of value and then (2) L2 solutions spreading and major merchants adding bitcoin as a payment option using L2.

1. Bitcoin is used as an investment/store of value already, all over the world. What more do you want from governments that they are not already doing?

2. Today you can have a Bitcoin account, transfer funds to a USD account to fund a credit card payment, and you could easily do all of this in real time to the point where it would be effectively no different than paying in Bitcoin. Millions of people do this all of the time, every day, when they visit foreign countries and draw on their home credit card.

[oktana]

Unfortunately, cryptocurrency at large isn’t Bitcoin. The chart speaks of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin is just one of the many cryptocurrencies that are out there (though it’s the most popular and the first). I’ve said before that the creating of Altcoins are somewhat a distraction for Bitcoin. For example, I think that Bitcoin value will be a lot more if only it was the only cryptocurrency. Because it will be the only investment when anyone talks about Cryptocurrency. However, I know that Bitcoin has mountains to climb. We may be at the top of a mountain already but there’s more. Many more ATH will happen.

[hatshepsut93]

Indeed, for any new technology to break into a new market, you actually have to be even cheaper and even better than the entrenched competition.

You don't necessarily have to be cheaper to succeed, though it is necessary to capture the widest possible audience. But even expensive things can be successful if there's demand for them, due to some other property compensating for the high price.

This is where Internet distinguishes. There wasn't an alternative to the Internet back in the 90s, just as there wasn't an alternative to electricity. I'm very supportive, but truth be told, Bitcoin is mostly money; and history is full of money alternatives. The bet is that these particular properties, like denationalization and state separation of monetary policy will distinguish on the long term.

(By "bet", I mean the best case scenario for bitcoin. Losing that bet does not mean it stops being peer-to-peer electronic cash.)

And this is the big reason why people aren't switching to Bitcoin - banks work quite well for them, so there's no incentive to change anything.

[legiteum]

Indeed, for any new technology to break into a new market, you actually have to be even cheaper and even better than the entrenched competition.

You don't necessarily have to be cheaper to succeed, though it is necessary to capture the widest possible audience. But even expensive things can be successful if there's demand for them, due to some other property compensating for the high price.

True, but not for commodity products. As far as a consumer or vendor is concerned, a transaction is a transaction. The only thing that makes them different is speed and cost.

[cryptosize]

We had this before the internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system