Bitcoin adoption slowing; Coinbase + Bitpay is enough to make Bitcoin a fiat

[rograz]

He has heard of Bitcoin and was thinking about doing mining in his home. He agrees Bitcoin hasn't spread as much in 5 years as the smartphone did.

An interesting but I'm not so sure it is fair to compare Bitcoins growth over the last five years to the growth of the smartphone.  The smartphone is being backed/produced by major companies with extremely deep pockets for one.  Bitcoin is grass roots and mainly depends on word to mouth forms of advertisements.  Expecting the same results as far as growth doesn't seem fair. 

The "smartphone" era is far away in the future for crypto, we have barely evolved away from this

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[bigtimespaghetti]

I believe this was true initially, not much money. But we are beginning to see the market open to solutions that make it slightly easier to use. Perhaps this will change in the next few years and we will see wider adoption. But those who are ignorant or not ethically opposed to the system that we all live in still shy away.

I'm not convinced that massive adoption is round the corner, because for the average fellow it is still hard to understand and therefore they do not see much utility in it. For the labourer you have cash in hand (for now), for the consumer you have contactless credit cards. As long as people think that everything is A-Okay (at least in the west) people will not rush in to protect themselves either. For example, I hear that Argentina has a fairly healthy small market for bitcoin... But I have no links to back this up so my statement could be over inflated.

[aminorex]

Bitcoin will never see adoption as a way to pay for coffee and gas.  That is not a bad thing for investors.  The upside for bitcoin is massive, but it won't come from quotidian consumer transactions.  It will come from transactions which need the blockchain, where bitcoin adds substantive value, or where its disruptive power displaces rentiers, and increases efficiency.

Other crypto will fill the gap, and become the donut-buyers crypto.  It will be scalable to global cash transaction levels.  It will work with cheap devices, transparently, and instantly.  XCN is a big step in that direction.

[bigtimespaghetti]

Bitcoin will never see adoption as a way to pay for coffee and gas.  That is not a bad thing for investors.  The upside for bitcoin is massive, but it won't come from quotidian consumer transactions.  It will come from transactions which need the blockchain, where bitcoin adds substantive value, or where its disruptive power displaces rentiers, and increases efficiency.

Other crypto will fill the gap, and become the donut-buyers crypto.  It will be scalable to global cash transaction levels.  It will work with cheap devices, transparently, and instantly.  XCN is a big step in that direction.

You're probably right about other cryptos filling the gap. And I agree about other potential uses adding value.

[AnonyMint]

Cross-posting...

I also see much confirmation that Bitcoin is not being adopted by most of those who hear about it

I am much more experienced than you in analyzing market demographics. I knew the following intuitively before I even Googled to verify it.

Bitcoin is nearing 6 years old. The World Wide Web was launched to the public-at-large in 1993. By the 6-7th year, the dot.com bubble had a capitalization that was 183% of the USA GDP!!!

Bitcoin is 1000x smaller phenomenon and yet the WWW is 10x bigger by now, so relatively speaking Bitcoin is 10,000x smaller.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/02/22/the-stock-markets-valuation-is-at-a-dangerous-115-2-of-the-gdp/

The ratio today is 115.1% of the $16 trillion GDP. In the year 2000, just before the market cracked in the dot-com bubble, the market capitalization was 183% times the GDP, according to a chart published recently.

And in 2007, just as the housing credit bubble was bursting, the ratio was 135% times the GDP. These are all times when the stock market looks overvalued.

This is basic research on relative size that anyone of your position with a thread like this should have done already.

http://www.coindesk.com/americans-think-bitcoin-is-xbox-game/

42% of Americans Know What Bitcoin is

According to a new Bloomberg poll, 42% of Americans know that bitcoin is a digital currency.

However, the majority of the US residents quizzed still don’t know what bitcoin actually is.

Those who were familiar with the cryptocurrency said they were still unsure what to make of it. In fact, many who were asked had questions for the pollsters too.

Those that do know, don’t know much

Of the people who had heard of bitcoin, some were hesitant to use it themselves, either in a business or personal capacity.

Olga Ruff, a 62-year-old businesswoman, said she was unlikely to start accepting bitcoin in her small jewellery shop. “What use would it be for me?” she said, adding: “I’m not sure what the value of it is, and what I’d be able to exchange it for.”

Jeremy Labadie, an internet security specialist, said he would have to consider his options further before making a purchase: “I don’t necessarily know if it’s something I would think about using.”

However Labadie also admitted that he had considered buying some bitcoins as a long-term investment.

Other respondents said they heard about bitcoin through mainstream news coverage. In turn, this had given them an idea of the currency’s drawbacks as well as bitcoin-related scams and crimes.

...

Bitcoin: Xbox game or iPhone app?

More than 1,000 people took part in the poll and some answers were rather amusing.

A total of 46% said they do not know what bitcoin is. Suprisingly, 6% of participants thought bitcoin was an Xbox game, while another 6% were convinced it was an iOS app on the iPhone.

Unsurprisingly, the poll found that people under the age of 35 were more likely to know a thing or two about bitcoin.

How much more clear can it be that most people have no use for Bitcoin? See below...

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112135/the-ethnic-group-that-knows-the-most-about-bitcoin-is-not-who-you-think-it-is

The average Bitcoin user used to be a non-religious male with libertarian/anarcho-capitalist leanings, 31.2 years of age, with a job and a full-time relationship, according to a self-selecting community survey done last year by tech/economics blog Simulacrum.

...

Hispanic-Americans were by far the ethnic group most likely to say they would consider using Bitcoin themselves: 23% answered they were “very likely,” compared to 9% from African-Americans and “others” and just 5% from whites.

Though it may be presumptuous to draw definitive conclusions from the survey, a clear inference about the results may be that Hispanic-Americans have begun to pick up on Bitcoin’s exciting implication for the remittance market: a low-cost method for diaspora members to send money back home.

Bitcoin-based remittance companies have been exploding especially in Africa, where it’s been estimated that people are losing US$1.8 billion annually to remittance fees.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101523567

More we know bitcoin, the less we trust it: Poll

Nearly half of all Americans know what bitcoin is but most don't trust the virtual currency, according to a new survey.

Just 13 percent of all respondents to a Harris Interactive poll said they prefer bitcoin over gold. Bitcoin has been embroiled in a series of controversies over the past few months, including inappropriate use and the shuttering of its highest-profile exchange.

Those negative headlines have taken their toll: The survey, conducted on behalf of financial innovation platform Yodlee, found that the more people know about bitcoin the less they trust it. People in the more tech-savvy regions in the West were better acquainted with bitcoin than those in other regions, but only 7 percent said they would invest in it over gold.

The cryptocurrency's biggest fan base: Men in the 18-to-34 age group, 22 percent of whom said they would choose bitcoin over gold.

[thezerg]

Cross-posting...

I also see much confirmation that Bitcoin is not being adopted by most of those who hear about it

I am much more experienced than you in analyzing market demographics. I knew the following intuitively before I even Googled to verify it.

Bitcoin is nearing 6 years old. The World Wide Web was launched to the public-at-large in 1993. By the 6-7th year, the dot.com bubble had a capitalization that was 183% of the USA GDP!!!

You are picking arbitrary dates.  You are picking your www date as "launched to the public-at-large" but picking your Bitcoin date from the genesis block.  A equally valid start date for www would be: "In 1989, while working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee invented a network-based implementation of the hypertext concept. By releasing his invention to public use, he ensured the technology would become widespread.", or even Gopher or the creation of arpa-net itself.

But it would be more reasonable to say that such comparisons are useless.  You can compare such things broadly but to expect equivalent adoption trajectories is just silly.


Your supposed experience caused you to completely miss the Bitcoin bull market of 2012/2013 IIRC so your crystal-ball has exactly zero credibility, even though some of your arguments -- that past exponential does not indicate future performance and your revised adoption graph is a reasonable fit -- have merit standing on their own.  And even more tellingly you seem to be unable to internalize your mistake because you persist in imagining that your reputation based arguments ("I am much more experienced in statistics and market demographics, I contributed to CSS, etc") have any value whatsoever in this forum. 

[AnonyWince]

You are picking arbitrary dates.  You are picking your www date as "launched to the public-at-large" but picking your Bitcoin date from the genesis block.  A equally valid start date for www would be: "In 1989, while working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee invented a network-based implementation of the hypertext concept. By releasing his invention to public use, he ensured the technology would become widespread.", or even Gopher or the creation of arpa-net itself.

Mosaic was when the WWW client was available to the public-at-large.

The Bitcoin client was available to the public-at-large in 2010. I read an article about it in 2010. News spreads much faster now than it did before the internet.

Your supposed experience caused you to completely miss the Bitcoin bull market of 2012/2013 IIRC so your crystal-ball has exactly zero credibility

This is well explained by nearly dying in May 2012. But it is irrelevant because I am not claiming authority to support my point. You can ignore the facts at your own peril; what you think doesn't impact on me.

[arieq]

I think the only way bitcoin adoption can really grow at this point is only if BTC become useful for something. Nobody wants to invest on something such risky now.

[zorke]

I think the only way bitcoin adoption can really grow at this point is only if BTC become useful for something. Nobody wants to invest on something such risky now.

Bitcoin is very useful. It serves the same kind of uses that paypal serves except that bitcoin does not rely on any central authority to keep track of users' balances (when you use paypal, the operators of paypal will keep track of your balance for you - and manipulate it if they choose to do so). 

[panju1]

I think the only way bitcoin adoption can really grow at this point is only if BTC become useful for something. Nobody wants to invest on something such risky now.

The increasing adoption of bitcoin is because of its usefulness. Bitcoin 101.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Coherently unifying all the concepts:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg9387308#msg9387308

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

The Conclusion:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.0

[contagion]

By those terms, a big precentage of bitcoin users are average joes and could be robbed easily...

Who's gonna educate dem average joes? Besides that I don't think real average joes even know what bitcoin is right now.

If the economy-of-scale is sufficient (i.e. 100s of millions of users, not the paltry 1 - 2 million Bitcoin has after 6 years) the necessary hardware will be integrated into the smart phones. Then it will simply work plug-and-play for n00bs.

This is why I (formerly AnonyMint, TheFascistMind, UnunoctiumTesticles, etc) wrote about the adoption rate of Bitcoin slowing and of Monero. Note I clarified why adoption rate slows as large entities aggregate users and capital.

Readers would be wise to click every link above and learn. Sorry this is not boasting. It is fact.

[panju1]

If the economy-of-scale is sufficient (i.e. 100s of millions of users, not the paltry 1 - 2 million Bitcoin has after 6 years) the necessary hardware will be integrated into the smart phones. Then it will simply work plug-and-play for n00bs.

It will still be some time before we reach that scale.
Apple was even pulling out bitcoin apps from its store last year. Iphone users were unable to send bitcoin from their phones.

[IceFire]

I think that this slow-down is, in a way, a calm-down before the storm.

Many new services are actually emerging and seem promising - Bitcoin ATM's, marketplaces, even this strange new form of an unbreakable contracts where the two parties can securely trust one another - something you actually can't do with a real FIAT (It's BitHalo http://davtonia.com/halowiki/index.php?title=BitHalo_-_The_world%27s_first_smart_contracting_client ).

Whatever happens, Bitcoin is on it's way to becoming not REALLY a FIAT (if it was, noone would have even noticed it); but a currency used by more and more individuals; for more and more things.

[contagion]

I am AnonyMint who wrote the OP.

...Bitcoin is on it's way to becoming not REALLY a FIAT...

Some education for you.

[TPTB_need_war]

The Blockstream white paper mentions interoperability, but afaics gives no details other than to say the chains share the same BTC unit.

I assume this means each side chain's money supply will fluctuate according to spending from one chain to the other and presumably not passing back through the Bitcoin blockchain as I had assumed. I suppose this is viable and what remains of my criticism is there is no investment model possible for the side chains unless there is some fee service that can be sold. So I guess the devs of a side chain would need seek their ROI by charging transaction fees but ongoing payment is a form of centralization.

I guess one could view moving BTC from the Bitcoin blockchain to a side chain as an investment in an ecosystem driving the value of BTC higher. Appreciation of the particular side chain will not be possible to capture.

The investment model concerns I think strongly disfavor side chains for any ubiquitous features. Thus side chains don't appear to do anything for the scaling problem of Bitcoin.

Side chains would be useful for isolating blockchain scripting where user programmability is the priority and not investment ROI.

Also I think my interoperability concern remains valid in at least one way. For example Monero as a side chain would presumably have different anonymity properties when spending to another chain than spending within the Monero side chain. Thus the interoperability doesn't scale the same as a single chain with ubiquitous features.

I potentially like side chains as a way of achieving hard forks democratically, i.e. anyone can stay with the old chain or spend off to the new chain (and come back anytime), but this could encourage fragmentation which could retard value appreciation.

I just don't think side chains address scaling and Gregory should either justify how they do or accept that isn't the market he needs to defend with this block size debate.

Edit: there is one way side chains enable scaling. That is the side chain is a centralized ledger. So if the masses can be enticed to spend their BTC into the Coinbase+Paypal+Circle cartel side chain, then it can scale easily. And then the hashrate of the Bitcoin blockchain will wane and can be attacked by the cartel.

Yeah a cartel side chain is great sell out to TPTB. Go! Good job!

Blockstream is (unwittingly?) enabling an easy path for the cartel to fork Bitcoin.

[jamesclark]

The fact is that those websites that accept bitcoin as apayment are not so well known to people which is the reason they ask for the best websites to start accepting crypto currencies.

[droptableguy2]

If the economy-of-scale is sufficient (i.e. 100s of millions of users, not the paltry 1 - 2 million Bitcoin has after 6 years) the necessary hardware will be integrated into the smart phones. Then it will simply work plug-and-play for n00bs.

It will still be some time before we reach that scale.
Apple was even pulling out bitcoin apps from its store last year. Iphone users were unable to send bitcoin from their phones.

Then it is very disadvantage for those who use the Apple brand. Since most of the current users are still Apple products. However, in my opinion, this market will have its own technology product to serve this field, I believe there will be. For quite practical reasons.