Adoption in terms of users

[zircon]

We see articles guestimating the number of Bitcoin users. A general average seems to be about 1.5M currently.

We have also seen an article from Juniper describing about 5M users by 2019.

What are your general thoughts on user adoption per year, over the next 10 years, and why?

What will the curve look like?

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[krigger]

What are your general thoughts on user adoption per year, over the next 10 years, and why?

Mass adoption cannot be calculated with precision or to be exactly specified.

[SirChiko]

We see articles guestimating the number of Bitcoin users. A general average seems to be about 1.5M currently.

We have also seen an article from Juniper describing about 5M users by 2019.

What are your general thoughts on user adoption per year, over the next 10 years, and why?

What will the curve look like?

You can't preddict something like this...it's simply unpreddictable and only time will tell us. It also deppends on many factors.

[futureofbitcoin]

I wanted to start a similar thread, but from a different angle.

Will bitcoin's path to mainstream be slow and steady, or a sudden explosion? I believe it's the latter. Most people in the developed world already knows about bitcoin. So if they're not adopting it now, they're not likely to adopt it in the future. The only way to change this, is if there's some fundamental change that's happening, for example, a real killer app based on bitcoin comes out, or USD goes to hyperinflation, or something that will cause people to change their mind about bitcoin. I imagine that it will be a relatively sudden rise.


So Expressed in ASCII, I think it'll look something like this:
                          /
                         /
                        /
______________/

Say 200 Million in 10 years. And if not, I think bitcoin pretty much would have failed.

[ChuckBuck]

For reference, the Juniper Report article:

https://coinreport.net/report-estimates-nearly-5m-bitcoin-users-2019/

UK-based analyst firm Juniper Research released a report Tuesday that suggests the number of active Bitcoin users around the world will reach 4.7 million by the end of 2019, compared to slightly more than 1.3 million last year.

But the report argues that exchange trading will continue to dominate the use of Bitcoin, while retail adoption will be largely restricted to relatively niche demographics, said Juniper Research in a press release.

According to the report, while a high number of high-profile merchants are supporting Bitcoin payments, activity levels from both online and offline developments are considerably low. Windsor Holden, the report’s author, said, “While average daily transaction volumes have increased by around 50% since March 2014, the indications are that much of this growth results from higher transaction levels by established users rather from any substantial uplift in consumer adoption.”

The report lists a number of factors it claims would continue to hinder growth, in particular the difficulty in communicating the concept of digital currency payments to end users. The report also argues that Bitcoin’s historical association with – and continued use by – criminals for illegal purchases and money laundering is likely to serve as a further deterrent to mass adoption.

The report also notes that with many Bitcoins being hoarded by early speculators, supply of the digital currency could be further restricted with Bitcoin mining profitability jeopardized by a combination of the Bitcoin’s volatility, lower Bitcoin yields, and rising electricity costs.

Other findings in the Juniper Research report include:

The altcoin market continues to be plagued by “pump and dump” currencies developed solely as short-term investment vehicles.
The introduction of licenses, regulated exchanges could lead to a stabilization in currency values and with it an increase in retail transaction adoption.
The protocols behind digital currency could be deployed in areas such as real-time transactional settlement.
The report is available for purchase on Juniper Research’s website.

5 million Bitcoin users by 2019 or basically a really big city's worth of people.  Doesn't seem much.

Just shows how much more work and time we got ahead of ourselves, if Bitcoin is going to truly become the world's currency...

[NUFCrichard]

We see articles guestimating the number of Bitcoin users. A general average seems to be about 1.5M currently.

We have also seen an article from Juniper describing about 5M users by 2019.

What are your general thoughts on user adoption per year, over the next 10 years, and why?

What will the curve look like?

I generally think of Bitcoin as a bit of a binary bet, either it will suceed and fluorish, therefore it will have far more than 9 million users in 2019, or it will fail and be used as play money by people who won't give up the ghost, so it will have lots less than 5 million users.

5 million would be a strange middle ground, meaning it is expanding, but it hasn't really cauugt on yet.  It is a guess based on the past, rather than the future, how many great new techmnologies expand, but slowly and consistently?  I think over 1 billion will have used bitcoin by 2019, but I think it could also fail or be adopted for something else and be used by almost no one...

[coinableS]

I wanted to start a similar thread, but from a different angle.

Will bitcoin's path to mainstream be slow and steady, or a sudden explosion? I believe it's the latter. Most people in the developed world already knows about bitcoin. So if they're not adopting it now, they're not likely to adopt it in the future. The only way to change this, is if there's some fundamental change that's happening, for example, a real killer app based on bitcoin comes out, or USD goes to hyperinflation, or something that will cause people to change their mind about bitcoin. I imagine that it will be a relatively sudden rise.


So Expressed in ASCII, I think it'll look something like this:
                          /
                         /
                        /
______________/

Say 200 Million in 10 years. And if not, I think bitcoin pretty much would have failed.

+1

[redsn0w]

The people will start to "search" or better adopt a new alternative when they will understand that the FIAT money (with this actual economic system) is only a *joke*. Then in that case I think a lot of people will join this "experiment" (or better this reality alternative).

[DeboraMeeks]

The best way for mass adoption according to me will be:

We know Bitcoins won't die ever and it has written its own destiny itself, but still for that to be completely assured and guaranteed, we must all join our hands and come ahead and "instead of donating", I would urge everyone to please use some part of your Bitcoins in Google Adwords, and advertise Bitcoins with as much relevant keywords as you can. That way, we will be able to get the targeted audience who will be interested in Bitcoins and will surely invest.

[Daniel91]

The best way for mass adoption according to me will be:

We know Bitcoins won't die ever and it has written its own destiny itself, but still for that to be completely assured and guaranteed, we must all join our hands and come ahead and "instead of donating", I would urge everyone to please use some part of your Bitcoins in Google Adwords, and advertise Bitcoins with as much relevant keywords as you can. That way, we will be able to get the targeted audience who will be interested in Bitcoins and will surely invest.

Very good advice but I don't think many people will follow it.
Most of the users are not really sure of the future of Bitcoin and see it only as an investment, not as new, revolutionary way of payment, new world currency etc.
Until this change and BTC become mainstream, users will continue to use the BTC as an investment, and will not be interesting to much to spend money on Google promotion.

[RodeoX]

I find it difficult to calculate because we don't know how bitcoin will be used in the future. Perhaps in 10 years there will still be at 1.5M users, but 500M machines that use bitcoin every day. Or perhaps a loss of net neutrality will drive BTC underground and lead to only a few hundred black market users.
My best guess is mass adoption and a billion or more users. That seems like a lot, however spread out over the planet it's only like 15%.

[coinableS]

The best way for mass adoption according to me will be:

We know Bitcoins won't die ever and it has written its own destiny itself, but still for that to be completely assured and guaranteed, we must all join our hands and come ahead and "instead of donating", I would urge everyone to please use some part of your Bitcoins in Google Adwords, and advertise Bitcoins with as much relevant keywords as you can. That way, we will be able to get the targeted audience who will be interested in Bitcoins and will surely invest.

Very good advice but I don't think many people will follow it.
Most of the users are not really sure of the future of Bitcoin and see it only as an investment, not as new, revolutionary way of payment, new world currency etc.
Until this change and BTC become mainstream, users will continue to use the BTC as an investment, and will not be interesting to much to spend money on Google promotion.

Really?  With bitcoin you can easily create a web payment gateway with a just little bit of coding knowledge. Ever try to set up a webstore shopping cart before and sign up with a 3rd party payment processor to accept credit cards? With bitcoin I can have a webstore up in a few hours with no 3rd party fees. It really is an easy new way to accept payments online.

[franky1]

how many great new techmnologies expand, but slowly and consistently?  

a history lesson.

The world’s first mobile phone call was made on April 3, 1973, when Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola, called a rival telecommunications company and informed them he was speaking via a mobile phone. The phone Cooper used, if you could call it that, weighed a staggering 1.1kg and measured in at 228.6x127x44.4mm. With this prototype device, you got 30 minutes of talk-time and it took around 10 hours to charge.

Even at the start of the 1990s this was still the case despite Nokia and NEC entering the fray. Nokia’s first 'handheld' mobile phone, the Mobira Cityman 900, launched in 1989 and weighed just 800g

1990 to 1995 represented an upward swerve in design and portability, with mobile devices gradually starting to appear in the hands of average consumers for the first time. By the late-1990s, mobile devices were fast becoming the norm.


....
so the question to ask yourself. what were the people in the mobile community crying, screaming and arguing about in the late 1970's.. just 5-6 years after the first mobile call was made. i bet they didnt even expect nearly every 13 year old+ person having them, let alone over a billion in population demand for one

[DeboraMeeks]

The best way for mass adoption according to me will be:

We know Bitcoins won't die ever and it has written its own destiny itself, but still for that to be completely assured and guaranteed, we must all join our hands and come ahead and "instead of donating", I would urge everyone to please use some part of your Bitcoins in Google Adwords, and advertise Bitcoins with as much relevant keywords as you can. That way, we will be able to get the targeted audience who will be interested in Bitcoins and will surely invest.

Very good advice but I don't think many people will follow it.
Most of the users are not really sure of the future of Bitcoin and see it only as an investment, not as new, revolutionary way of payment, new world currency etc.
Until this change and BTC become mainstream, users will continue to use the BTC as an investment, and will not be interesting to much to spend money on Google promotion.

Dude, to make Bitcoin mainstream is the only purpose why I gave that advice to put some money out of our pockets.
If you are pocketing profits with BTC, I don't think you or anyone will have some problem to at least spend $10 to advertise BTC in Google Adwords?

If you even multiply even 10% of the current users, i.e., 1.5M x 10% = 0.15M and they all commit to give $10 out of their pockets, then we can have $1.5M which is enough to give Bitcoins enough evolution which it deserves.

[BitUsher]

We see articles guestimating the number of Bitcoin users. A general average seems to be about 1.5M currently.

1.5 M is too low....as Coinbase has has 2 million unique users and 2.6 million wallets right now and they only exist in a few countries and not the largest market -China.

Thus the most conservative estimate would be 4 million bitcoin adopters worldwide to as high as ~10 million.

[AgentofCoin]

We see articles guestimating the number of Bitcoin users. A general average seems to be about 1.5M currently.

1.5 M is too low....as Coinbase has has 2 million unique users and 2.6 million wallets right now and they only exist in a few countries and not the largest market -China.

Thus the most conservative estimate would be 4 million bitcoin adopters worldwide to as high as ~10 million.

I think those numbers are way too optimistic.
I think the actual numbers of individual users are between 900,000 and 1,005,000.
An extremely optimistic number now, one address per user, would currently be around 4,309,000.

[BitUsher]

I think those numbers are way too optimistic.
I think the actual numbers of individual users are between 900,000 and 1,005,000.
An extremely optimistic number now, one address per user, would currently be around 4,309,000.

Coinbase follows KYC and isn't even available in the largest markets. I'm not guessing and backing up my numbers with evidence and logic:

https://www.coinbase.com/about

Are you suggesting Coinbase is lying?

[coinableS]

We see articles guestimating the number of Bitcoin users. A general average seems to be about 1.5M currently.

1.5 M is too low....as Coinbase has has 2 million unique users and 2.6 million wallets right now and they only exist in a few countries and not the largest market -China.

Thus the most conservative estimate would be 4 million bitcoin adopters worldwide to as high as ~10 million.

In January 2015 Coinbase said they passed 2 million users, NOT UNIQUE.

"The question though is whether or not the accounts represent human beings or if there are a lot of duplicate or dormant accounts."

How many of those accounts were created, used once, and then abandoned? The number of actual bitcoin users I expect to be much lower.

There are only 1.8 million addresses with a balance over 0.001 (26 cents).  I think this number is a better representation of users vs how many accounts coinbase has opened.

[BitUsher]

In January 2015 Coinbase said they passed 2 million users, NOT UNIQUE.

"The question though is whether or not the accounts represent human beings or if there are a lot of duplicate or dormant accounts."

How many of those accounts were created, used once, and then abandoned? The number of actual bitcoin users I expect to be much lower.

2 million users and 2.6 million wallets is what they cite. so 600k are not unique wallets.

There are only 1.8 million addresses with a balance over 0.001 (26 cents).  I think this number is a better representation of users vs how many accounts coinbase has opened.

Where are you getting this number from?

You are aware that many wallets with bitcoin exist off the chain right? I have personally given 40+ of my friends and family members 40 dollars or more in bitcoin with services like coinbase which are held off the chain  and only a few of these have bothered to get a unique public address. Additionally, all changetip users are holding off the chain accounts as well.

[croato]

If Bitcoin manage to become mainstream internet currency as first step, number of users will go dramaticly up. After we concuer internet, everything is possible and sky will not be limit anymore lol.