Recently, I have become bothered by the narrative that Bitcoin adoption is going to come from developing nations. It seems like everyone can now quote the inflation rate for Argentina, highlight capital controls in Venezuela, pull out the size of the remittance market, and cite the number of unbanked off the top of their head. It all sounds very smart, exotic, and exciting indeed.

I, however, disagree with the thesis that adoption will come from the developing world. I happen to also think this undersells Bitcoin’s potential greatly.

There’s an important distinction to be made between who most benefits from Bitcoin adoption and who will drive Bitcoin adoption.

For example, Twitter and its decentralized press benefits the censored and the oppressed the most, but most of the tweets and advertising dollars come from the US. Similarly, the self driving car is most beneficial to the blind and disabled, but messaging obsessed adults fully capable of driving will end up being the bottom line for automakers. Bitcoin enables anyone to send any amount to anybody for nearly no cost (quote credit to Roger Ver), but it’s the advanced economies that transact the most and have the most wealth to store.

Why then has there been all the fuss about developing countries driving Bitcoin adoption and prices?

Aside from making you sound worldly and rather benevolent, I attribute the recent increase in such talk to the slumping price. In bear markets, there is a tendency to get more and more abstract and distant in describing the target user. Mainstream adoption is now defined by people of lands most have never travelled to. Use cases change from everyday ones to ones unrelatable for many like remittances. (I have seen a similar story before from the financial world. Poorly performing fund managers would always sell you on the glories of investing in equities far abroad - how China’s growing at an incredible 8% a year. Only later did people realize the underperformance versus the S&P.)

Bitcoin in my opinion has the greatest potential to be adopted quickly by those in advanced economies with the very best infrastructure, the most wealth to deploy, and the nimblest of regulatory environments. The Internet of Things with machine to machine payments isn’t going to be first built in the developing world. Neither will the Oculus VR with Bitcoin integration sell the best there. The Venezuelan regulators are certainly not going to have a commenting period. Almost every Bitcoin application I can imagine is more ripe for advanced economies than developing ones.

It’s time we focused a little more on the developed world. Only then can we more effectively reach those who most need what Bitcoin offers.