Satoshi launched Bitcoin in 2009, famously he linked to a Financial Times article in the “genesis” block, the first Bitcoin block ever mined. (The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks ).



What does this mean? Well only Satoshi knows it’s intentions, but with all the recent global banking scandals, the reference is clear as day. Bitcoin could provide the solution to many of the woes currently experienced in our current money system.

No one knows for sure if Bitcoin will be around 5 or even 10 years from now, but here is our Top 10 indicators that say Bitcoin adoption will grow in 2016.

1 The Growth Of All The Largest Bitcoin Exchanges

2015 was a phenomenal year of Growth within the Bitcoin industry. The largest of all the Bitcoin exchanges at the moment is OK Coin who currently have around 43% of the market share and current trading volume is estimated to be around $16.7m USD daily (Around R260 million rand). It had over an 800% growth between 2014 and 2015. And that’s just one exchange.

Across the top 5 exchanges their was an average growth of 420%

2 Daily Transaction Values Among Payment Processors

(Source: Statista Charts) @statistacharts

Bitcoins current daily transactional volume is around R4.5 Billion Rand Daily (I agree that this is up for debate)As you can see, Bitcoin sits just above Western Union in the chart of daily transactional volume across all the top Global payment processors. This is partly because Bitcoin fees are much lower (as low as nil) when compared to the other processors and a lot of the transactions are merely Bitcoin users tranferring funds between their own various accounts and wallets. That brings us to the third point.

3 International Money Transfer Costs

5 Bob Transaction Fees

Bitcoin does not have a set transaction fee, rather you pay according to the current conditions. The standard fee is 0.0001 BTC/ 1000 Bytes (Around 0.59c). This is not limited to the transaction amount though, so whether it’s R100 or R10m ZAR you will pay a fee of aroung 50c, or 5 bob at current market value. Take note this transaction is border-less, doesn’t matter which country you are sending to.

4. Cryptocurrency Venture Capital Funding

Bitcoin start-ups have been getting funding and 2015 has been the year of VC for Bitcoin. 2014 saw a total of around 5,7 Billion Rand and 2015 was a record 7.5 Billion South African Rands! 2015 saw many new and exciting start-ups to the scene with the boom in Blockchain and FinTech news and Big global banks and corporates expressing interest in the technology behind it.

5 hot start-ups to watch– Ethereum, Coinbase, Changetip, NXT and Shapeshift.io

5. Bitcoin Merchant Adoption

There are currently an estimated 7,323 global bitcoin merchants worldwide, Payfast- South Africa’s payment processor famously allowed all it’s merchants (Over 30,000 in total) to accept Bitcoin payments easily and convert it instantly to Rands.

5 Global Brands That Accept Bitcoin

Overstock.com was one of the first major brands to accept Bitcoin and has really seen a major increase in revenue and acceptance among the Bitcoin community. 2015 saw many huge brands integrate Bitcoin as payment due to the many great benefits they could realize on their products.

That’s my take on the current state of Bitcoin, and if you asked us the question, is Bitcoin dead? The answer you would get from me is HELL NO!