I recently found an interesting article on Forbes, which argues that in terms of adoption of cryptocurrencies in 2017 we were at the same point in time as the internet was in 1994. So, I decided to do a little research and figure out for myself how likely it is that we are at early adopters stage at the moment. If so, is there something that tries to slow it down and maybe stop it all completely? I start from the beginning…

The birth, the message

First Bitcoin transaction (the genesis block) was made on Saturday, 3rd of January 2009 with the following message:

Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks Bitcoin genesis block message

The message is a reference to this The Times edition:



Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks

Alistair Darling has been forced to consider a second bailout for banks as the lending drought worsens.

The Chancellor will decide within weeks whether to pump billions more into the economy as evidence mounts that the £37 billion part-nationalisation last year has failed to keep credit flowing. Options include cash injections, offering banks cheaper state guarantees to raise money privately or buying up “toxic assets”, The Times has learnt.

Perhaps, that message symbolizes the true essence of Bitcoin and that’s the reason it was hard-coded in there. The global financial crisis of 2008 was one of the worst economic disasters. Genesis block with the such message could highlight the fundamentals behind the creation of Bitcoin: it is offering an alternative solution to people from the flawed financial system. The statement could be a protest against the possible billion pounds pumps, which can collapse the economy for the sake of bankers.

Or, maybe, the message was put there to indicate that the transaction was made on or after 3rd of January 2009.



Present time



As I write this post it has been almost 10 years since that very first transaction. So what happened during the last 10 years?



Bitcoin is used by major retail companies

Bitcoin is used for majority of online transactions

Bitcoin is used to send and receive money from different countries

Bitcoin is used by people in marketplaces like eBay or Gumtree

Bitcoin is used by people to buy and sell goods offline

Bitcoin is used in business to business transactions

All of the above

None of the above

The correct answer would be “None of the above”. Presently, Bitcoin is used to convert fiat into a cryptocurrency and then it is used as a speculation tool on various exchanges to trade other cryptocurrencies. Why is it not used as it was intended, a true currency? What is true currency? Let’s investigate further. Since Bitcoin belong to both, tech and finance worlds, let’s briefly look at how adoptions usually take there.



Adoption in technology

The technology adoption rate graph from BlackRock shows how long it took for various technologies to get widely adopted.

Adoption of technology in the U.S. 1900 to present

Telephone, electricity and even cars took 20-30 years before reaching 60% adoption. As we get closer to our current time we see adoption rate accelerating. It’s been almost 10 years and we should expect Bitcoin to be widely adopted by now, at least 50% adoption, right? No, it’s far from it, I will try to estimate the current adoption rate later in the post but now let’s have a look at adoption rate in the financial world.



Adoption in finance

Going back 50,000 – 100,000 years ago, people relied on very primitive ledger. The ledger was needed to remember who owed what. If you killed a saber-toothed cat or woolly mammoth and you give your friends some meat, you then would remember how much meat you gave to who, so you can could ask for similar favours when you need it. This was a system that worked for a very long time. Thousands of years.

Gradually, the ledger became more efficient. Different tribes, in different parts of the world, were coming up with idea of of using objects to keep track of their ledger balance. Shells, beads, stones, clay tablets, cocoa, potatoes, copper coins and of course gold – all acted as money at some point in the history of human race.

1742 drawing of shells of the money cowry, Cypraea moneta

For example, in the 13th century BC, Chinese people used cowry shells as their currency. They used the shells because they were hard to counterfeit and more importantly they were not easily obtainable. Only the richest Chinese could obtain bigger quantities of this commodity. Fun fact, cowry shells are so deeply embedded into Chinese culture that many words in written Chinese refers to money or trade, contain the symbol for cowry shell: 貝.

In 14th – 15th century, gold was accepted as a currency almost everywhere in the world. However, it took gold thousands of years to accomplish that.

Later on, in the 16th century there was a radical proposition to replace gold with gold certificates written on paper. Andreas Antonopoulos (A Bitcoin guru) in this video states:

If you think people find Bitcoin weird, imagine a time when they told them gold is no longer the money, bits of paper are… they were like you gotta be kidding me. So that idea was so radical, it took 400 years before it became broadly deployed in mainstream society. Andreas Antonopoulus

Debit cards have been around since late 1960’s. If we travel back in time to Europe in 1990’s, we would have a hard time trying to find where we can use a debit card, only cash was widely accepted. This was less than 20 years ago!

As we can see, adoption in finance runs at a much slower rate then in the tech world but it also accelerates as it gets closer to the present time. The lesson to learn here is: a cryptocurrency adoption might take slightly longer than adoption of a smartphone or a table because, finance and banking are not industries that benefit from innovation since they don’t create much value.

Current adoption

Let’s now do some simple math to calculate the current adoption of Bitcoin. New technology generally follows this bell curve:

Technology adoption curve

The closer we are to the left of chart the more early we are and more growth we can expect to happen.

First we need to calculate the total adoption, that is, the total number of people who can benefit from using a cryptocurrency. To do so, we need to take the whole population of the Earth and deduct people who doesn’t have internet access, elderly or too young to understand cryptocurrencies and people which disabilities which prevent them from using the internet.

The current population of the world is 7.6 Billion. According to CIA World Factbook current demographics are:

Age Percentage % Number of people 0 – 14

25.44 % 1,933,440,000 15 – 24 16.16 % 1,228,160,000 25 – 54 41.12 % 3,125,120,000 55 – 64 8.60 % 653,600,000 65 + 8.68% 659,680,000 100.00 % 7,600,000,000

If we only consider people from 15 to 64 as our user base, then we would get 5,006,880,000 people. I think it is safe (and more sceptical) to assume that half of those people either do not have internet access or simply cannot use a technology – we can divide than number by 2 and we get 2,503,440,000 people. Therefore, 2.5 billion people would be our absolute maximum number of people who can use Bitcoin.

In 2017, Cambridge University created an extensive 114-page study on cryptocurrencies that digs deep into empirical data of the digital currency world as it appears across the world. The report states:

The current number of unique active users of cryptocurrency wallets is estimated to be between 2.9 million and 5.8 million. Between 5.8 million and 11.5 million wallets are estimated to be currently ‘active’ Cambridge University, 2017

It’s 2018, let’s be more aggressive and say more people adopted Bitcoin. We can assume that unique active users can be within the range from 2.9 million to 17.4 million (three times more what it was in 2017)

2.5 billion people is the total possible maximum

2.9 million < users of bitcoin < 17.4 million

Knowing those numbers we can now calculate the current adoption:

Percentage % Number of people 100.00% 2,500,000,000 Min adoption 0.116% 2,900,000 Max adoption 0.696% 17,400,000

The current adoption is between 0.116% and 0.696%. Which puts are right in the first bucket – innovators!

The current adoption is between 0.116% and 0.696%. We are innovators

Bitcoin price when adoption grows to only 10%

Assuming the Bitcoin price is one-to-one function of Bitcoin adoption growth, which is quite reasonable expectation, then we can calculate the price of Bitcoin if the adoption is only 10% in our ranges. The current price of one Bitcoin is $7,355.68.

Lower range:

Price $ Adoption $7,355.68 0.116% $634,110.34 10.000% $6,341,103.45 100.000%

High range:

Price $ Adoption $7,355.68 0.696% $105,685.06 10.000% $1,056,850.57 100.000%

If only 10% in our target population would adopt Bitcoin then the price for one Bitcoin would be from $105,685.06 to $634,110.34. Remember, we were very modest about the target population too.

Bitcoin price would be from $105,685.06 to $634,110.34 with 10% of adoption

What can obstruct the progress?

Bitcoin needs to evolve, become faster, cheaper and more usable. Nobody wants to pay high fees for anything, nor wait 10 minutes before the transaction is confirmed.

Also, there’s been a very public civil war among Bitcoin developers: One group favours changes to the network, the other doesn’t. If developers cannot agree with each other, that too might put an end to it.

Bitcoin started its life with a threat to the existence of banking institutions and major banks would probably do everything in their power to fight against it.

To conclude