Bitcoin has continued to record global acceptance, and its adoption as a legal tender increases yearly.
Bitcoin is set to change the way people understand and use money, and it is set to improve our lives with internet and smartphone technologies. Advancements in blockchain technology will solve more human problems in the future, leading to innovative leaps around the globe.
Bitcoin has had an excellent track record since 2009 and has had challenges like the Silk Road crackdown and unstable prices. Other issues with Bitcoin include significant value losses, scalability, and many more.
How Did Bitcoin Become a Reality?
A little over a decade ago, it wasn’t as popular as now. A ten-dollar investment in Bitcoin in 1999 would have a considerable ROI today. The first USD transaction for Bitcoin was recorded in 2009 by a Finnish developer (Martti Malmi). He sold 5,050 units of BRC for $5.02, which will run into millions today. The reason is that the unit cost of bitcoin in 2021 will reach a peak of $64,000.
How did Bitcoin become such a valuable asset? Well? It all started with Satoshi Nakamoto. After the global financial crisis of 2008, he published his book, The White Paper. He laid down the blueprint for the transaction of Bitcoin across merchant platforms. His goal was to establish a peer-to-peer network uncontrolled by traditional financial institutions.
The transparent nature of crypto is responsible for its acceptance. However, there is a concern about Bitcoin being used for illicit transactions, and Scrupulous persons can use the privacy it offers.
The online gaming industry supports the application of crypto. Since the inception of Bitcoin, many gambling sites have been accepting it. Bitcoin became well known when Lazlo Hanuexz paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas. Since then, it has become a normal thing to play online slots with it.
Another factor responsible for Bitcoin’s growth is the increase in trade volumes. However, there have been good and bad days in the crypto world, and Bitcoin has maintained an upward trajectory.
How Many People Use Bitcoin?
Determining how many active Bitcoin users there are is a near-impossible task. Bitcoin is a store of value, and using the network transaction to determine active users will lead to wrong estimates. In 24 hours, the number of dynamic Bitcoin wallet addresses can be anywhere between 500,000 to one million.
Daily confirmed Bitcoin transactions by Bitcoin users can be between 200,000 and 400,000. This excludes the number of transactions processed on the Lightning Network, and this is usually more than a million in a second.
Figuring out how many bitcoin owners are is no walk in the park. Yet, there exist certain statistical rangés that can be applied. Out of the 460 million BTC addresses created so far, over 172 million make regular BTC transactions, with a constant increase in the rate of users at hundreds of thousands each day.
Placing an accurate number on the amount of bitcoin users is difficult. The reason would be that many people own multiple Bitcoin addresses, and some have multiple accounts on exchanges.
Price and Volume of BTC
I was wondering what influenced the price of BTC. Simple, it was the rate at which the cryptocurrency became adopted. Its trading volume and price have increased. Certain news and companies trading it can alter the trajectory, and they can manipulate its value on the market. Bitcoin trading volume is affected by changes in price at some level. It went up by the end of 2015 and January 2016. In January 2016, Bitcoin achieved a peak of $176 million daily.
Businesses And Governments Adopting BTC
Bitcoin is a recognized payment method by several blue-chip companies. Amongst them are Microsoft, Etsy, Tesla, Starbucks, etc. It is necessary to identify the varying types of adoption. If a company accepts Bitcoin as a payment method is different from it being legal tender, and several nations are beginning to take it as legal tender.
Still, this does not downplay how widespread Bitcoin’s use has become and the upward trajectory in its value. In 2021, there was record-breaking popularity for Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies were also being embraced widely.
Chain analysis, in its research, posited an 880% increase in the global adoption of crypto assets. Its research pointed out which countries have had the most alarming crypto adoption rates for citizens. The study showed people turned to crypto due to inflation affecting their local currencies.
El Salvador is a prime example of such countries, and it was the first to adopt crypto as a legal tender. The country’s official Bitcoin and USD app, Chivo Wallet, has 1.6 million users.
Sadly, the situation in Beijing, China, contrasts sharply with Salvador. There have been significant restrictions and clampdowns by the government, and the targets are usually crypto users and miners, leading to crypto mining companies leaving China.
Another primary disaster for the crypto world was a recently approved bill in the United States called the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. This bill requires crypto brokers to report their customers to the IRS for adequate taxation. The term “brokers” might include crypto exchanges, crypto miners, and developers for decentralized apps. However, this will be an impossible task to carry out for anyone who isn’t an exchange.
It may be true that the mass adoption of crypto in the US is far from being realized. However, the crypto industry now has strong lobbyists putting pressure on lawmakers and politicians.
FAQ
Bitcoin will be adopted by which countries?
So far, the only country that has permitted the use of bitcoin as a legal tender, thus making it equal in value to its national currency, is El Salvador.
Has Bitcoin Passed The Stage Of Early Adoption?
Since 2009, Bitcoin has been a market commodity. According to experts, one can say that it has far surpassed its stage of early adoption. The most accurate phase we can attribute to Bitcoin is the early majority. This remains good news for investors because Bitcoin hasn’t reached its late majority stage, when the returns on crypto investment will diminish.
Which Country Owns The Most Bitcoin?
Recently, most Bitcoin has been owned and transacted in the United States. In tandem with the popular statistical claims, more than $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin was circulated on cryptocurrency exchanges based in the US.
