We Are Ultra Early Adopters
Here is an image that I came across on Reddit. I do not know the exactly accuracy of it although I feel it is in the ball park.
This compares the pace of many different technologies over the past 100 years. Most of them achieved mainstream penetration. The chart shows how long it took for mass adoption of much of what became a "household" item.
I recall someone mentioning to me during the cryptocurrency run up in 2017 that he felt he was too late. I just laughed at such an idea.
Obviously, from a financial perspective, it was smart of him not to invest at the peak. However, to believe we are anywhere near "too late" is preposterous.
The truth is we are in the very early stages of a multi-decade shift that is taking place. We are not only looking at a technology that is going to interrupt our entire financial system, but most every industry is going to change due to this. Couple this with the simultaneous advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and we can see how the world we will be in 10 or 15 years will be completely different.
Cryptocurrency, so far, is adopted by the low single digits in the United States. With roughly 300 million people, we are looking at under 10 million (probably) who used it in any capacity. Some parts of the world have achieved a greater penetration rate yet the overall numbers are still low.
According to Statista, at the end of Quarter 2 of this year, there were about 40M wallets in the world.
I honestly think this number is a bit low. There are more wallets out there that are not contained in the results.
Nevertheless, this is wallets, not people. Consider how many wallets each person in crypto has. A good chance there was a Bitcoin wallet set up at some point along with an Ethereum. I know I have two BTC and one ETH.
Thus, we are looking at a number which has far fewer people than wallets.
Think about that for a second. Let us say there are 50M wallets and each person has, on average, two. That is 25M people globally involved in cryptocurrency.
There are 7B people in the world, half of them on the Internet. In a landscape with 3.5B people, cryptocurrency is not even a dot on the screen. The number of people involved would literally being a margin of error statistically.
To illustrate, I found some stats on mobile social media users. If the world of cryptocurrency was a social media app for phones, it was ranked around Snapchat.
This is not any one particular blockchain like Bitcoin. Presuming about 50M wallets, we are looking at roughly the same number as Snapchat for the ENTIRE cryptocurrency world.
Using the chart above, if the number of wallets experiences the same growth rate as it did the last three years, we will be in the neighborhood of 250M in 2022. My expectation is the pace will only increase as more is available to users.
So, for anyone who things it is too late in the game, we are still in the embryonic stage. Where we are at today is nothing compared to 5 years from now. Things are starting to materialize with all the development that is occurring. With each day, we are seeing an acceleration of things. Bitcoin is still the undisputed leader garnering a ton of attention. This is a good thing. Bitcoin gets recognition at a level that one cannot pay for.
This will eventually creep into the rest of the alt-coin market. The development of Web 3.0 is just starting to kick off. Bitcoin is not going to dominate this aspect of the industry providing a huge opportunity for those who are paying attention.
The next alt-coin run will not be based upon fluff like it was in 2017. Then, anything that announced an ICO took off. This time, I expect we will see a more concentrated ascension of those platforms that actually have things being built on them. This is a major difference.
Hence, those projects that are seeing the development could well be the leaders at the top of the ranking lists in a year or so.
Just like the Internet, the fluff sent things flying yet those entities which were focused upon development ended up excelling in the long run.
We see a lot of the same thing taking place here.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and resteem.
It will never be too late. There is no limit to what can be built here. With decentralized flat architecture humanity will be able to scale the world economy to heights not thought possible.
The gains generated by this growth can not be propelled to the top of the pyramid, because the corporate pyramids sink into the shifting sands of decentralization.
The thing about a fixed quantity currency in a world that is constantly pushing innovation means your bitcoin will be worth more in the future (even if there is no $ to compare it to)
This phrase made me smile
Some of us missed the ultra, ultra-early stage, but most of us still are trailblazers in our circles of influence.
Convincing others of this is the hard part. I agree though. We are early to the party all things considered.
So, 50% of the people saw the light, then it took another couple decades before the rest of the people opened their eyes?
If you consider including general blockchain and DLT (I know, they are essentially the same) in with cryptocurrency, it won’t be long that people will be using it without realizing it. It’s pretty much that way now with web based technology that doesn’t depend on opening a browser (think OneDrive from Microsoft). Projects like Steem will be providing that infrastructure.
Someday everything will even out and only the best and most widely adapted technologies will survive. The Steem blockchain and STEEM currency is here to stay, it's not going anywhere - even if steemit.com becomes a faint memory.
Hi @taskmaster4450!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.139 which ranks you at #274 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 117 contributions, your post is ranked at #2. Congratulations!
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!