Bitcoin Goes Back to the Future for Mainstream Adoption

Signs of bitcoin adoption are everywhere. Whether it is Morgan Stanley scooping up more shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Amazon hiring a blockchain and digital currency expert or PayPal expanding its crypto footprint to the U.K., it is clear that bitcoin is closer to becoming a household name.

Nonetheless, if you ask one market analyst, it is still the very early innings for the asset class. Willy Woo, an on-chain analyst, in a tweet, illustrated the “projected worldwide bitcoin users expressed in internet years.”

Here's the projected worldwide Bitcoin users expressed in Internet years:

Internet 1997 = Bitcoin 2021
Internet 2005 = Bitcoin 2025
Internet 2010 = Bitcoin 2028

Here's how the Internet changed… pic.twitter.com/CzrE83JVMJ

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) August 26, 2021

Bitcoin and the Internet

According to Woo’s analysis, bitcoin is currently in the stage where the internet was in 1997 when the World Wide Web was more readily available and used by businesses and households alike.

It will be close to four years before bitcoin is at the post-dot-com bubble stage of circa 2005. For context, that was the year that Pandora Internet Radio was launched and Google introduced a short-lived personalized homepage, iGoogle.

Bitcoin will not reach internet 2010 status until the year 2028, according to Woo, which is akin to when the Kindle was selling like hotcakes on Amazon.com. In terms of devices, 2010 was also the year that the Apple iPad was introduced.

Woo also pointed out back in February that bitcoin’s adoption rate at the time rivaled that of the internet in 1997. He added, however, that bitcoin adoption was moving at a quicker pace, forecasting that there would be 1 billion bitcoin users by 2025, which again he likened to 2005 for the web.

Data:
BTC unique exchange users: @CambridgeAltFin
BTC unique on-chain users: @glassnode
BTC de-duping via survey: @woonomic
BTC growth sanity-check: Google Trends
Internet users: @worldbankdata

Note: Present day BTC user count is the lower bound estimate (most conservative).

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) February 1, 2021

Bitcoin Supercycle

As the bitcoin market matures, the stars are beginning to align for what Kraken’s Dan Held describes as a “Bitcoin Supercycle.” According to LocalBitcoins, a bitcoin supercycle is one in which the leading cryptocurrency “creates a virtual marketing loop” in which several themes are apparent.

Held explains which pieces are in place. For example, consumers are losing trust in “existing institutions.” Bitcoin is increasingly being looked to as a store-of-value asset around the world in the face of rising inflation. And the industry infrastructure is getting better, making it easier for people to buy bitcoin, which, in turn, could hasten wide-scale adoption.

Not saying it’s highly likely to happen, but all the pieces are there for one to possibly happen.

– Loss of trust with existing institutions
– Bitcoin is being globally recognized as a SoV
– Great content that orange pills faster than ever
– Never been easier to buy Bitcoin

— Dan Held (@danheld) August 26, 2021

The bitcoin price is not too far from the USD 50K level. Market leaders are optimistic about where the price will go by the end of the year.