Topic: 1 Billion Bitcoin users by 2024 is possible with increased access to electricity (Read 461 times)

I agree, not only an internet is the problem. We might consider that they don't  have the knowledge to start with it? maybe they are afraid that they will only lose money? they still prefer stock market than crypto? or they are not yet ready because of the on going pandemic and bear market? there's a lot of factor with it. Same to the other country, as much as we want to teach them crypto it is not yet possible because electricity is not stable which is very essential just like the internet services.

Its not only that, but also that if people have no electricity in this moment, they will not have the skills to operate the bitcoin network in the next moment. You have to consider that they maybe never used the internet before. How would they operate a wallet and what money would they even have to invest, if they are so poor that they have no electricity in the year 2022.

Even if people starts using solar power to charge their phones and Laptops, what about the connectivity, how they are going to solve that. Since you mentioned that there are places where there is no electricity which means they are not connected to globally. First the government has to think about the infrastructure and then we can think about people using solar power to charge their gadgets .

its 2022 not 2009
you do not need to be a miner to use bitcoin.
you dont need 24/7 access to 3kwh electric to use bitcoin

you can use a cell phone that only requires charging once a week to use bitcoin.

electric is not an issue for bitcoin

asic mining does not determine limitation of transactions per block.

its the dev politics that limit the transactions per block

lets not try turning this into another FAILED excuse of "it cant scale, its broke" because of mining or electric.(usual excuses to shift the blame)

bitcoin can grow without needing lots more electric. it just needs devs to stop being elitist politically/corporation motivated agenda to think that fee's are acceptable at $1 a tx and that billions of unbanked should not use bitcoin(their mantra) just so they can promote their altnets as the things the poor/regular users should use instead

 i think it depends on some criteria. electricity cost is the most common problem for some countires. it is expensive or not fixed. some countries such as srilanka having heavy power cuts these days. and government policies are also must be considered . but your point is about bitcoin users by 2024 . it is possible to have more than 1 b bitcoin userrs by 2024 because of recent rallies and institutional adoption. those big players are encouraging people to invest , mine and keep bitcoin and use it as a payment solution.

Not the entire world but only those extremely poor countries. I think on our local rural areas, many places there will also not be covered by electricity because they are too far away from the city but governments are now putting up an alternatives like solar panels.

There's also hydro, wind and other types of renewable energy in case one isn't available due to weather conditions. Don't forget that the OP's concern is the adoption of bitcoin and not market or the economy of the countries that you mention although I think bitcoin can give some contribution on ones country if done well like governments can do some indirect regulation and then charge a tax for those big transactions.

Ever seen pictures from refugee camps? Sadly its not about electricity and access to technology rather its all about how every person living on the earth can get quality food and water daily at least for one time! That’s the area of major concern in the Africa. Saw some documentaries based on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which shown whats the situation out there. You can not really crunch this data and expect some high tech stuff goes boom. There are many who has access to the mobile phone, electricity and Internet but not everyone is capable to be user of the same. This could be due to poverty, family needs, daily survival struggle and what not.

I don't feel poor access to electricity in Africa and other places affects the number of bitcoin users, here is my logic, there are bitcoin adopters in those areas, and they are probably the people that have one less problem to think about, so they can look at bitcoin and investments in general, they are the people that cannot only afford electricity, but other vital needs, so they add bitcoin to their investment if they can work and buy it or earn it directly after offering their service.

But it goes without saying that for the majority that do not have access to electricity and alternatives to it, if we make a hypothetical sitiation where electricity issues is solved by their government for them, there are immediately other problems that rear its head: food, children school fees, money to buy clothes, etc, bitcoin will be last on the list, that is if it makes the list to begin with.

Electricity isn't the problem, but poverty. Even if a poor person works and is paid in bitcoin, they will convert it immediately to cover some of their serious needs, they aren't going to hold it, they do not have the liberty to, people who hold bitcoin are people who can afford to survive without the btc that is held. But the poor person will need fiat to spend easily, but they are still bitcoin users if they earn in bitcoin, even if they do not hold it, but then in the condition they live in, how many have the skill and time to work and earn in bitcoin around there.

I don't really see why electricity would have a factor in people deciding on BTC. By that logic, the western world that takes full benefit of electricity should be at 90% of people's adoption. I really doubt that people who were, just yesterday, without electricity, or with unstable access to electricity, suddenly have spare change lying around to buy a computer, or a smartphone, the tools needed to access crypto investing, let alone have the spare money to actually invest. As for mining, again, people who as of yesterday had no access to electricity will suddenly be buying rigs that can mine BTC. Come on this is a joke right

Electricity plays a major role in all economic sector.
Like as mentioned earlier alternative ways of accessing the internet should also be pursued.

Solar powered phones and laptops? I've never heard about this idea before. Where did you come up with this?
Do you really think that such new technology would be cheap enough? Brand new technologies are usually very expensive at the beginning.
4 billion Bitcoin users by 2030? This seems far-fetched to me. Bitcoin currently has around 30 million users worldwide. Hitting even 100 million worldwide users would be really hard and 1 billion Bitcoin users is close to impossible.
The underdeveloped countries will be facing hard times increasing their electricity production and expanding their power grids.
They would definitely need foreign capital for such massive investment, but the developed countries that have the capital are going to face a recession in the next months or maybe years. Your dreams about mass electrification in Asia and Africa won't come true anytime soon.

The issue of electricity supply have been a major problem for the entire world, and that is why there is a call for nuclear energy if the energy is renewed then enough storage will be easy for transmission. This energy situation is a global phenomenon but Africa is the worst hit simply because of the backwarness in technologies that can help generate more energy and also build a strong facilities to transmits the power to household. A lot of start ups in Nigeria can not survive the market because of lack for electricity. This have been the situation for a long now this if fixe will help to strengthen the economy.

The truth most be told. The description of Africa by the European counterparts as a dark continent is like a paradox. Africa produces the highest natural resources in all ramifications yet it is the poorest in all continents in the world, mostly in Nigeria. I have not slept with light for 24/7 hours a day or used it for 24/7 ours. My phone number is also among this ones.

This is when I was doing National Youth Service in Nigeria in the local area. It is solar panels that were fixed to pump water in the school compound that we were using. And that solar works only in day time because when it is night there would be no sun to Power the solar panels. And national light comes once a while which can not be depended on. Now after the service year, I have to buy a portable solar system in the my room so that I would not depend on the national light.

Then the average amount held will be significantly less than 0.021 BTC in 2024 and less than 0.00525 BTC in 2030, since there will never be more than 21,000,000 bitcoins and those are the values you'd get if you just split up those bitcoins evenly. I assume we're all aware that there'll be a 1% that will hold an amount that is EXTREME in comparison to the average, and a 10% that will hold SIGNIFICANTLY more than the average. As such, the actual amount that the vast majority of people will hold in that circumstance will be significantly less than those averages.

Seems like it'd be a good idea to get your share of 0.005 BTC (or 0.02 BTC) as soon as possible before you get left behind and there isn't enough left for you.

Indeed Constant Electricity has been a major challenge facing some part of Africa and could slow down the number of people who might have access to Bitcoin due to non constant Electricity in those region, However, There is nothing that is impossible , in fact with the way things are going with Bitcoin and together with the building of the fourth industrial revolution going hand in hand with Bitcoin , therefore when people are getting to know that Bitcoin will play a major role, where Bitcoin will be used to pay robbot, self driving cars ,algorithm and drones that will take over the economy then that number 1 billion is very very possible to reach and even more on or before the year 2024.

And the problem is that you will have to trust the exchange reporting the numbers, let's look at Celsius:


O yeah, everyone at the last of the month will ask themselves what to buy a bag of rice to have secured dinner for 4 days or 1000 satoshi, even counting who will allow you to trade around the ~1.

As for the earned part, you don't realize Bitcoin is money! You don't just earn Bitcoin, you work for money, simple as that, doing something for someone else that includes a reward of any kind is working, and if those people would have been able to do extra work they wouldn't be in that situation anymore. This is a complete misconception of earning bitcoin, when you create post things is not bitcoin that pays you, it's the owner of the blog who pays for your writing, when you design stuff and get paid in bitcoins it's for your design, it's not bitcoin that somehow pays you for all this, it's a normal business that does.

Seriously, are we so desperate to come out of this bear season that we are targeting the cents in the pockets of the poorest people in the world?
Just think for a moment, they have 100 needs and you can only think about how they could buy coins so that bitcoin reaches 100k.
How would you call it?

The normal way things should be done is all those shills that claim to have made millions from crypto should put aside 1% of their earnings to support the electricity and water infrastructure in Africa, but what we see is thousands of tokens claiming that only to fleece more investors and not giving out a penny.

Things that needs preference need to be given. Initial thing to be done is the infrastructure development for the isolated regions. Very few countries take initiative to make such changes which could boost the adoption and usage of bitcoin.

In recent days Europe have taken a measure to have solar energy system on every new building to overcome the oil demand. Maybe the same initiative could help the people without electricity get access to the electricity connection.

you will find that africa skipped passed/ignored copper wire/fibre internet telephony. and pushed straight to cellular towers. as its cheaper to reach great distances while offering good speed internet

alot of the 'unbanked' use cellular alot because they use phone credit as their currency, (mpesa & MoMo) so they are actually very comfortable with technology and digital currency. so switching over to cryptocurrency is not a huge leap. its actually much harder to try to convert them back to paper bank notes due to many many issues they have in their area in regards to bank notes (recessions hyper inflations, ATM/bank availability) they would much prefer cellular based currency use

Where there is no electricity, there's also probably no internet service providers and communication signals, so if we're talking of this isolated sector, let's probably forget about Bitcoin.

I don't think the people living in such condition prioritize Bitcoin more than the rest of their needs. And I assume that such a place is definitely poor. I know that there are off-grid villages and communities that are well-off but we're talking here of developing countries like mine. So it's no use for them to pursue Bitcoin as if it's the be-all and end-all of their existence.

Let's be practical. First things first.

you dont need a massive solar panel to charge a phone

you can trickle charge a power bank over a few days. to then charge a phone in a few hours where that phone can then run for more days than the trickle charge takes to charge the powerbank.

so a small handheld solar panel is all they use.(remote villages that dont have shops/services)
.

as for markets.
if they average buy order in fiat decreases from $400 to $4 . sellers simply offer smaller decimals of btc.
which if you then calculate the equivalent price as if it was a whole btc, then it tells you the whole btc price

EG
someone buying 0.02 for $400 =$20k/btc
someone buying 0.0002 for $4 =$20k/btc
so no difference effect in price by just selling less sats offering less fiat

we can see this because in 2012-3 mtgox was selling 1btc for $400 as an average order amount where the occasional order an hour of 1000btc for $400k

these days you wil not see 1000 whale orders in any given hour on one order line
and average orders are not 1btc amounts..

now its 0.02 amounts and 1btc amounts are the occasion orders happening each hour

..
what is actually the hold up of bitcoin acceptance in third world countries is the transaction fee.

and NO this is not an opportunity for certain people to derail the topic to advertise an altnet brand stealing bitcoin pretending their other network offers bitcoins without the fee.

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It’s very true sir, I have also seen some of them that runs phone charging services with generator powered electricity. But the challenge most time is phone or phone accessory theft and most of them don’t offer 24hrs services, hence one cannot access them at all time.  

But sir if they can save the 30 cents, maybe they can be able to buy a fraction of Bitcoin after sometime. There are many people in these developing nation that are poor but they still want to use their small saving to invest. I have learnt that Bitcoin can also be earned.

Sir, at least access to these basic requirements gives them the opportunities to know about Bitcoin. All of them might not necessarily accept or be interested in Bitcoin, but there are possibilities that the opportunities that Bitcoin offers might motivate some of them to become Bitcoiners. Yes the number of active internet users is not equal to number of Bitcoin users, but it can facilitate an increase in the number of Bitcoin users.
  
Corrections appreciated sir; it should be improved or better access to electricity. Like you rightly stated there are still areas in rural areas that lack access to electricity and even in some urban areas have not enjoyed power supply for years due to infrastructural problems. Youths in developing nations are very creative, innovative and very diligent. Hence, they would gladly grab any opportunity that can grant them access to financial freedom.

Thank you sir, developing nations have access to electricity but the point is that a large number of the population either have no access or epileptic supply. Hence, my take is that improvement in power supply can affect Bitcoin adoption positively.  

Valid response sirs, but I have no intention to state that electricity or internet challenges are the only reason why Bitcoin adoption or users might not increase as expected. Yes challenges of Bitcoin usage are multidimensional, but I just had the privilege of identifying electricity.

All the challenges you listed are correct sir. But my focus is access to electricity. And you would agree that inaccessibility to power is a major challenge.

Is anyone running a solar campaign?

If electricity was the only problem in bitcoin adoption, we'd still have much more users than we have. Right now the number of bitcoin users is smaller than the population of China. Tell me again that it's the lack of electricity that's stopping over 700k of Europeans with easy and cheap Internet access from buying bitcoin.

As far as the price goes, when we start moving towards 100k it's going to be an explosion again. The money to push bitcoin up is there and it would need only a few days to do so if the time was right. People from poor regions aren't going to do it. It's the hedge funds and businesses that save up their 1% in bitcoin that are going to make us go to 100 or 200k.

The cost of running alternate source of power supply are quite expensive in developing nations but this doesn't mean there are no power supply at all. This days solar panels are even less more economical and can power mobile phones and other gadgets that can access the web giving everyone equal opportunity to power supply no one has valid excuse for not joining the bitcoin ecosystem because the goal is not to hold 1BTC the goal is to haveBTC no matter how small.

Better electricity is what you should say OP, because we have electricity but it is not constant/stable except you are only considering the areas with no electricity access at all, the real rural areas. An increased and better electricity will mean that the youths can spend longer hours watching TV and on the internet without being bothered about the power on their devices and a longer time on the internet will mean that they have an increased exposure, a better chance of coming across bitcoins or cryptocurrencies. Africa has a lot to offer, and it's teaming youths desperate for ways to alleviate themselves from the economic hardship instilled as a result of bad leadership will always consider and embrace cryptocurrency if they are exposed to it as a way out.

There is a substantial difference between the ease of access to Bitcoin or Crypto and the willingless of adoption by the general population.

Fiat is a far better alternative as opposed to crypto mainly for a few reasons. Namely: Volatility, Ease of use and general reluctance to change the status quo. If El Salvador is of any indication, Bitcoin is not a sustainable currency where volatility is of any concern. It can be worse than the major currency in those countries because of its volatility. You can still argue that their currency may be subjected to hyperinflation but USD or major market currencies are far more stable. In countries with low literacy rates, you have very few of the people who are willing and able to use technology to their advantage. They are far more likely to be willing to maintain the status quo due to the lack of understanding of alternative currencies.

The problem is not with the ease of access but it is an entire myriad of problem that plagues the lack of adoption.

Agreed on this. I read some article before on how to have a wise estimate on how many real bitcoin holders are there. Since a user can have a multiple address containing dust amount, Some expert suggest that counting the number of people registered on exchange is probably the best thing to do due to KYC since the majority of crypto holder is using exchange and probably undergo KYC due to regulatory compliance.

I just saw some flaw on this method which user can create multiple account different exchange unless all exchange share there data to each other to have a single database to count unique users.

Article: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/

You can not use total holders or total UTXOs to make judgement that there are how many Bitcoin users. Estimation can be not correct. One holder can have many wallets, many addresses, many UTXOs.

If in future, you see more use cases and bigger trading volume for Bitcoin, the adoption is becoming better. I am sure when demand increases, price will grow consequently because the supply of Bitcoin is always 21M. It can not be increased by anyone. Many Bitcoin was lost too.

for those in africa that "want" to mine but know they require 3kw per hour constant electric. knowing the prices are high for that type of energy generation.. they would instead do the smart thing.
save money and just BUY bitcoin. because in those cases its cheaper just to buy bitcoin

There are as many resources in the earth as electricity that can be generated, if you want to do mining, then you have to decide that you are not paying too much bill, due to which you are getting any harm from mining, now more people Will start but you will have to do mining very carefully otherwise your electricity bill will come more than your mining's cost.

The economies of developing nations might be very insignificant when compared with developed nations but it can have a positive impact on the Bitcoin space. And this can be achieved if developing nations have access to electricity. Seeking cheap alternative and innovative means of power such as solar powered phones and computers can be a good starting point. Instead of buying an entire solar system which includes batteries, inverter, panel, etc, an affordable phone or laptop with inbuilt solar system would be ideal. These developing nations might no have the financial power, but they have the population.    

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Research has shown that as at 2020 100% of the population in china had access to electricity and considering their population1.45trilion which is slightly higher than african population 1.40 trilion 73% of them has access to the internet while in africa 22% has access to the internet yet this doesnt neccesarily reflect the number of chinese using Bitcoin. The factors that determine or affects the population of bitcoin users(especially in africa and other underdeveloped regions) is far beyond power generation it includes also the following:1. Affordability of handset, data 2. Lack of digital skills and literacy 3. Lack of content in local languages 4. Governmental policy and other internal regulations 5. Inflation etc

a solar panel to power a USB charge phone does not require KW's and are not rated at 30x daily income.

i visited africa years ago and went to some remote villages and they do things differently
they dont have power lines to power houses at a full proper house usage of 2kw a day.
they didnt have telephone cables/fibre for their internet.

they used small dinner plate size solar panels to power individual efficient devices like a 8watt LED lightbulb or a usb charger, USB charger 'powerbanks'

the thought that large diesel generators and massive kw solar panels were not a first thought that came to peoples mind when planning to get access to the internet and electric to do simple tasks of lighting.
..
as for thinking bitcoin needs exponential new users for deflationary price increases is another fools understanding of economics

in 2012 there were 12m coins in circulation. in 2022 there are 19m coins in circulation but that does not mean that it needs 0.5x more new buyers just to keep the price inline with 2012

what actually occurs is different
if all buyers only had an average spend of $400 both in 2012 and 2022. it does not require 50x more people to get to $20k
its actually much more simple.
the sellers just dont offer 1btc orders. instead they offer 0.02btc per order, where offering 0.02 for $400 average order results in 1btc=$20k

I agree that providing access to electricity to more people is extremely important. Then making the Internet widely available is the next step, and ensuing that people can afford devices to frequently access the Internet (a laptop or a smartphone, at least) is next. Prior to all that, we can't expect people who live in poverty and without access to all these basic requirements for using Bitcoin to become interested. But even when all of that is widely available, it doesn't mean people will turn to Bitcoin, as there's a huge difference between the number of active Internet users and Bitcoin users. Creating a fruitful ground is good (and regardless of whether people choose to adopt Bitcoin, they should enjoy access to electricity and the Internet), but it doesn't mean that when these conditions are met, it will automatically lead to higher Bitcoin adoption. And yeah, I don't think that 1 billion by 2024 is realistic.

Ok, so not all are using BTC right now because they don't have the electricity to power their phone and this is why we're stuck to 1 billion users till 2024, despite the fact that somehow, magically, the number of smartphone users reached 5.22 billion by the end of 2020.

Bruh, even if the whole of Africa would be without power completely, that's only 1.2 billion, leaving more than the other 6 billion for growth, there is no "MUST". Do you really believe that the growth will come from people who earn less than 5$ a day? Do you think their first choice once they get electricity would be to invest...what? The 30 cents they are left with at the end of the month after barely managing to buy food for their families?

Seriously, those poor people have little access to electricity, clean water, a damn hospital, or a school and the major concern is that they can't buy bitcoins...

The world population is approaching the figure of 8 billion which should be reached before the end of this year, and only 10% of that would amount to 800 000 million people, which makes the number of 1 billion Bitcoin users by 2024 quite unrealistic if we consider that the current estimates is that about 5% of the world's population has some kind of contact with Bitcoin.

Africa is often mentioned as a continent with great potential in terms of a very large and relatively young population, but without enough resources that enable them to be included in everything that offers access to the Internet and electricity. Of course, this is changing, but it will take a long time until the electric network is built, while the Internet is something that is in a better position because it can become available through mobile networks or via satellite.

A few years ago I watched a documentary about how people in Africa manage to charge their phones at stations that offer such a service, and some are even mobile and use solar panels.

I would prefer that the electricity flow is stabilized in the rest of Africa. Having constant on/off power for a few hours every day is more annoying than being off the grid and used to it.

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Today about 770 million people live without access to electricity, mostly in Africa and Asia. Considering the high cost of buying and maintaining other sources of power, generating set has become the generally accepted source of power. The cheapest generator might cost about $200. While other sources of power would be much more expensive. The average cost of running a small portable generator costs about $30 to $70 per day, while a 15- to 20-kilowatt generator that powers the entire home will cost about $50 to $150 per day. In a region where 85% live on less than $5.50 per day, access to electricity is a major challenge. Most people that are interested in Bitcoin are discouraged because they don’t have access to electricity to power their phone or other appliances that can grant them access to the Bitcoin space. And they cannot afford the cost of buying and running a generator.

There are predictions that Bitcoin can still hit $100,000-$150,000 price mark in few years but the rate at which new consumers are buying and exploring it would determine the price. Bitcoin adoption increased  880% in one year and developing nations had the highest increase. If Bitcoin would achieve the mark of 1 billion users by 2024 and 4 billion users by 2030 then developing nation must have access to major infrastructures like electricity to drive this growth. Interestingly, growth rate in access to internet is currently high in developing countries like in the Sub-Saharan Africa region with a growth rate of over 90%. This shows that developing countries have a rapidly growing interest in the internet and the related innovations.

The economies of developing nations might be very insignificant when compared with developed nations but it can have a positive impact on the Bitcoin space. And this can be achieved if developing nations have access to electricity. Seeking cheap alternative and innovative means of power such as solar powered phones and computers can be a good starting point. Instead of buying an entire solar system which includes batteries, inverter, panel, etc, an affordable phone or laptop with inbuilt solar system would be ideal. These developing nations might no have the financial power, but they have the population.