Topic: Early adoption stage (Read 5389 times)

It makes for a bad comparison s'all.

This pervasive obsession I'm seeing with Linux adoption not directly increasing some kind of market cap is pedantic about a distinction that is irrelevant to the observation being made.

Doesn't matter if muggles know they are using bitcoin or not, what matters is how much it is used. If you owned a millionth of all the copper in the world, you would be insanely rich. Not from people buying copper in its raw form, but from all the computers and phones and dishwashers people use. I get where you were going with the linux thing, but nobody makes money if I download a copy of Ubuntu.

The scarcity or non-scarcity of software is not the point of the comparison at all.

The point is the nature of the network effects involved in adopting it. The fact that "Bitcoin" exists as a token that has market-based price discovery is incidental to the comparison.

The point of the Linux comparison is that there are viable use cases for mass adoption that do not involve masses of people directly interacting with Bitcoin in any noticable way.

Maybe a more obvious example of this scenario is voice-over-IP telephony. Basically 100% of telephone service is over IP on the backend now. But the public-facing interface is still a phone. Someone who still has regular copper pots service does not have to actually know anything about the nuances of how their phone calls are routed via IP in the background. Bitcoin could turn out the same way where the direct experience of users is through financial instruments and interfaces that resemble what they already do without having to directly interact with the Bitcoin network itself in any significant way.

and that software is not scarce

but i thought about that case too - maybe to put in a bigger picture cryptocurrency/cryptofinance is in early stages.

good point. difference is though that those were never traded on exchanges:

This whole ecosystem might in the end turn out more like Linux adoption than say smartphone adoption.

The ultimate ubiquitous use-case for Bitcoin might end up being the underlying infrastructure of mainstream financial transactions, where consumers interact in exactly the same way as before through existing firms that convert over.

Much the same as how Linux never really caught on for desktop use but completely changed the world on the backend.

In other words, yes, we're still early in the early adoption phase. Assuming that bitcoin really succeeds (which is by no means guaranteed), the bitcoin economy has room to grow thousands of times bigger and more developed than it is today.

everyone using the software; seeing how the "big" businesses in the btc ecosystem are run; where bitcoin can be used; and has any hint of the potential of this technology and the market size of money markets, sees at which stage of adoption this project is

I might have been too conservative about full adoption. According to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/hardware/Smartphone-user-base-to-hit-1-75bn-in-2014-eMarketer/articleshow/29051185.cms , there are 1.75 billion smartphone users. In some sense, BTC is a comparable technology -- so let's say full adoption is actually 1.75 billion people.

If that's the case, the threshold for innovators (forget early adopters, we're talking innovators) is 44 million! With only 2 million users -- holy crap! -- are we still at the beginning of the innovators stage? Anyone?

If it is in fact true about the comparable market caps, then this is one hell of a way to put things into perspective.

LTC has proven value because the market has spoken.
You can predict lower prices and/or try to debate, but LTC currently has value and no one needs to prove it.



Litecoin (currently) allows people to buy 10 LTC for under $180.
Many people would rather be paid a higher number of LTC, than 0.00047 BTC (for example)
The higher prices go, the more value this difference will have.


ps. You are also off-topic; Have a great night  

Litecoin has no advantages to Bitcoin, only differences... The differences may or may not be advantageous depending on the perspective from where you look at them...

The Litecoin blockchain would not be susceptible to potential future problems with SHA-2 encryption. Cracking scrypt encryption is extremely memory intensive...

It's more likely to succeed compared with any of the other alt coins because of the demographic of its supporters.

No. Early adoption ended in January 2013.

Summer 2013 gave one last shot to latecomers in the dip to 50-60's.

But it does nothing better than bitcoin. Other than perhaps requiring different (not necessarily harder) ways to be hacked, it's just a weaker version of bitcoin in all aspects.

Relatively rare, well established, accepted at a growing list of places.
Also a hedge for investors: some possible bugs/attacks on BTC might not work on LTC, especially if they develop new features.

Maybe you can tell me. What makes litecoin worth something?

Good call. Bitcoin has competition...

Bitcoin does have one major advantage; the level of investment in mining infrastructure...

I think it's wise to keep Bitcoin and Litecoin a part of your digital portfolio.

Digital currency is a revolution waiting to happen:
I'm still excited about BTC, but a new leader might rise out of the altcoin mess.
Perhaps someone will "re-brand" the bitcoin blockchain with new wallets and a new name; That is also possible.

If we jumped the chasm last year it would be an incredibly depressing realization...

Personally I think we are still in the earliest stage of adoption. The governments don't even know what Bitcoin is yet. They are scrambling to try and classify it, then regulate the exchanges.

There's no way we have 13% of full adoption yet. Thinking that in this stage just doesn't sound, feel, or seem right.

Regardless of any financial benefits the future might bring, we are all still very early adopters...

The distribution of BTC wealth will shift around as time goes on. The earliest of adopters will take huge profits but it's very unlikely that they will cash out completely...

Bitcoin is a revolution waiting to happen. Most people don't even realize the amount of control exerted over them. People can have control of their wealth once again with Bitcoin; the perceived risk decreases and becomes palatable as time goes on. The longer Bitcoin exists, the more powerful it becomes...

There are so many people living in depressed areas where Bitcoin can greatly benefit users; I don't think Bitcoin has jumped the chasm yet...

We jumped the chasm last year and then slid into the hole.
Now BTC needs to crawl back out of a negative period.

Everyone will rush to the door...
OMG we are thinking like a Ponzi and everyone will rush to the door sell, sell, sell.
^^^
BS
Wall Street is preparing to throw huge money at BTC.
Good luck with your FUD.

The reason the market cap is so small is that bitcoin is not easy to use yet nor it is easy to acquire nor is it easy to manage. Once applications are developed to allow this and people can experience the advantages of digital currency in their everyday lives, bitcoin can move into majority mode.

Is there a user base history (or number of addresses with non-zero balance)?
It could be interesting to see how fast (or slow) it grows, or cross reference with price over time.

- governments are running scared, this threatens them more than the Internet itself could have. Money = power. So they have incentive to get in the action very early.
- lots of people know about Bitcoin, very few own any or actually know how to *use* it.

I personally think what happens now is simply long slow growth as services are built to make it easier to use. Maybe we already had the "dotcom boom" of bitcoin, but now we have a long slow increase that is no longer driven as much by speculation as by actual useful services (I hope).

Freakin' this!

Bitcoin is still incredibly difficult for normal people to use. When a kid can get bitcoin as easy as buying phone credit, THEN things may get interesting.

Dafar - Don't let your current pain cloud your vision. You bought in during the bubble phase, like many others. The same thing happened when folks bought in at $250 and then had to hold down through $50. But within 8 months those same people were in 400% profit.

although we never know for sure, I believe strongly you will get to ride at least 1 great rocket in the next 12 months, that will leave you grateful you bought way way back in 2013.    Hopefully your faith will be repaid and you will be able to tell your story to the next wave of adopters who show up when btc is at $5k.

may it be so...

and yes. Don't leave any significant funds (fiat or BTC) on the exchanges. Very bad idea.

I meant late minority, oops


That's what I'm hoping for! I'm eager to see where we go by 2016, i'll definitely be holding by then as long as my coins don't disappear. I think LTC has a chance of showing me some love... but I should probably get them off BTC-E

Well, if you'd popped back to 2011 and told everyone what was transpiring a piffling 2-2.5 years from then - VCs, hedge funds, professional investors, thousands of merchants, governments sitting up and taking notice, exchanges on the horizon which might actually not steal your money - people would think you were utterly deranged.

The combo of all that weight, all the beatings Bitcoin has taken and it's still growing and yet only a few tens or hundreds of thousands own a complete coin makes right now a pretty miraculous time to buy in.

I presumed it would be a multi-year deal. That's fine with me. There'll be many, many more lulls, scares and explosions. In 2016 you'll be a veteran who's seen it all and thrived.

Not sure if you're aware of what you're stating, but late majority would actually mean that Bitcoin almost reached its maximum user base, which I really don't think is the case.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations , the first 2.5% of adopters are "innovators" and the next 13.5% are "early adopters".

According to this https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/distribution-of-bitcoin-wealth-by-owner-316297 , 2 million people are holding BTC.

The big uncertainty is how many people will hold BTC at "full adoption". The world population is 7 billion people. If, at "full adoption", 0.1% have BTC, that's 7 million people. 7 million * 16% = 1.1 million, which means we are already past the "early adopters" stage.

However, if at "full adoption", 0.2% will have BTC, that's 14 million people. 14 million * 16% = 2.2 million, meaning we are near the end of the "early adopters" stage.

All of these numbers are guesstimates, but I think they give you a general sense of where we are. I personally think we are near the end of "early adopters". Maybe the upcoming bubble will be the end.

I am. I'm down 90% on some of my Alt coin investments (on a significant amount of money), down nearly 40% on LTC, just barely up on BTC since I joined last Sept/Oct. I'm still a believer of bitcoin, but I'm going to remain pessimistic on my financial situation until I see the dough. I have a strong superstitious theory that I am just unlucky when it comes to money and investing (which has been proven over and over again), so I have doubts that I will be fortunate enough to ride another price explosion. It must be an amazing feeling. I live vicariously though you guys who have experienced that.

It all depends on the adoption-saturation level.  

If growth stops now, new users are laggards.  

If eventually 10% of the population become bitcoin users (assuming < 0.1% currently have), then current bitcoin adoption is at less than 1% of the saturation level.  This would mean that new users are innovators (or earlier).  

This is the case with all technology, by the way.  You can only tell if you were an innovator or a laggard (or somewhere in between) with the benefit of hindsight!

You appear to be a bit dispirited today. 2009-2012 types are sub micro stealth adopters.

I've no idea about orders of magnitude higher, but when one ATM machine arriving in an entire country still gets people excited I think we can assume it's still unbelievably early days.

There's a universe of difference between a regular person hearing the word Bitcoin, then actually vaguely figuring out what it is, then deciding it's worth taking the plunge, then creating a wallet and buying some or being paid some. That might be a process of several years for most.

I'll state it again - if you're posting on here you're so attuned to Bitcoin that it's very hard to conceive of what the non-infected world makes of it. It's still a drip in a swirling ocean.

I would say we are early adopters. People who bought before mid-2013 are innovators IMHO. We are definitely not in the early majority yet.

We are not early adopters... people who bought in at 2011 and 2012 might be... but not us. We are more like late minority


Everyone saying we are early adopters are hoping for another 10x-100x profits... which will most likely not happen. I want it to happen more than anything else but I'm just being realistic. Good luck getting to $1T market cap with all the FUD, lack of security, regulation and overall understanding of what the hell bitcoin is. Maybe in 10 years... but I so wish I was an early adopter and got in last year or 2 years ago. Your only hope of ever seeing those kinds of profits again is through a time machine.

awareness  != adoption

also do you see legislators getting themselves in a bundle over angry birds. Nope.

BTC tech, can actually take away a massive amount of state power, and the fact they have make announcements on it says everything. I mean all of the large govt financials had to take drastic action to stop the bitcoin blackhole from sucking every last bit of value from the RMB.

Alot of people have hears about BTC now sure, vaugley....but very very few own it. Even fewer are not Hodling.

You are seeing the smallest tip of ice berg right now and the modern state is the titanic.

However, in order for the masses to adopt Bitcoin:

#1 it needs to be much easier to use

#2 submultiples have to be used: people want to buy whole amounts of things, not tiny fractions. One of the things that kept me from buying Bitcoin was the fact that I thought only whole coins could be bought. And I'm sure many people who'd like to jump in have the same misbelief!

Will it ever be easy to use?


I think bitcoin will stabilize on lower price level in future, there might be one or two bubles on the way, but generally it's most likely to end up as nerd-currency with a few use cases...

My opinion is that we've left the very early phase and are now early adopters. In the coming months the price will reach low $x,xxx and the massive media coverage will help bring a lot of the public in.

I always use myself as a very good metrics: I first heard about Bitcoin in early 2013 and everytime I read an article about Bitcoin I thought you people were just a bunch of nerds who needed to get a life. As soon as I started reading about price increases, I started to convince myself it was just a bubble bound to burst. All this until last december when Bitcoin reached ATH and I started to slowly change my opinion: "perhaps the bubble won't burst" -> "it's possible that it isn't a bubble at all" -> "I could give it a try" -> "it's an opportunity". So, on early January I decided to finally signup for an account at BitcoinTalk.org and spent the whole night reading (I went to bed at 5:30 AM). Now, 2.5 months later and totally on the other side of the fence, I like to call myself a proud HODLER and make fun of those who disregard Bitcoin as a "stupid tulip-like bubble".

Lololololol

2011 just called and they want that image back (and their $2 Bitcoins).

we will be looking back at this time and wishing we were buying $600 btc hand over fist....

Pessimist 

Well what's the difference with paper fiat? Btw all fiat is already rotting due to inflation.
BTC wallets require maintenance so HODL doesn't mean you don't reprint your paper wallet or put your data on new thumb drives.

uhh,  and i thought is was other way around:




 

People who think Bitcoin is nearly maxed out at $8 billion market share are either bad at economics, math, history, or all of them.  

Well we are at mining stage. I wouldn't use financial terminology for it since it is impossible to compare bitcoin to anything else (even though many people think it is ponzi, securities, traditional currency)

Considering that bitcoin is all but unusable, the mind boggles to consider what the value will be once it is easy to use for any fit purpose.

+1 it's still very much early days, like 1997 for  the internet. If we take that standard adoption curve, less than 0.1% of people have bitcoins, so we are completely at the start. One of the things which interests me is how bitcoin solves counterparty risk problems in international banking. I think it's likely that bitcoin will be used for early experiments that try to solve this before being replaced by something more mature a few years later. I also think that it will replace a lot of online credit card transactions and offshore banking shenanigans.

That said, a vaguely stable price, or a mature futures and options market (which will lead to that), needs to be in place before all of that starts to happen. A the moment people are slowly realising what cryptocurrencies are and what they might lead to. The strange thing is you get to own a percentage of the future global money supply now, before most people realise that's what it is. Maybe bitcoin falls apart before then, but cryptocurrencies are here to stay. If MtGox is anything to go by, there will be plently of warning before bitcoin is replaced, if one is paying attention.

Saying that people losing coins at exchanges or whatever is a reason why bitcoin won't work is like saying "my friend had a computer virus, computers will never take off" -  in 1990. But how low will bitcoin go on the way there? Very low, perhaps, place your bets if you like.

Wrong thinking on all levels. I'm sorry. You are confused and sad and obviously should not be invested in bitcoin. If you are concerned about $100 fluctuations in price over a couple of months, you do not have what it takes to ride this dragon. I'm shocked that you put so much cash into something you obviously do not understand or appreciate. Get out as soon as you can. Really. Really.

...for the rest of you who are actually interested...here is a pretty picture...(sorry for the giant size - did not have time to format )





I suspect we are just moving out of innovators phase and into early adopters - on this chart. This year 2014 & 2015 will be the early adopter years. There is often a "gap" in the tech adoption in this phase - before the user interfaces get worked and made human friendly and a killer app or two shows up. This gap can sometimes lead to widespread doubts about the survival of the tech and a temp collapse in investment.



I believe we will blow through that gap because we have so many talented & passionate people on the case.  However I don't think we will hit early majority until mid to late 2015.

I will never get why people argue by the price of 1 Bitcoin - have you seen the market cap? It is less than 8Billion, I think that is less than M1 of Mazedonia....

It's super early. The crazy thing about Bitcoin is that the higher its value is, the more useful it is. I always thought it was insane that a year or two ago there were institutional investors who said "it's too early to buy into Bitcoin, we're going to wait for it to get bigger"... that seems like the worst investment strategy possible, but there you have it. The last "investors" to come to the table will be central banks (20 years from now), who will want to have Bitcoin reserves, once it is "big enough."

I'm not too sure anyone who is registered and posting on here has the objectivity to nail the stage of adoption we're at. Their Bitcoin radar is so finely tuned that it can't pick up the wider world.

Here is my warped opinion - early as shit.

Those scenarios already exist. More will come, and far, far more people than now will become aware of them. The timing wasn't coincidental.

It would not be early if you look at it on a logarithmic chart; it would already be most of the way to the top, given that bitcoin has already risen x1,000,000

more like, wait 20 years and open your wallet to find hard drive has crashed, pc has been hacked and long stolen, USB thumb drive is corrupted, paper wallet damaged in fire/water/bleached by sunlight/eaten by mice/disintegrated by time, etc.

We might be holding a $1 Coca Cola or Microsoft share for all we know or maybe a dot-com bubble stock that crashes.

HODL and see!! In 20 years you will be filthy rich or just as poor

ok, but ...

having gone 1 mile out of 20 or even 1 out of 50 miles would still be kinda early.

Half of the bitcoins that will ever exist, have been mined in the last 5 years, the other half will be mined in about 120 years.
I'll let you decide if you're early or late...

Good assessment, I agree. I think the "early adopter" line is basically a sales pitch used by those who are already invested in bitcoin and have interest in seeing it rise further. It's used around here so often now that I find it concerning. If we look back in 2010 I doubt we'd see too many posts from those guys claiming that they were all "early adopters". They really did find bitcoin early, and to them it was interesting and they hoped for the best, that's all.

The fact that we use it so often now leads me to believe that we're reaching a saturation point. I do believe the price will go up some more, but we're never going to hit ridiculous figures like 10,000 USD or more without real life case scenarios for why people need bitcoin. now it's still a speculative intsrument, with some small niche utilities. that will need to change.

- Governments are writing legislation about and holding publicized meetings about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is already starting to collide with and meet resistence from the establishment.
- If you go into a room at least a few people know about bitcoin.
- There are several news articles every day about bitcoin.
- My Facebook friends are now into Bitcoin.
- Bitcoin is often on the front page of Yahoo Business/Finance and other news pages, and often on NPR.
- Bitcoin exchanges are getting ready to launch in wall street.
- Tens/Hundred of thousands of businesses have already adopted Bitcoin, including major mainstream online retailers.

The "early" phase is over. This might not be the "final" phase but I don't think it's the early phase because there is such a large awareness and adoption already.

The reason the market cap is so small is because people have CHOSEN not to use it. We are not even guaranteed that bitcoin is "the future of money" so your logic of the relation of bitcoin's market cap to angry birds and to some potential market cap of quadrillions of dollars is based on a false premise. Maybe the realistic future of bitcoin is only to reach the market cap of Google or Facebook, in which case we've already realized 1/50 - 1/20 of it.  Or maybe the fair market cap of Bitcoin is the market cap of Western Union, which it's already at.

my answer is check out rovio. it has a market cap in the same range as bitcoin.

it is the company that does angry birds. that´s all they do. the future of money has the same market cap as a several year old single game app. sounds pretty early to me.... 

Early adoption phase was single maybe double digits. Like with anything, the more people know about it and the more mainstream it goes, the less profit you can get out of it.

Not sure what really early adopters think about btc? Are they still in? Or sold and enjoy the money or invested in something else the public did not heared about it.

And bitcoin @100.000$ is so absurd if we can't even pass 600. Maybe 100.000$ when you can buy an lollipop with that amount of dollar in next future.

And yeah I'm very pissed that i bought @685 and can't pay out at the moment without an loss of 10k

In a sense, anyone who buys before bitcoin reaches its final, stable price (somewhere north of $100k) could be considered "early". Certainly if we ask the next generation, should it survive that long. All depends on perspective.

I simply saw that you were a new user with a 9 post history expressing doubt. I'm free to express my opinion too--I get tired of posts that rehash the same argument over and over again. It's nothing personal, but this place is overrun with trolls and skeptics who delight in spreading FUD and Schadenfreude at every opportunity.

What you just described is called market capitulation, not necessarily the end of bitcoin.

It is interesting what you say, especially that in my game I will be accepting bitcoins exclusively and no one will convince me to use 3rd party companies like paypal or other banks. You are talking from speculative point of view and I'm from practical and I have no doubt bitcoin will succeed.

Last year called, they want their main argument back.

Yes. Be prepared to be called a sinister "early adopter".  

It's like the internet. The day your Mom sent you a FB friend request it was all over. Wait until she sends you BTC to pay for collage textbooks, then we are mainstream.

yes I think we are, but I also feel like we might always be in the "early adopter" stage, kind of how Google Glass users will always be early adopters.

Yes. Very early.

Would you say we are in early adoption stage?