coinbase has 2.7 million KYC verified clients and 4.2 million accounts and they fall outside the jurisdiction of the largest bitcoin userbase. A conservative estimate would be 4-5 million minimum.
https://www.coinbase.com/aboutThose are *registered* not *active* users. Coinbase (and others like them) are always ambiguous when they quote those numbers. A user may register just out of curiosity, perhaps make one or two small transactions and then give up on bitcoin.
If Coinbase's active users were really growing, they would not need to run referral campaigns that paid $25 ($75 at some point) for referral of a new user who made a $100 payment through them (which would have generated $2 of revenue).
Moreover, that count must include (as you say) people who use only "off-chain bitcoin" -- deposit dollars at Coinbase, buy some bitcoin, only to spend them at a Coinbase-affiliated merchant who gets dollars from Coinbase. Sorry, but those are not at all "bitcoin users". Bitcoin was about replacing dollars and getting rid of trusted intermediaries, remeber? If youdon't issue transactions for the blockchain, you are not using bitcoin.
Bitcoin is to "Coinbase bitcoin" like steak is to steak-flavored corn chips.
If you consider a "bitcoiner" as actively using it almost daily than I will take half a million users and suggest that is really healthy. All those passive users who I gifted 30-50 dollars through coinbase , now have hundreds of dollars worth btc , will soon become active again.
No , this is unhealthy and violent rise... I would be happier with 1-2% steady gains a day for the next year
The rapid rise in 2013 was unhealthy and violent as well. Look how that turned out for the most of us.
Many people that purchased near the peak were and are still disappointing and sold at a loss because they didn't follow advice from people like me which discourage speculation and focus on short term utility and insist if they do speculate that they are in it for the longterm and do their research first. Thousands sold at a loss, and turned their back on bitcoin and won't be returning for many years.
