Why we still haven't seen true Bitcoin adoption

A lot of folks look at adoption through the lens of retail holding and price speculation. When discussions pop up about adoption, you often hear stuff like "why aren’t people using Bitcoin to grab things like Coca-Cola?" The proper comeback is, "why aren’t people using it just to hold instead of buying Coca-Cola?" But real adoption is actually spotted in corporate treasuries, trade settlements, collateral markets, and energy transactions. The real measure of Bitcoin’s adoption isn’t just how many folks own it. It’s really about how much global capital depends on Bitcoin being around. A sovereign fund putting 10% into Bitcoin might have way more impact than 10 million retail investors each buying $100 worth. When institutional adoption kicks in, it’s gonna change everything. Bitcoin today kind of gives off vibes similar to the internet back in the early ’90s.

I don't entirely agree. How many people own and use it is better than how much global capital is dependent on it. Adoption is not how many companies have a bitcoin reserve, but how many people actually use it. 2 companies can hold more bitcoin than 5000 people own joined together, and while those two companies may have more influence in the market than those 5000 people, those 5000 people are the actual adoption. Adoption to me is how I can use my bitcoin anywhere I am, not how many companies now have reserves. While it would be good for Bitcoin to be used in trade settlements and all, which is wishful thinking, if we're being realistic, then if that is what is considered adoption, then Bitcoin was not made to be an alternative monetary system for even the common man, because only a small percentage of people have access to the collateral markets and energy settlements. I would prefer if my favourite online store would accept Bitcoin as payment for the gadgets and household items I order, rather than for my country to have a Bitcoin reserve. It would change the game in the sense that their high demand will make the price to increase, but it would not help in adoption.

The Bitcoin adoption is contributed by many people and entities as individual developers, users, retail business to big corporations. It's not right to only consider institutions as entities that can bring adoption to Bitcoin because they're only part of the Bitcoin community. The real adoption for Bitcoin actually started since 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Bitcoin Genesis block and there were people like Hal Finney who run "Bitcoin", and [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0]Laszlo bought pizzas[/url] with bitcoins. Bitcoin adoption rate is actually much stronger and faster than the Internet adoption. The adoption curve of Bitcoin is faster than any other global infrastructure rollout before it.

You're right about that. Bitcoin is still in its early days. Just like the Internet. Real adoption is already happening behind the scenes. Institutions are buying, governments are holding, while banks are beginning to offer BTC financial services to their customers. Within 10-20 years from now, Bitcoin will become so mainstream, it will be nearly everywhere. Like almost every merchant, business, or retailer accepting it as payment method. At the same time, governments will have "Bitcoin Reserves" of their own. The demand and price will certainly be a lot higher by then. Better buy some "cheap" BTC before it's too late.

I've heard this same argument 5 years ago, maybe even older than that. The argument changes from one person to another, but they're essentially arguing that Bitcoin is still in early days. Others take another extreme, saying that the top is near and we'll plateau sooner or later. I think discussing this stuff quite often makes me a bit tired of this topic. Whether this person or that person is right, what matters is how many sats I have on my bag (if I'm concerned about wealth). At the end of the day we can only enjoy what we have. So I simply keep DCAing whether the market is bullish or weak.

Recently I have started hearing the close to the top narrative. I kept wondering how they actually know where the top will be since bitcoin is simply volatile in nature. Bitcoin price keeps going up and as well as coming down, so why would someone lay an overall claim that the top is near? But whatever propaganda they came up with, if you are DCAing, you shouldn't be concerned because you will definitely be winning on the long run. Then industry is moved by rumors and that is the reason rumours must be flying everytime. So, we should learn to deal with the rumours. To me, bitcoin global adoption has really happened, I don't know which curve you are looking for again.

This is all false and you have twisted the meaning of adoption into something that is very far from the truth. I will explain with a scenario comparison and you will see how it is ridiculous. Tell me which one is more real adoption of the two. Let's say that there are trading cards called Shitcoin. Scenario 1, billionaire invests $10 billion and buys all the Shitcoin cards. Nobody owns any cards besides him.Scenario 2, normal people invest a total of $10 million and buy many Shitcoin cards. Thousands or tens of thousands of people own the cards. In which case is the adoption more real, in the first one or in the second one? The truth of the matter is that the quantity of money has nothing to do with real adoption, it is part of the secondary factors that you can consider. Bitcoin's real adoption is defined by the number of people who have it. Otherwise if you define it as the quantity of money that is invested in it, then you could say the best case is China and the USA each buying 10% of Bitcoin and having a reserve and that Bitcoin is widely adopted then. This would be good for the price, but that would not be a sign of real adoption. Bitcoin is adopted by a very low percentage of people, so it is in its infancy and resembles easily use internet. What does this mean for the price and future price performance can be discussed, but it does not change the fact that we are there. What this comparison falsely does is imply that Bitcoin will be adopted by as many people as the internet eventually did, but that implication is dishonest. There is nothing that guarantees that. The correct way to phrase it would be maybe to say that in terms of the level of adoption that Bitcoin resembles the early days of the internet, but that does not mean it will be adopted by everyone eventually.

There are many people who think Bitcoin is a scam that is why Bitcoin is not implemented everywhere but those who know about Bitcoin are accepting Bitcoin as a national currency. In that case, Salvador. They keep a lot of Bitcoin in reserve for their country for inflation protection and financial security.

The earlier we understand that Bitcoin actually do not need every person in the world to own it for adoption to grow, the better for us. Most of us doesn't own shares in the companies that run the internet yet we heavily depend on the internet in our day to day activities, that's similar to Bitcoin's adoption. If big global corporations and financial institutions are now heavily relying on Bitcoin as a reserve asset or collateral, don't you think it does have a better economic impart than when millions of people across the globe are Bitcoin holders? The real adoption shouldn't be measured by how many people own Bitcoin but how Bitcoin has increasingly become very difficult for the financial systems to ignore.

Bitcoin was meant to be used as currency, I mean the real use case not end up in the treasury of the government or in the wallet of a rich guy, the real adoption is when you pay for your fuel in bitcoin or pay for your meal in a restaurant and such. So yeah, we are far away in the early days of bitcoin adoption and all we have to make sure is that you got enough bitcoin when the whole world is chasing for it.

You are wrong here bro because a sovereign wealth fund putting $10B secures the asset financially but 10 million retail users running nodes or holding their own private keys and using btc as parallel banking system secures the network politically and ideologically. You can't just say money is all that matters. It was not the money that took btc here from the start. It was those people who believed in it and stayed connected and contributed to the network. BTC has provided that settlement network that most think they don't need right now but it is like an advanced technology. Like internet in the 1990s could not stream 4k videos because there was no such infrastructure. In the same way layer 1 of btc is a settlement network. If you expect to buy coffee on layer 1 then bro you are misunderstanding the design. You need to use L2 of btc like LN.

@Hamza2424 - thats it, its easy to overlook all the other aspects which goes into Bitcoin adoption, it isnt all about corporate and institutional investment. I would even go so far as to say not everyone is enamoured with corporate and institutional investment getting anywhere near Bitcoin. Bitcoin adoption will grow organically without these vulture's getting involved. Bitcoin adoption is about more and more individual people realising there is an alternative to the FIAT financial and banking system and how governments are abusing everyones FIAT money. With this type of adoption it means more development happens, more nodes are being run and more transactions taking place.

The change in the focal point of adoption to institutions give a more significant legitimacy of future sustainability of digital assets. Sustained interests of big organizations make the network to be sustainable without the need of direct and active contribution of all the individuals. The most practical indicator of future prosperity of the digital asset ecosystem is the integration of a financial infrastructure.

The change will be effective when the low bottom of the community gets used to the system. In my view 10 million users buying $100 will be make the market stronger than the corporate involvement. People just use and try to be the effective support system in the development. The corporate always try to manipulate and benefit out of it, which is the common practice. It is like a country governed by a government. The government will be supported by the corporate with mutual benefits, but the common people run the government expecting benefits, whether they benefited or not is secondary.

We can also agree that the adoption scalability is measured by enthusiasts who are using bitcoin at their pleases whether for using to pay or receive payments for any kind of services. The real adoption processes are those who are in contrasts with the currency. Speculations is very enlightening on this view because that as well erupts avenues to spread the awareness of bitcoin.

That is true. However, this is an unfair comparison. The internet emerged in a very early stage, lacking infrastructure and awareness, and everything had to be built from scratch. Meanwhile, Bitcoin emerged in an era when the internet was already widespread, inheriting the entire digital infrastructure that had been built decades earlier. Saying that Bitcoin has been adopted faster than the Internet is like comparing a kid sprinting on a paved highway to a pioneer hacking through the jungle to build the road in the first place.

But I do feel like while institutional is important to happen, I'm not exactly sure that retail has to be so discounted so easily. History has also demonstrated that technologies aren't really that important until regular people see value in using them and not merely when big institutions invest in them. The market could be affected if a sovereign fund had an interest in purchasing Bitcoin but millions of people could be saving, transacting, and securing their wealth through Bitcoin as well, which could make the market much stronger. If the driving force of adoption is institutional then it can be another asset that can be owned by big players and is not equally accessible for all as a financial instrument. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government and the companies were first to invest in the internet, but unfortunately it hasn't changed the world. It changed the world because it was ordinary people who did. When both institutions and individuals rely on Bitcoin  in the long run only real strength will be found.

I've also seen few of similar discussion here in this forum where arguments states about bitcoin having to reach a top that'll be a resistance and can't be surpassed again, I've also been concerned asking those geeks about when is that going to happen but no definite answer has been given so I also feel exhausted in the conversations. The output of this kinds of rumour has mislead many enthusiastics and had them on hold to buy bitcoin as they're misinterpreted that bitcoin won't be profitable in the longer time. Perhaps if they've realized that bitcoin adoption is still at its early stages, then they'd understand the true value of bitcoin with the concept of portraying digital gold in regards to its limited supplies and adoption rate of populations and as well the institutional interests.

People inside and outside the market really want to speculate how the market will move next and ignore a fact that it's impossible to make accurate speculations from time to time, from bull market to bear market. They can easily make inaccurate speculations in both bear market and bull market because they don't control the market, so the market manipulation is from someone else, while surely market makers never disclose what they plan for their market manipulations. Like in Bull market, people always lift their target price up until the bull market finished a quite long time, and they stuck in a bear market with lower prices. Similarly in Bear market, people will move their target buying price down lower and lower, until the bear market completes and price already moved far away from bottom price area. In Bitcoin history, with its very strong growth, many price bands become "Never look back" ones. https://charts.bitbo.io/never-look-back-price/

I guess in ur response, u intended to say gold and not hold right. Anyways, what I want to say is, I don't think this is the right response though. Gold is government approved, more like a legal tender, whereas, Bitcoin is owned by d people. When u said this: It is all that in d first paragraph, and it also depends on how many people owns it. When big institution and corporate treasuries holds Bitcoin, they hold in a very large amount, and because most are in for d profit, they can dump anytime, or collapse, and it can greatly affect the price. When individuals hodl, that is truly owning and adopting Bitcoin, it is not about making profit then, but about utility, individual may hold it for different reasons and purposes, ranging from as security assets to cross border transactions with less fee compared to banks and much more, that I think is real adoption. Although, these: Will strengthen the ecosystem of Bitcoin, in fact, it can help in adoption, because people who believe in these platforms will see how much they are investing in Bitcoin, thus driving the price high, they will believe much more in Bitcoin and will want to adopt it, but the real adoption is in the number of single individual hodling or owning Bitcoin.