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Bitcoin surpassed 100 million users in September 2020. This is an estimate since we cannot know the exact number of users of Bitcoin which is a pseudonymous network. We can only know the number of addresses used on the network.
The number of users on the network must therefore be estimated. The consensus was that 100 million users would be reached by that date. A year later, the number of users exceeded 130 million.
So Bitcoin continues to grow in popularity with the general public. What has been accomplished since January 3, 2009, and the launch of Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto is exceptional, but there is still a long way to go for the mass adoption of Bitcoin. That's what makes the future so exciting if you're involved in the Bitcoin world.
Some say Bitcoin is too complicated for mass adoption
Among the doubts, I frequently hear is that the Bitcoin system is too complex. Thus, some ask the following question:
“Is Bitcoin Too Complicated for Mass Adoption?”
It's no coincidence that this question comes up frequently. I have to say that Bitcoiners, including myself, have a big responsibility here. Indeed, it was the technical side of Bitcoin that first attracted me in 2014. It was Satoshi Nakamoto's unique combination of technologies to create the Bitcoin protocol that made me want to dig into the subject.
It was only much later that the monetary revolution of Bitcoin and the freedom that its system gives you jumped out at me.
So I tended to talk initially about technical topics: Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) which are at the heart of the private/public key system used by Bitcoin, cryptographic hash functions with the SHA-256 algorithm, the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm at the heart of Bitcoin's consensus mechanism, the P2P architecture of the Bitcoin network, ...
I am a developer. All these topics are very interesting to me. So my enthusiasm may have confused the general public to whom I tried to talk about Bitcoin initially. It was only much later that I realized that this approach was not the right one.
The general public has no interest in knowing that Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm or the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).
In the mid-90s, many thought that the Internet would only be a “passing fad”
In 1997, the Internet had about 130 million users, roughly the same number as Bitcoin today. The excitement among developers must have been immense. They had to talk about the TCP/IP layer, the HTTP protocol, the many methods of this protocol like GET, HEAD, POST, ...
In short, a whole bunch of technical topics that are exciting for technical people, but off-putting for the general public. After hearing this, most people thought that the Internet would never succeed in being massively adopted worldwide because it was too complicated.
Remember this article from Newsweek in 1995:
Clifford Stoll said that the Internet would not be nirvana and was just a passing fad. One can say that he was not very visionary for someone who worked in the computer world since the beginning of the '80s, in addition to being a recognized American astronomer. Don't blame him any more than that, since even Bill Gates, who was the founder of Microsoft and knew a lot about technology, had said such an incongruous statement:
“The internet is just a passing fad.”
To err is human as they say. When we see the incredible growth of the Internet since 1997, we can say that those who doubted the success of the Internet at the time were short-sighted:
Over 60% of the world's population now has access to the Internet. The Internet has changed our lives for the better. Even though the Internet was a complicated technology for the general public to master, it has been massively adopted.
The Internet has been massively adopted for the same reason that Bitcoin will be massively adopted in the future
So you have to ask yourself the following question:
Why has the Internet been massively adopted worldwide when its technology was complex for the general public?
The reason is simple, and it is the reason that Bitcoin will also be adopted en masse in the future. The Internet was making life easier for its users. The Internet was making life better for its users. It is no more complicated than that. People who use the Internet don't care about the HTTP protocol or the GET and POST methods.
The only thing the general public cares about is enjoying what the Internet brings to their daily lives.
With Bitcoin, it will be the same. Bitcoin is an incredible new monetary system that gives you power over your money in a way you've never had before. It is a decentralized payment system owned by its users that will be usable on a large scale for daily payments thanks to a layer-2 solution that is the Lightning Network.
Bitcoin will protect you from monetary inflation by becoming the reference store of value in place of gold in a world where everything will become digital
That's all that will be of interest to the general public in the months and years to come when Bitcoin is widely adopted. The good thing about reading this is that you are aware of this opportunity before the vast majority of the world's inhabitants. Imagine if you could have invested in Internet companies in 1997 and then been patient for the long term.
You would be a multi-millionaire today. With Bitcoin, that's what you can get, plus the freedom to live your life on your own terms
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