Blockchain and crypto by the numbers: interest is high, adoption low
Find yourself explaining blockchain and cryptocurrency all the time? Those of us working for a while in the space forget how new this still is for most people. We shouldn’t be surprised. According to one analyst, less than two years ago fewer than 500,000 people worldwide owned one Bitcoin.
Many more certainly owned fractional amounts, but the total number worldwide that same year was judged to be only around three to six million. Of course, it’s impossible to know for certain. For instance, Satoshi Nakamoto — the creator or creators of Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency — owned the largest store of cryptocurrency but may have spread it across thousands of different accounts (or wallet addresses, to use the language of the industry). In 2019, more than 40 million wallets had been created.
COMPANIES SPENDING BIG TIME
Meanwhile, investment in the technology is growing exponentially. Ninety percent of banks in the U.S. and Europe are reportedly investing in the sector, recognizing how its ability to automate processes and save time and money on human resources could lower costs by 30%.
Banks are far from alone. Businesses will spend close to $3 billion in 2019, up around 90% in just a year according to CBInsights. The international Data Corp. says that will grow 400% by 2022. In another study, close to 85% of business executives said their companies today were investing in the technology.
Job search in the sector increases when Bitcoin prices rise, but if you are someone with blockchain skills, you are in high demand today. Recruiting companies saw job postings that mention blockchain jump in 2019 by over 500% in just one year. Thousands of vacancies exist at some of the largest corporations alone. As regulators begin actively ramping up their efforts to understand the field and promulgate policy, lawyers are getting hired right and left.
WIDE VARIETY OF JOBS BEING CREATED
Aside from the big corporations looking to speed up and secure their current businesses, others are innovating. Among the projects getting funded? Healthcare is seeing big jumps. Messaging apps are raising money to launch payment functions, and other platforms are looking into how to use blockchain to preserve and manage identity as you travel around the internet. Other startups are looking at ways to still give advertisers the ability to target ads to consumers without generating massive amounts of centrally stored data for companies like Facebook and Google. And devices linked to the Internet of Things (IoT) will need to be blockchain enabled to function.
A platform like Aeryus, which delivers smart receipts for transactions, can turn those receipts into instruments that allow artists of all types to guard their intellectual property, or companies that market those works (like music publishers, theatres, and movie studios) the ability to control piracy, counterfeiting, and scalping.
But let’s go back to those original numbers, of people actually using alternative currencies or current blockchain business functions. Those numbers are still tiny compared to how business is investing and moving the industry forward.
ADOPTION FOLLOWS NEED
And there are numbers as to why they are not paying much attention yet. When small business owners are asked in surveys about their interest in blockchain, many respondents say they think it is hard to use. Others point to the long delays for processing transactions on small purchases because the reward is based on a percentage of the transaction and few miners want to bother for the small fee they would earn. Does a shop owner want to risk not seeing payment and let you leave the store while the transaction lags? Or do you want to stand at the cash register for days while your sandwich gets stale? Neither is likely.
But the biggest reason people haven’t invested time or energy in understanding it is that they simply don’t need it. They live in a world where their paychecks are predictable and the banks work well. Others answer that they believe it is risky, or too complicated to understand.
In fact, reasons for not getting involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency are very similar to how people responded at the dawn of the desktop computer industry, when those machines seemed too complicated and most felt they were unnecessary. Things are still slow, but get ready for the avalanche in adoption.
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