Just How Fast Is Bitcoin Really Growing?
We seem to hear about it all the time, but what do the numbers say?
It’s been well over 11 years since Bitcoin — an entirely new financial concept — was released into the public domain. There’s no question it’s grown substantially since then, but is it growing as fast as those of us who are “in the industry” might think it is?
Recently, Bitcoin reached another milestone. Not in price this time, but in the number of wallets created, which surpassed 50 million on June 12, 2020, according to data taken from the blockchain. (update November 2020: The Third Global Benchmarking study by Cambridge University in September 2020 now puts this figure at 100 million)
That seems like a lot at first, but if we add some context, that view may change. Using current figures, for example, this means that 0.64% of the world’s population is using Bitcoin. Or, to put it another way, 99.36% of the world’s population isn’t.
In fact, because most people have more than one address, we can safely conclude that the real percentage is far lower. To hazard an educated guess based on previous analytic reports by companies such as Chainalysis, known trends, and a bit of good old fashioned gut feel, the real percentage is probably more like 0.23%.
