Crypto Winter Is Here, But Public Interest Isn’t Going Anywhere — Lite.IM and ZTX Will Be There For the New Adopters.
If you spend enough time reading cryptocurrency related news articles and tweets, you might think the whole movement was on its way out, that the Bitcoin bubble had finally popped.
No doubt, the cryptocurrency market has taken a serious beating over the past year, with the bear trend reaching new lows this month, earning the current period the dreary moniker of “Crypto Winter”. But is currency price really the biggest indicator of the blockchain industry’s health?
Despite the more than 80% decrease in the price of Bitcoin since mid-December 2017 to mid-December 2018, there are plenty of statistics showing user interest and adoption is actually holding strong if not increasing through the bear market.
The good news
According to one hedge fund’s cryptocurrency adoption index, we’re actually in the middle of an upward trend in usage. “The benchmark, based on more than 10 data points including the number of active crypto wallets, transaction volumes, computing power, web searches for bitcoin terms, and industry hirings, shows bitcoin and crypto adoption is on an upward trajectory,” Forbes recently reported.
Likewise, a recent study from the University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance showed that the onboarding of new users into the cryptocurrency space almost doubled in 2018, from 18 million to 35 million verified users.
Google Trends recently released their list of trending searches in 2018, and Bitcoin was at the top of the rankings for searches in a number of countries, including the number one search for the “What is…” category in the US, Australia, and the UK; the number two search in the tech category in Canada; and the number 2 search in the “excitement” category in Switzerland.
But it’s not just Bitcoin that’s experiencing a significant staying power in interest and adoption through Crypto Winter, Ethereum too, despite a staggering 87% drop in the price of ETH over the past year, is seeing strong adoption fundamentals.
According to a report recently released by ConsenSys, the Ethereum software powerhouse, the number of ETH wallets is steadily growing, as is the amount of time those wallets remain active. Smart contract deployment is also rising significantly, increasing from 200k to an impressive 1.5 million deployments per month from June to November. Ethereum Internet chatter has also increased, with Reddit’s r/ethereum community doubling from 176k in December 2017 to 418k in December 2018.
Still not convinced cryptocurrency adoption is growing? Check out this impressive list of positive adoption signs from Hacker Noon, which includes adoption signals by everything from Starbucks to Nasdaq to the state of Ohio and struggling economies like Venezuela, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.
Lite.IM and ZTX — paving the way for increased adoption
The ultimate point is, don’t believe the gloom and doom. It may take some time for bull conditions to return, but make no mistake, the space is growing, both in terms of adoption and innovation.
For our part, we continue to work hard every day to build the tools and platforms that will be there to welcome the next wave of cryptocurrency adopters, including most importantly Lite.IM and ZTX, both of which are fundamentally designed to help facilitate adoption.
While Lite.IM is making it easier than ever to onboard new users and get them transacting and managing cryptocurrency in the simplest way possible, ZTX is set to fuel a robust new blockchain ecosystem aimed at mass adoption.
When Crypto Winter thaws and a new Crypto Spring begins, we will be there with meaningful, valuable solutions for crypto veterans and crypto newbies alike.
Learn more about ZTX and how it relates to adoption in Part 1 and Part 2 of our article series ZTX Explained.
You can use ZTX with both the Zulu Republic wallet and Lite.IM (via Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and SMS).
