An analyst has explained when Bitcoin could grow large enough to rival even the US Dollar (USD) based on its historical adoption curve.
Bitcoin Needs To Grow Its Adoption This Much To Challenge The USD
In a new post on X, analyst Willy Woo has discussed what the expectation around the original cryptocurrency has been building up to in financial circles recently.
“The financial world now believes Bitcoin is a fast emerging asset class,” says Woo. At present, though, the coin only has a total market cap of around $1.2 trillion, while the analyst notes that asset classes are generally valued in “units of tens of trillion.”
Woo thinks that this expectation around BTC means the financial world believes three things: BTC would grow at least ten times from here (to breach the $10 trillion market cap mark), rival the USD in size, and become a reserve asset.
But when will these expectations come to fruition? To make an estimation, the analyst refers to cryptocurrency’s “adoption” curve. Below is the chart shared by Woo that compares BTC’s adoption against that of the internet.
Looks like BTC has seen adoption from 4.7% of the world's population so far | Source: @woonomic on X
The values on the adoption curve here correlate to the percentage of the global population using the asset right now. Woo has put together all known studies on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption to determine the curve.
A couple of the prominent ones include Glassnode’s clustering of addresses into “entities” (with each entity representing an investor who controls some number of addresses) and Cambridge’s data on verified exchange users.
From the chart, it’s visible that Bitcoin’s user count is equivalent to around 4.7% of the world population right now, as per the estimation made by the analyst’s model.
If the s-curve of the internet is to go by, BTC could still be early in its reach. Assuming this is the case, the coin’s user count would show some acceleration from here.
Now, how much adoption does the cryptocurrency need to rival the USD? Woo believes this would happen when the curve enters the 25% to 40% territory, which could potentially be in the 2030s.
It remains to be seen how the adoption curve of Bitcoin will develop in the coming years and whether it will look anything like what has been seen with the internet.
BTC Price
Bitcoin kicked off this week with a plunge under the $59,000 level, but the asset has since recovered as its price is now trading above $61,400. However, it’s unclear at the moment whether this retrace will last or if the bearish momentum will return soon.
The price of the coin seems to have gone down a net amount in the last few days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView