Current research finds that Bitcoin is barely used as Satoshi Nakamoto intended, having people find other, seemingly better applications that drive its wild adoption.
The first and largest cryptocurrency to drive the digital money revolution that the world is witnessing today remains the most widespread one in individuals’ crypto wallets worldwide.
Bitcoin has outgrown its primary, original purpose of being a niche concept and helping people exchange stuff with the most negligible fees and effort possible, developing into a trailblazing and multi-faceted digital asset in a decade.
The harbinger digital coin now has people reading, tweeting, discussing, and browsing online crypto exchanges, all in the hopes of making of and foreseeing where the btc price prediction could be in the future.
The trend is even more pronounced since investment firms like Grayscale and VanEck have launched developments like exchange-traded products.
Now, researchers are spending all of their resources to determine the main practicalities of Bitcoin as accurately as possible to gauge the market’s direction, focusing on investors’ choices of spending it to buy things.
The data gathered to date depicts a somewhat different reality than what Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous developer of Bitcoin, would have imagined.
What are results based on when discussing stats and numbers?
Researchers may not base their findings on completely accurate information coming from a single source. Determining the exact number of Bitcoin transactions and the intent of BTC owners behind their investments is more like a guessing game than math calculus.
From what we know, experts blend surveys, exchange account data, blockchain data, and internal data to draw conclusions such as the number of Bitcoin proprietors.
Besides, such fluctuating market trends also use reports and data provided by crypto exchanges and financial advisory companies. Statista, for instance, is another reliable source of trustworthy information, as it’s the leading global researcher for data-based insights, statistics, and research.
This preeminent portal for data on anything from industrial sectors to media and consumer markets has recently found that more than 100M individuals worldwide make use of cryptos, where the main and largest digital coin by market cap leads by a wide margin.
Given the many use cases, there’s a growing fascination with crypto knowledge, particularly across U.S. nations, where around 63% of adults manifest interest in learning and purchasing such assets, as Gemini found out.
While the exact number of BTC possessors is sketchy, one can only conclude that digital currency adoption is soaring, and the first crypto remains at the cutting edge of this revolution.
What was the primary intention behind Bitcoin’s development?
Frankly speaking, Bitcoin’s main and original purpose was to be a unique spin-off and alternative to the traditional assets used as stores of value, namely centralized currency, gold, commodities, financial capital, and other precious metals and gems, to name a few.
As an emerging store of value, Bitcoin would have, and actually does, serve similar purposes, meaning that it is divisible, portable, and capable of maintaining its value over time, with ideally few to no risks involved.
Bitcoin has long been wielded as a store of value, with fewer applications targeting it as a unit of account or medium of exchange.
The asset’s primary purpose was to carry out transactions, removing the existence of a go-between, such as financial institutions or banks, which are vital in traditional, daily transactions.
Since it was built on a peer-to-peer technology that assists on-the-spot payments, the world can now worry less about Bitcoin’s blockchain ins and outs and more about how this asset with unparalleled potential can be leveraged for one’s benefit.
Bitcoin operates without the involvement of any oversight or central control, with specially designed software that guarantees that every transaction is safely stored and immutable.
Thus, no transaction with Bitcoin can be deterred, modified, compromised, erased, or suffer any other ill-intended changes.
A long road ahead before Bitcoin is wielded as it was intended
Now, those late to the game know the whole point of Bitcoin is to serve as a P2P variant of electronic cash, enabling the processing of online payments without being verified by any financial institution.
However, the most recent data gathered from Australian and U.S. institutions responsible for these activities disclose a somewhat distinct conclusion than one may reasonably think. Bitcoin isn’t used as a means to conduct online purchases as it is wielded as a trading and investing vehicle.
In Australia, for instance, the Reserve Bank research based on Ipsos data shows that cryptocurrency is among the least used means in payments and has convinced only around 2% of the population to adhere to this practice. Contrastingly, other, younger developments such as PayID and BNPL services represent go-to payment methods for about a third of shoppers.
Whether these trends will suffer modifications and change to fulfill Satoshi Nakamoto’s ambitions remains to be told over time.
To date, and as far as Bitcoin for U.S. consumers is concerned, the asset was a chosen payment tool for only 2% of the adult population, as per 2022 studies from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Sweeden’s Riksbank shows that the country falls behind the U.S., with only 1 in 100 Swedes offering cryptos like Bitcoin for their acquired goods or services.
Deterred by high price volatility
One reason why many purchasers in the studied countries enumerated above and beyond turn their backs on Bitcoin as an online payment tool is that the market is still in its infant stage and is bound to remain wrapped in burdensome volatility for as long as we can predict.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies are defined by high volatility, having their value change in the blink of an eye, unlike Tether, whose value is tied to the U.S. dollar.
For this reason, prices for services and goods aren’t expressed in digital currency.
Converting product prices in a given shop or restaurant would involve a constant modification of the labels and price blackboard, which could only mess with the enterprise’s accounting.
Final words
Several franchises and companies, such as Starbucks, Wikipedia, Google, McDonalds, and more, have already implemented such payments.
You can now today pay for a whole trip abroad in crypto or buy the car of your dreams with it, assuming it is a Tesla, Ferrar, Dodge, or other giants down to take crypto as payment.
Yet, there are a lot of modifications that need to be carried out in a business enterprise in order to facilitate such exchanges and keep their papers faultless, so what we can do is help expand crypto knowledge.
So, if you own Bitcoin, would you feel comfortable sharing what your holdings’ main intent is?
