When it comes to measuring the level of adoption of Bitcoin, the same question always comes up: how many Bitcoiners are there?
Unfortunately, there are no exact answers to this question.
Some people might be surprised when they read this, but it's strictly true. You can't know the exact number of Bitcoin users at any given moment. You can know the number of active addresses on the Bitcoin network, but since a Bitcoin user can have as many addresses as he or she wants, you won't get much further.
So we have always had to rely on estimates.
Analytics companies and exchange platforms have developed different methodologies for estimating the number of Bitcoin users.
Among the exchange platforms that publish estimates every year is crypto.com, which has just published its annual Crypto Market Sizing 2022 edition report. I invite you to go and read for yourself this report available here:
On my side, I will share with you the main information I have retained from it.
The first thing that should be highlighted is the methodology used by crypto.com. The exchange “combines on-chain data with blended parameters 1 to estimate the number of global crypto owners.” One limitation that crypto.com points out for its methodology is that “OTC trading and users who have never made on-chain transactions may not be effectively captured.”
Crypto.com then details the exchanges included in their on-chain data extraction:
The main absence to report here is that of Coinbase. Coinbase, whose CEO had recently stated that according to him, a quarter of American households have already used Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. This a figure perhaps slightly too optimistic, but not necessarily so far from the truth when we think back to the latest Morning Consult study I mentioned here:
219 million Bitcoin users by the end of December 2022
Crypto.com's estimate puts the number of Bitcoin users at 219 million. This is a significant increase from Crypto.com's 2021 estimate of 183 million Bitcoin users. The number of Bitcoiners would have increased by +20% between January 2022 and December 2022 despite the Bear Market with very high inflation, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, as well as the explosion in full flight of several scams resulting from the abuse of the previous Bull Market.
Something rather positive for the future as the price of Bitcoin is promised to go higher in my opinion. With this figure, Bitcoin is more than ever on track for the goal of one billion users by 2030. So Bitcoin is continuing its progress toward the hyperbitcoinization of the world. Slowly, but surely.
The exact method by which Crypto.com arrived at the figure of 219 million Bitcoiners is detailed here:
As you can see, a lot of estimates here to arrive at this figure. So we have to take it with a grain of salt. What is most interesting though is that crypto.com does the same work every year, which allows us to see a trend. And this one is bullish.
Crypto.com puts forward the figure of 87 million Ether owners at the end of December 2022. The total number of users of cryptocurrencies reaches 425 million, constantly increasing throughout the year 2022:
From January 2022 to December 2022, the number of cryptocurrency users would have thus increased by +39% according to the crypto.com report.
The growth in the number of Bitcoin users slowed down in the second half of 2022:
The bullish rally in early 2023, as well as the prospect of the Halving in early 2024, is likely to reignite the growth of the number of Bitcoin users in the months to come. Something that will be interesting to watch.
With the switch to the Ethereum 2.0 centralized censorship machine ("The Merge"), Ethereum will have been under the spotlight over the second half of 2022 as evidenced by the growth in Ethereum adoption among cryptocurrency owners :
By the end of 2022, 20% of cryptocurrency owners own Ether, while that figure stands at 52% for Bitcoin.
Since 219 million would own Bitcoin and 87 million would own Ether, that would leave 119 million users left in the cryptocurrency world who own neither BTC nor ETH.
Finally, we see the same problem again and again: too few users have private keys associated with their Bitcoin. Indeed, we know that there are around 44 million active addresses on the network today. Since each user has several addresses, there is a huge gap between this number and the 219 million Bitcoin owners.
The “Not your Keys, Not your Bitcoin” mantra will have to be remembered again and again in 2023 and the future. This is the only way you can take power with Bitcoin. Bitcoin that stays on an exchange platform is worthless. It is only a promise that people like SBF proved in 2022 can be easily betrayed.
"Not Your Keys, Not Your Bitcoin – FTX Was Selling Fake BTC to Its Users."
So it's in your best interest to keep your Bitcoin safe yourself. It's the key to the Bitcoin revolution.
3 Schools of Thought Now Clash on the Further Movement of the Bitcoin Price
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The first is composed of those who think that the price of Bitcoin will continue to crash and that $10K is inevitable.
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The second school of thought is that there is a dead cat bounce coming for the price of Bitcoin that would take it to $30K before a major correction. Then it would be left to wait for the year 2024 and the fourth Halving of Bitcoin.
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A third and more limited view is that the price of Bitcoin will continue to rise and that a new ATH is possible by the end of 2023.
More details in the following issue:
