Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Snapchat first investor thinks bitcoin could realistically be worth $500,000
by
LoyceV
on 11/04/2017, 17:12:19 UTC
I'm however not sure about the part where he said "Bitcoin's user network grew from 120,000 users in 2013 to 6.5 million users in 2017" as there is no way to calculate the userbase of bitcoin. Despite all that, what are your thoughts?
Let's assume this is true, and see what that means: The last 4 Blocks processed 1603 + 1935 + 1047 + 1799 transactions. I'll take this as average: 1596 transactions every 10 minutes. That gives 229,824 transactions per day.
Now let's assume the best-case scenario, in which transactions are evenly spread out between users. That means these 6.5 million users each make 1 transaction in 28 days.
This is of course not realistic: active users make much more transactions, which means the large majority of less-active users take manu months between transactions. The assumption of 61 times more users by 2030 would lead to 1 transaction per user in 5 years at current block size.

Is it realistic to call Person X a Bitcoin user, if he made 1 transaction in 2016? I don't think so. I traveled by train once in 2016, that doesn't make me a train user.
The 50-fold increase in users shows the scaling problem again: prices can't grow as long as users can't make more transactions.

Now back to the catchy topic title: if this is his expectation, did he invest most of his wealth in Bitcoin? The article doesn't mention anything about his own personal holdings.