Quote from: kdrop22 on December 06, 2013, 11:45:51 PM

Quote from: CryptStorm on November 27, 2013, 06:17:18 AM

Quote from: SlipperySlope on November 27, 2013, 05:18:18 AM

Quote from: CryptStorm on November 27, 2013, 03:05:58 AM

Quote from: BitPirate on November 27, 2013, 02:51:51 AM

I agree with most of your post, but I think we are well into the early adopter phase, if not through it already -- actually this timing is what worries me the most.

I misspoke, the 'chasm' is between the early adopters and early majority, and given that, perhaps you are right-- I don't think so, I tend to think we are just crossing into the early adopter stage, only. That's how the infrastructure is getting rolled out for the 1 or 2 out of 100 to be able to use it. Even at early adopter stage, the usability must be pretty decent, and it's just now coming-of-age at the most basic levels. Even those are lacking-- the best example is the exchanges, and some merchant services-- still no remittances, micropayments, escrow, et al. While at early innovator stages, it was really only a very tiny subset that was able to fit the requirements for usage.

If you subscribe to the ideas of 'Crossing the Chasm', then what might the chasm represent? Would it be the question of how does a regular Joe use bitcoin? I think that's a reasonable place holder, and one for which Bitoin still has a long way to go. Remember, early adopters are some 13% of the market. There is no way we have made large inroads to that group. We are probably still well under 1% adoption, though the media is covering this realm.

The chasm with regard to the population of early adopter bitcoin speculators and early majority bitcoin speculators, as I understand your terms, was the period in 2011 when the trustworthiness and utility of bitcoin exchanges was very much in doubt. During the early adoption period exchanges were non existent or not somewhere that I felt really safe storing coins. According, I put June 2011 at the trough of the chasm for adopting bitcoin speculators.

The chasm with regard to the underlying economy may be upon us. As informed speculators we can envision the replacement of legacy financial infrastructure with bitcoin. I see very impressive transaction volume reported by coinometrics.

I honestly don't know how one can argue that we are anywhere further along the adoption curve than the first signs of the early adopter phase. Before I go further, I should really make clear that I am referencing the Roberts Adoption/Innovation Curve with its 5 constituencies as follows:

** Early Innovators (2.5%),
** Early Adopters (13.5%),
** Early Majority (34%)
** Late Majority (34%)
** Laggards (16%)

There are some larger sums of money getting moved with Bitcoin, and while most of that is speculation (still valid movement), the number of actual people who are using the protocol or currency is bordering on miniscule. I suggest you consider how far down the rabbit hole, and out of main stream, this conversation is being had. I think that the type of person that comes to Bitcoin *this* early might tend to understand concepts and abstraction more readily and deeply than the average person. There is no precedent to Bitcoin, the math is *scary*, it's new, requires a good deal of thinking to grasp, overthrows/improves the status quo, etc. The idea that Bitcoin has more than 1 out 10 people in *any* group (cryptocurrency experts aside) utilizing its benefits is patently false. The infrastructure is not even available to use it for but a small fraction of its potential.

My guess it that given the media uptick, it seems like Bitcoin is everywhere. Perhaps confirmation bias is at play? Certainly the facts seem to indicate that only about 500,000 private keys with over 0.1 BTC exist, and there are about 150k users on Bitcointalk. While it may happen very fast, Bitcoin adoption still has a long way to ubiquity.

Facebook has around 1 Billion users.
Given that there are people with dozens of accounts and kids, teenagers on facebook. I would say anywhere from 100 Million to 50 Million are financially sophisticated enough to be the market for Bitcoin.
The current user base estimated from various threads on this forum is around 1 Million for Bitcoin. So, I would put that around 1 to 2% of the entire market, which is the Early innovators stage.

However, in an alternate scenario, where Bitcoin does not fully mature to it's potential it dominates a few niches like international remitances, offshore asset protection, grey market etc... but does not take hold as a payment network (due to complexity, technology risk, govt regulation etc...) In that case we can estimate the total market to be 10 Million users. In which case we would be around 10%, which is the early adopters stage.

In either scenario, irrespective of what happens to the price right now. The final peak price is at least 1 to 3 years away at around 50% user adoption. (At what might be a valuation of 10 to 100x current price).

These thoughts and estimates seem to give healthy weighting to the balance of arguments-- thank you for pointing out the concerns around adoption across different industries & applications.

We should consider, too, that there are other industries for which cryptos will fill a need, that have not yet been discovered/invented.

And, we should recognize that other cryptos themselves make compete for part of Bitcoins presumed future market presence, if they provide better solutions for myriad reasons, may those be regulation, locality, etc.

I can pray to my baby Jesus (no offense to anyone) that we have 1-3 years to 50% adoption. Tongue