The most nodes online info I've seen is 8K nodes

Which is a lot when you realize that btc only recently reached 700K users so 1% or so are involved in transactions and mining

7M users of btc if the 1% ratio holds 70K nodes MAYBE

But the ratio of nodes should be decreasing since in the beginning of btc it was geeks that could put the core on a server

One of the nocs we use had a huge issue not long ago with the btc malware thing, tons of servers running btc

Every password on the network changed those unsecure servers banned from the network

So in the earliest days of btc and we're still in the early days, you had mostly guys with core in the community most were mining, then guys with no servers joined and now you have 1% of the community with core and most with 2nd tier wallets

Face it wallets on blockchain, coinbase and bitpay are not nodes and are just entry level wallets for consumers to collect a coin or fraction

Most of the world is broke and can't invest thousands into btc or anything

So early miners have lots of btc, you have had 4 tenfold growth bubbles to get to the users today, 3 more bubbles of growth you have 10% of the gwp using btc

As the sheeple with no core use btc the ratio of nodes will keep dropping and dropping

geeks are a tiny fraction of the world

cryto geeks even smaller

that's where the btc wealth is now

So you will not see millions of nodes IMO

millions of users but only a fraction will have a core on a server and doing 1st tier work for the network

btc is moving into the 2nd tier growth, consumer growth and most consumers do not have any savings and they're all tapped out

so you will see consumers doing minor micro wallets to save a few bucks at retailers with btc signs up and discounting btc transactions

then 3rd tier growth will be a new type of iTunes will emerge probably 100% illegal with 10 cent downloads all through btc

bullet proof hosting of the site and a black market app and people buy btc like cheap bags of dope back in the day to get that dime fix of music instead of the buck apple wants

so music is gonna be what takes btc mainstream

you get a big music act to launch a song and say only at my site only with btc and it's 10 cents not a buck

about what he makes anyway through itunes

that is what btc was designed for under a buck transactions

read the white paper

so how soon a major music star is hooked up with a new btc music site they have a piece of you will see twitter and his/her fans take btc to the next level

maybe a rap star does it, since some of them understand drugs

haha

drugs made some aware of btc

music takes it mainstream