The recent tangle with the infrastructure bill that is in the United States Congress is very telling. Here is a bill that was going to pass on its base merits. However, a section that deals with cryptocurrency regulation and taxation really opened up a can of worms.
Instead of passing unnoticed, this started a firestorm that delayed the voting on the bill for 5 days The cryptocurrency community suddenly appeared out of nowhere. There was such a backlash that it caused a number of U.S. Senators to take notice. It even forced them to really start to consider options as evidenced by the few bipartisan amendments proposed.
Alas, it looks like that was all for naught. The bill is going to be passed in its original form. We will just have to see what happens when it gets to the House of Representatives. Bet the ranch they are aware of the power the cryptocurrency industry is now wielding.
There is a valid reason for this. Cryptocurrency is experiencing a tremendous growth rate that is only making the numbers more formidable.
2021 Cryptocurrency Growth
It is true we are only a bit more than halfway through the year. That said, we are getting some statistics about what took place in the first part of 2021. For cryptocurrency there is only good news.
Crypto.com put out their latest "Measuring Global Crypto Users and the numbers are startling.
By analyzing the top on-chain activities along with information from exchanges, they were able to come up with an estimate of how many people are involved in cryptocurrency.
At the end of May 2020, that number stood at 66 million.
Here is the latest chart from their report:
As we can see, by May 2021, the number sprung to 203 million. For the year, we are seeing a greater than 250% growth rate. January ended with 106 million, a number that grew to 221 million as June closed out.
On an annualized basis, this equates to a 259% growth rate.
Bitcoin And Ethereum Lead The Way
It is no surprise to see Bitcoin and Ethereum leading the way. These two blockchain get most of the attention as well as having the largest market caps. They drew a lot of institutional investors into the space which is bringing in larger amounts of money.
These are also where the media focuses a lot of its attention. That is putting both front and center in the cryptocurrency discussion.
Much of it centers around price movement. While this is drawing a certain type of crowd, it is pulling in people. Many noted how cryptocurrency use is higher when market prices are up and declines along with the market. That is simply a reality that goes along with the present users that are attracted to this.
It really isn't much of a surprise considering a great deal of the conversation is about cryptocurrency pricing. We also see that speculation as the main use case being employed.
Over time this will change. Nevertheless, the big players are Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to the report, they make up more than half the cryptocurrency users.
Both of these experienced a great deal of growth also, following the same path as the overall.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
This is just the start. While this is a powerful growth rate, it is not going to be a "flash in the pan". We should not think this is a one off event.
Cryptocurrency adoption is only going to keep increasing for the next few years. In fact, these numbers might be understating the growth that already took place. There are many other areas that are starting to have an impact.
One major one is gaming. The Play2Earn model is gaining traction. None of this is taking place on Bitcoin and Ethereum is hindered by its fees. Thus, we see a lot of progress being made elsewhere.
At the same time, the gaming tokens and assets are not presently trading on the main exchanges. Therefore, we can surmise there is a lot that is flying under the radar. For now, that is alright since we really do not have the metrics to monitor this stuff.
We see the growth rate of games like Axie Infinity and Splinterlands over the past couple months. Is this drawing new people to cryptocurrency or simply providing another option to the individuals already involved? Either way, there are more than 2.5 billion gamers out there and we know how popular a game like Farmville™ became on Facebook.
The Play2Earn model does not appear to be slowing down. We will get more blockchain games rolling onto market over the next few years. At some point, the major game developers will have to get involved. This will introduce hundreds of millions of people to cryptocurrency.
Of course, gamers already accustomed to tokens and digital assets.
Over the rest of this year, it would not be surprising if the growth rate exceeded what happened in the first half. This is an accelerating adoption curve that we are riding. We are still a long way from mass adoption. Considering there are more than 5 billion Internet users, we can see how we still reside below the 5% level.
There are a lot more people who are going to be entering this space. It will be interesting to see what numbers come out 6 months from now.
My guess is they are a lot larger than what this report detailed.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
gif by 
logo by 