Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the rest of the cryptocurrencies suffer from a real-world usage problem. Go up to the random person on the street and ask them if they have any Bitcoin. What do you think the percentage of “Yes” responses would be? 50%? 25? 10? 5?
If you read these pages and you follow the crypto space, you’d probably be inclined to think about the people in your bubble, and maybe you’d say the answer would be 50% or higher.
But if you really think about how far crypto has yet to go, then you think about the average person on the average street – I bet that number is way lower than 5%.
In fact, there are brand names out there that are much bigger, and have much more notoriety, than Big B and its Brethren.
Tesla Is Bigger Than Bitcoin
The market cap of Tesla – you’ve heard of them, right? – is around $58 Billion right now. Bitcoin’s market cap – measured by the number of coins in circulation times the price – is around $42 Billion.
Tesla, though, has the same thing going for it as Bitcoin: lots of name recognition but, in reality, not a lot of market penetration.
Or an untapped market.
Tesla delivered 76,230 vehicles in 2016.
Does that seem like a lot? In December of 2016, Toyota sold 240,000+ vehicles. In the US alone. Annual figures were 2.4 million vehicles.
Paradigms Don’t Shift Overnight
For one of the sites we manage, we wrote a post a couple years back that claimed that Tesla is the next Apple. Think about it – the slick marketing, the sexiness of it all; the forward-thinking, rockstar CEO.
But for all the headway that Tesla has made – when we wrote that post, the stock was at $236 a share, it’s now at $371 – it’s quite possible that they have yet to scratch the surface.
Powerwall. Shingles that capture the energy of the sun. And no doubt more to come.
And That Brings Us Back to Bitcoin
Total value of foreign currencies traded on the Forex exchanges, in one day: roughly $5 Trillion.
The folks at Blockchain say that roughly $700 million in Bitcoin was transacted yesterday. If you add in all of the cryptocurrencies traded on all the exchanges – quick math tells us that was something around an additional $5 billion – you’re still at roughly one tenth of one percent of Forex.
Agreed that we’re not talking about all of the other cryptos, too, in our transaction calculations above – but, still, you can say that we have a ways to go. QUITE a ways to go.
So, What Are You Waiting For?
We’ve shared the Coinbase link a dozen times here, and we’ll keep sharing it.
Doesn’t matter too much if you missed out on the little pullback – we think this whole space is a paradigm shift, and you’re best off getting into the game as soon as you can.
Use the Coinbase link and get a bonus – $10 bucks worth of Bitcoin with a qualifying purchase ($100) of any of the three currencies (BTC, Ethereum, or Litecoin) you can buy on the site. (DISCLOSURE – THAT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK. But you get a bonus too, so that’s cool)
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. The story will be told over the months and years to come. You don’t want to be on the sidelines.