I've been an investor in Bitcoin for about 18 months now and seen a phenomenal run up in my investment. So much so, that I've recently started looking at spending some of my gains on real world products and services. However, when I spoke to service providers in the healthcare and education industries about accepting Bitcoin as payment, they both told me something like, "we're not set up to take Bitcoin...I don't think we can take it...(seemingly no interest in trying either)" Of course, I pressed them by saying, "Bitcoin is better than dollars...setting up a wallet is easy..." However, all of my persuasion was in vain.
In both instances, these professional service providers were completely nonplussed. Although they had clearly heard of Bitcoin, they seemed to think of it more as a curiosity than something of real value. I came away from these interactions realizing that although Bitcoin has made impressive gains and made a number of early investors rich, it hasn't yet made much of serious impression on the psyche of society at large. It's like we've only scratched the surface, and major increases must be ahead of us in order for the world to recognize that Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies are the best transactional currencies ever developed. In other words, for Bitcoin to realize its potential as the greatest, most advanced money ever created, it must increase many fold from its current price.
My guess is that it will take a run up to over $100k before people at large begin to "get it" and start wanting to do "real" transactions in Bitcoin. This would put the cryptocurrency's market cap at $1.6 trillion or approximately 20 times its current price.
its not out of the picture
Interesting take. I'm not sure the price will have to run over 100k for people to "get it". Personally, I think we're going to have exponential adoption in the next 12-18 months.
I agree that exponential adoption is rapidly approaching.