Bitcoin (&Crypto) Adoption vs. The Internet
A detailed look into how crypto assets are being adopted globally vs the internet to draw out specific trends to aid in de-risking adoption
Before starting, I want to note that the data I’ve been able to source only properly looks at crypto adoption, not Bitcoin. My research is focussing on Bitcoin, and I have minimal interest in the broader crypto ecosystem. However, given the lack of publicly available data, I’ve broadened this. For how early we are in the adoption of this asset class, this will be directionally correct and still have a lot of value to Bitcoiners, noting the limitation we have with publicly available data.
In a future post like this, I will take an approximate view for Bitcoin only, but note that this will have greater errors and may lead to the wrong conclusions. I hope that for those reading this, there may be someone with access to Bitcoin-only data who can carry this work forward.
Setting the Scene
Many of us on Bitcoin/Crypto Twitter have seen the chart below, which benchmarks the total number of Bitcoin users vs. the Internet, to show where we are in our adoption cycle.
That is fine if we are looking for a rough estimate; however, I’m starting to see people take this as a sign that we will succeed in driving mass adoption like the internet, given the almost mirroring of the adoption rates.
When i look at the above I see a couple of deficiencies.
It’s looking at an adoption number rather than a percentage of the population, so it hasn’t corrected for population growth.
This is global and doesn’t take into account individual country nuances
This doesn’t look at the demographics of the population
And more.
In the work that I'm looking at, which is scaling Bitcoin beyond money, understanding this adoption in detail is an important data point, so I knew it would be well worth my time to do the work myself with what data is available. This article is that work and what i expect to be a yearly piece i write that improves over time as the data sources available improve as adoption progresses. There are two things that I wanted to get out of this.
How are the different countries around the world fairing in their crypto adoption vs their internet adoption?
How are countries’ adoption compared to the US as a benchmark?
My gut was saying that some countries in the internet adoption era did not have the infrastructure to adopt it as fast as they would have liked, and I thought they would exist on the African and South American continents. However, with the internet's ubiquity, all those regions would be able to adopt Bitcoin and Crypto, so it introduced a different dynamic this time.
The other was that with the launch of the ETF, the time for retail to front-run the institutions on adoption is drawing to a close. However, given the ethos of Bitcoin, I wanted to have the data set to see which countries were lagging behind the global trends so that the Bitcoin community could wrap our hands around them and focus some of our time and attention on helping them in their specific adoption journeys. I’d much rather see retail continue to adopt ahead of institutions so that less of the current wealth divide is preserved. Bitcoin can be the biggest wealth redistribution in history, but that is only if we get the participation early and broadly.
With that as context, let’s dive in
Data
There are two framings of the data that stood out to me upon review that I will use throughout the rest of this article:
US benchmark - Comparing the internet vs crypto adoption by country to the US as a % of the population. The comparison point is where the US adoption of the internet and crypto are currently aligned. In this case, the US’ crypto adoption in 2024 is at the same level as their internet adoption in 1996
Global benchmark - comparing the internet vs crypto adoption by country where current global crypto adoption is aligned to global internet adoption. In this case, global crypto adoption is at the same level as internet adoption in 2000.
The reason for the above framing
Using the US as a benchmark, we can see the shift in country adoption compared to the US in the internet era to see which countries will gain a greater economic share of this industry. If the internet revolutionised our economies, with the US taking an oversized share of this through companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc., then Bitcoin (and crypto) will be that next revolution, and this is an early indicator of likely winners and losers.
The global benchmark shows at a global level where we are in the adoption cycle and who is further along in that journey.
Combining the two will paint a global picture of the centre of mass for digital assets, which may indicate future economic prosperity.
Through my economics research in recent years, I’ve consistently seen the message that the economic centre of gravity is shifting away from the US into Asia, specifically India and China. Without seeing the data, this is instinctively accurate to me. If we believe that Bitcoin and Crypto are the next revolution fueling the next wave of economic growth, then adoption rates should validate (or disprove) this.
With the framing in place, where did I get this data?
Data on internet adoption is readily available, and the source that I used for the analysis came from ourworldindata.org/internet1
Understandably, Bitcoin was a lot harder. All the data sources gave broad-brush approaches that couldn’t be used for this analysis. When I broadened the search to crypto more broadly, I found Triple-A2. To their credit, they also provided their methodology for the data collection. Still, it is a little unclear (which is to be expected for a private company), so the accuracy of this is unknown.
For this first analysis, I felt that it would still be a step up from what I’ve seen. It will be directionally informative and, as this refreshes, will become more accurate.
Findings
The US Benchmark
The data is more interesting at the national level. If we use the USA as the benchmark we measure from, I've found that we are closer to the internet adoption in 1996. Suppose we observe the success that the US has had with internet adoption and the subsequent internet-based companies that are now dominating the stock market, using them as the comparison point. In that case, we can see who may be likely to topple the US in the Bitcoin (and crypto) age.
Here are a few examples
What is interesting to see in the above examples is that some countries are outpacing the US in adoption, which indicates the potential for these countries to capture more of the value in the short term. For those of us in Bitcoin, we always say that this was the first major asset where retail could front-run the institutions. Another way to look at this is that Bitcoin is the first asset the developing world can use to front-run the United States and the West.
This is incredibly exciting because if Bitcoin's thesis does play out, this front-running of the US effectively means that those who take the risk will be rewarded with wealth accumulation.
Additionally, the above two examples lead me to my next focus on these countries: whether they are building the new Facebook, Google, and Amazon for the Bitcoin age. With adoption outpacing the US, they are in a position to capitalise on this through further innovation. The question on my mind is, are they only adopting as a store of value? Or are they adopting and building for the new world order?
Global Shift
We can see further trends by looking at the US benchmark against the top 30 adopting countries for the internet and Bitcoin (and crypto). While the US was number 3 in the adoption of the internet at this point in the cycle in 1996, they have fallen to number 9 in Bitcoin (and crypto)—a few additional observations.
Nordic/European countries are well represented in early internet adoption but have significantly declined when it comes to Bitcoin and Crypto.
Norway - 1st for the Internet, 28th for Bitcoin (and crypto)
Finland - 2nd for the Internet, 63rd for Bitcoin (and crypto)
Iceland - 5th for the Internet, 148th for Bitcoin (and crypto)
Netherlands - 6th for the Internet, 49th for Bitcoin (and crypto)
Sweden - 7th for the Internet, 62nd for Bitcoin (and crypto)
These Western and Nordic countries have been replaced by Asia, the Middle East, and South America.
If we consider the Internet in 1996, this is still anyone’s game. It was still so early, and most people had yet to see its value potential.
This is like running a marathon, and we look at the positions of our runners after the first 5km. It's an indication, but we know that those who do not keep pushing and don’t have the continued investment will ultimately lose ground to those who do. There is so much that could happen on the global stage that could impact this in the short term being.
The US federal election, given Trumps’ more recent comments on Bitcoin and making the US a dominant player in mining
The lapse of the Saudi and US petrodollar agreement
BRICS
Increasing digital censorship across the West
Sustained climate alarmism and DEI
And more….
I will be closely watching each year when these figures are updated to see whether countries are maintaining or accelerating their adoption and how these rankings shift. This will provide insight into those slowing down and becoming complacent and those pushing ahead.
The Global Benchmark
In this analysis, I’ve used % of the population rather than the actual number of users. The 25-year gap between these two technologies necessitates correcting for population growth. You could also make the case that you would also need to correct in some way for the population's age distribution as that will also affect the propensity of that population to adopt; however, that data doesn’t exist from what I can see today with public sources.
So, for this analysis, I’ve continued to use the percentage of the population rather than the number of people to ensure that population growth is considered.
Using that, in 2024, crypto adoption stood at 561 million people, with a global population of just over 8 billion. That puts current global adoption at 7%. When you look at the period in which 7% of the global population adopted the Internet, you get the early part of 2000 (6.74%).
What I find interesting here is that in 2000, even with a global adoption rate of 6.74% in internet adoption, the top 30 countries had a significantly higher adoption rate. This adoption was largely localised in the weather Western countries, with the only Asian country making the top 15 being South Korea.
This shows that some form of barrier was slowing countries down in their adoption. My guess (which I hope others will validate and add to) is that the physical infrastructure was a highly capital-intensive program of work that could only be afforded by the West. Additionally, there could be something around education and, finally, cultural dynamics at play.
When i look at how behind these countries are today with Bitcoin and Crypto my mind instinctively thinks of complacency. These countries have already captured so much of the Internet age that they have become lazy and complacent. Those that didn’t capture the internet potential are now driving harder to capture Bitcoin (and crypto).
Drilling down a little further, when we look at the two most populous countries China and India, that have an outsized effect on these numbers. Their internet and Bitcoin (and crypto) adoption looks like this.
This is a significant shift in these two countries at this point in the adoption cycle, and they have made up significant ground. Some things I consider when looking at this
China banned Bitcoin mining, which has likely caused some of the disparity between India and China.
China has greater control over money than India, and that has also minimised the adoption
Regardless, their increased contribution of adopters to crypto and Bitcoin vs. the internet has contributed to the upper bound of the window of adoption we are currently sitting in. The lower end of 1996, as seen earlier when using the US and the measuring stick, 2000, when looking at global population adoption.
It is encouraging that because the internet is now ubiquitous, there are fewer barriers to adopting crypto, so developing countries can adopt it sooner. It's not just that retail is front-running institutions with bitcoin; the developing world is front-running the West, which is an incredible stat.
1996-2000 Window
This analysis has given me a window into where we are in the Bitcoin (and crypto) adoption cycle when we compare it to the internet adoption cycle. On one end, using the US as the measuring stick, we are in 1996, but on a total global adoption level, we are in the year 2000. What is clear from this is
The Internet adoption had a ‘Wealth’ divide, with the West significantly outpacing the rest of the world. Bitcoin (and crypto) adoption is far more ubiquitous.
At the time, the West was just entering the late majority phase of internet adoption, while the rest of the world was just entering the early majority adoption phase. I hypothesise that this differential allowed internet companies to flourish in the West, creating greater entry barriers for the rest of the world.
If we look at the adoption curve and overlay some of these % we get
For the top two countries on the adoption list, this is where they roughly stand on the technology adoption curve compared to the US. Both countries are still in the early phase of their early majority, which is still incredibly early overall.
Additionally, both countries are well over the ‘chasm’, a moment in the adoption curve between the early adopters and early majority phases (which is where the US is now). The crossing of the chasm points to the technology that finds a market fit that allows it to progress past the early adopters into ‘mainstream’ adoption. This is also promising as it is one of those risk hurdles that we can now show doesn’t exist, creating an even more bullish case for this as a technology.
Internet vs Bitcoin (Crypto) Phases
For me, the internet had 3 distinct phases
Early adoption - pre-2000 building and adoption
Dot com bust - punishing speculation and hype
Social - creation of value on top of the internet
If my measuring of the adoption cycle is correct in saying we are between 1996-2000, then we are also approaching the dot com bust we observed with the Internet. This bust saw a whole host of internet companies like pets.com that say ridiculously high valuations because they were “internet companies”.
If I were to draw a parallel to this, the shit coins are those pets.com-like companies. Today, there are almost 26,000 different cryptocurrencies out there, and if this were to play out in a similar fashion to the Internet, the vast majority of these are going to $0. We will even see the good ones drop significantly like Amazon did, but based on fundamentals, weather through the storm and come back stronger.
Whether this occurs in tomorrow or 4 years is anyone's guess. But it’s likely to occur in a proper recession as speculative betting on companies are punished.
Social is here
I’ll boldly claim that Bitcoin's social parallel is here. The piece that gave me this initial insight wasn’t lightning but rather the use case I’ve been waiting to solve since I was doing advisory work on smart cities. Digital Identity
Just like social allowed us to engage socially on the internet, we have yet to see a similar innovation in Bitcoin. But Michael Saylors Micro Strategy recently released the latest software product, MicroStrategy Orange, a Bitcoin-based decentralized identity (DID) system. I believe this will be the key enabler for the next generation of Bitcoin L2 and apps to be built to create the next Facebook, Google and Amazon for the Bitcoin age. I do not know what that looks like, but I’m excited to see how it evolves.
Conclusion
It's great that we can celebrate the lower barriers to the adoption of Bitcoin and Crypto when compared to the internet. We see South American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries front-running the West, which offers a real chance for global wealth redistribution. But what I see in this data is that there are countries that have the potential to adopt but have yet to do so.
Also, it goes without saying that we are still incredibly early when you see these numbers and compare them to the internet adoption cycle. We were at that point of adoption when the dot-com bubble burst, and it was just under six years that we saw the emergence of social media and the explosion of value we currently see on the stock market, with the top companies built in this era today.
What excites me is that I’m starting to see this social media equivalent of Bitcoin emerge. I see Micro Strategies’ orange platform and digital identity on Bitcoin as that social moment. And I also see these L2s on Bitcoin being the crypto killers that cause our own “dot com crash” but not of Bitcoin but the endless Crypto assets (shit coins, meme coins etc.).
But here is the call to action for the Bitcoiners
The following are the countries at the bottom of the list at <1% population adoption, a lot of whom would benefit greatly from getting the education to help their people adopt and escape their current systems.
We may not be able to get to all of them, but at least when we know who they are, those close to these locations can make a conscious decision on where to focus their efforts.
This is a little different from the usual articles I publish, and I hope you enjoyed it. Tracking this adoption data is an important piece of my research on scaling Bitcoin beyond money. It is objective data on Bitcoin principles at work to identify the pitfalls earlier on future applications of these principles in other industries.
Finally, I hope to one day make this my full-time job and to do that, I need your support. Today, that’s to share this context and subscribe to this substack because the broader the reach, the more likely I am to make a living from this.
Thanks for reading, and see you in the next one
Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2023) - “Internet” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/internet' [Online Resource]https://triple-a.io/cryptocurrency-ownership-data/