Bitcoin Total Users
In this study of Bitcoin's adoption-S curve I've put together all the known studies of Bitcoin and Crypto Asset adoption here on this single chart. References and comments are below
- Glassnode
The earliest studies can be found forensically in the Bitcoin blockchain. Glassnode clusters BTC addresses into individual entities based on transactional interactions. This is a reliable and high resolution view into the unique users until 2016 onwards. From 2016 onwards we started to see users adopting custodial wallets offered by exchanges without an on-chain footprint. - Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance between 2016-2020 conducted three benchmark studies surveying the entire industry. Part of this study had lower bound numbers for unique KYC-ed users on crypto exchanges
Reports:
- CCAF Benchmark Study 2, p33
- CCAF Benchmark Study 3, p44
- Crypto.com Reports on Market Sizing
Well known exchange Crypto.com has conducted annual studies of market sizing. Their data is in strong congruence with prior studies from Cambridge and Glassnode.
Reports:
- Triple-A
Digital payments provider Triple-A conducted a study from 16 prior studies from various sources, they applied their own weightings to derive their figure of 420 million users in May of 2023.
- GWI
Between 2020 - 2022 GWI conducted a global survey of web users aged between 16 to 64 for those that owned cryptocurrency. Their results seem optimistic when compared to the industry surveys conducted by Cambridge and Crypto.com. The results, if accurate, may imply a significant number of users do not have exchange accounts.
- Woocharts
To build a continuous curve I have run an interpolation line through the following datapoints:
- 2008-2016 - Glassnode on-chain entities
- 2016-2020 - Cambridge numbers for unique users on exchanges, with a 13.6% uplift to account for Bitcoin users who do not have exchange accounts
- 2021-2023 - Crypto.com numbers for unique crypto users on exchanges, with a 35% reduction to account for Bitcoin-only users. This is because recent Binance research shows 65% of crypto users hold Bitcoin.
- 2024 onwards - projected from the last known annual growth rate
