The adoption rate of bitcoin has increased by 700% over the last 5 years, from 1800 businesses accepting payments in BTC in 2013 to more than 14 thousand in December 2018.
Mass adoption could be Bitcoin’s “Holy Grail”. Should the adoption of bitcoin spread commonly among the population, its value would skyrocket due to the limited number of BTCs in circulation.
In order to get a precise idea of the BTC adoption, it is useful to monitor the number of businesses mapped on CoinMap.org. The site collects and publishes the addresses of shops or businesses that currently accept bitcoins as a means of payment, and this can be used as an index of the rate of adoption of bitcoins around the world.
To date, the world map shows that more than 14,000 shops currently accept BTC. Just five years ago this number was seven times lower.
From early December 2013 to date, there has been an increase exceeding 702% in the number of businesses that accept bitcoins in the world: from 1,789 in 2013, to 14,113 at the end of December 2018.
Also, in the same period, the price went from about 200 to about 3,500 dollars, or more than 17 times as much, much more than 700%.
The map shows that the highest concentration is in Europe and in the two coasts of the USA. But Japan, South Korea and some areas of South America are also well represented.
South America has been the area with the highest increase in the last 5 years, in particular, of course, in Venezuela, but also countries like Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil.
Excluding Africa, China and Southeast Asia are the areas where there are still very few shops that accept bitcoins. Of course, in China the use of BTC is severely hampered by the government, and it is not certain that the CoinMap website is used in these areas, but in China the prospects for development are interesting, to say the least.
India is also very poorly covered, but even in this case the obstacles coming from a suspicious attitude of the government certainly do not help.
In addition to this, the number of daily transactions in BTC has significantly returned to grow, reaching the volumes of mid-2017, much higher than those of the end of 2013. Transactions in BTC have already almost doubled since the burst of the crypto bubble in February 2018, when they were dramatically reduced.
