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I literally shared on chain data. That's actual users. Even if you assume that all 80k unique wallets that exchanged USDT yesterday were real users, that's just

by spaceman_2020 4y ago

I literally shared on chain data. That's actual users. Even if you assume that all 80k unique wallets that exchanged USDT yesterday were real users, that's just...80,000 users. Niche forums have more users than that. Anyone who has ever created an account on a crypto exchange has a crypto address. I have accounts at Binance, WazirX, Kraken, Crypto.com, Gate.io, Mexc, ByBit, and probably 2-3 more exchanges I can't remember. That means I have 10+ addresses. But that's not real users. Any money I've sent to exchanges is just for trading/investing. I'm not actually using the tech. On-chain usage is the only real usage. The rest is just banking with more hurdles and scams.

olalonde 4y ago
> But that's not real users. I think we're in agreement here? On-chain data is more or less useless for counting actual users. That's why I was sharing survey data, which is the best approximation we can get. For actual users using the tech, it's also difficult to know but we can see that the on-chain transaction volume is quite significant (multi billion dollar daily).
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  > On chain data is more or less useless for counting actual users. I assume anyone who owns crypto but hasn't made any on-chain trasaction to not be a real user but just a speculator. Ergo, immaterial if you're talking about the viability of the network to scale.
  - olalonde 4y ago
    I meant it was useless in the sense that we can't accurately determine the number of users from looking at on-chain data. As you've also explained in earlier comments, there is the issue of "multiple addresses - one user" and there is the issue of "single address - multiple users". If we ignore the latter issue, we can put an upper bound at ~1 billion users for Bitcoin due to the unique address count but that's just an upper bound, the actual number is lower but we can't know how much lower.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      We're on the same page but we're looking at different metrics. I'm talking about daily usage which, even if you assume that every wallet is a unique user, is in the tens of thousands at most. The entire point is that crypto adoption is abysmally low for a tech that almost every tech literate person in the world has heard about now, and that this tech falls apart even for this limited user base.
      - olalonde 4y ago
        > I'm talking about daily usage which, even if you assume that every wallet is a unique user, is in the tens of thousands at most. That's incorrect. The number of daily active addresses for Bitcoin is around 1 million[0]. > The entire point is that crypto adoption is abysmally low for a tech that almost every tech literate person in the world has heard about now, and that this tech falls apart even for this limited user base. To me, that's super impressive given that many people on HN initially dismissed. I personally never thought it would grow beyond the initial group of cryptography/p2p nerds. I was super shocked when Bitcoin was mentioned on TV for the first time. Has any non-governmental money ever made it that far? I don't think so. It's come a long way, but I understand the numbers are a bit disappointing to those who were expecting Bitcoin to completely displace fiat. And in the end, it's a matter of perspective and there's no right or wrong answer. [0] https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&category=Addresses&m=addresses.Count https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&category=Addresse...
cableshaft 4y ago
People don't have to use something every day to be users. I mostly just buy crypto once a month and every once in awhile make a purchase with it when it makes sense (usually either towards a new computer or some place I don't want getting my credit card info). If crypto became the default (which I'd be fine with), I'd use it all the time. But there's enough fees converting from USD to crypto and then making a purchase on top of that, as well as hassle with taxes each year (since I do report crypto transactions on my taxes) that trying to use it for all transactions, currently, isn't worth it for me. So on most days I wouldn't even show up in that 80,000 DAU (well, especially since I don't touch USDT at all, keep in mind there's quite a few coins out there, not everyone interacts with all, or even more than a few of them). And yet I keep up with crypto news, read crypto forums, watch videos about crypto, on an almost daily basis. Personally, I'd consider myself a user of crypto, and find it to be a useful tool. But just like my drill or my hammer, I don't use it every single day, just when the situation calls for it.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  My point is that the network doesn't scale to fit even these very few daily users.

olalonde 4y ago

> But that's not real users. I think we're in agreement here? On-chain data is more or less useless for counting actual users. That's why I was sharing survey data, which is the best approximation we can get. For actual users using the tech, it's also difficult to know but we can see that the on-chain transaction volume is quite significant (multi billion dollar daily).

spaceman_2020 4y ago
> On chain data is more or less useless for counting actual users. I assume anyone who owns crypto but hasn't made any on-chain trasaction to not be a real user but just a speculator. Ergo, immaterial if you're talking about the viability of the network to scale.
- olalonde 4y ago
  I meant it was useless in the sense that we can't accurately determine the number of users from looking at on-chain data. As you've also explained in earlier comments, there is the issue of "multiple addresses - one user" and there is the issue of "single address - multiple users". If we ignore the latter issue, we can put an upper bound at ~1 billion users for Bitcoin due to the unique address count but that's just an upper bound, the actual number is lower but we can't know how much lower.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    We're on the same page but we're looking at different metrics. I'm talking about daily usage which, even if you assume that every wallet is a unique user, is in the tens of thousands at most. The entire point is that crypto adoption is abysmally low for a tech that almost every tech literate person in the world has heard about now, and that this tech falls apart even for this limited user base.
    - olalonde 4y ago
      > I'm talking about daily usage which, even if you assume that every wallet is a unique user, is in the tens of thousands at most. That's incorrect. The number of daily active addresses for Bitcoin is around 1 million[0]. > The entire point is that crypto adoption is abysmally low for a tech that almost every tech literate person in the world has heard about now, and that this tech falls apart even for this limited user base. To me, that's super impressive given that many people on HN initially dismissed. I personally never thought it would grow beyond the initial group of cryptography/p2p nerds. I was super shocked when Bitcoin was mentioned on TV for the first time. Has any non-governmental money ever made it that far? I don't think so. It's come a long way, but I understand the numbers are a bit disappointing to those who were expecting Bitcoin to completely displace fiat. And in the end, it's a matter of perspective and there's no right or wrong answer. [0] https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&category=Addresses&m=addresses.Count https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&category=Addresse...

cableshaft 4y ago

People don't have to use something every day to be users. I mostly just buy crypto once a month and every once in awhile make a purchase with it when it makes sense (usually either towards a new computer or some place I don't want getting my credit card info). If crypto became the default (which I'd be fine with), I'd use it all the time. But there's enough fees converting from USD to crypto and then making a purchase on top of that, as well as hassle with taxes each year (since I do report crypto transactions on my taxes) that trying to use it for all transactions, currently, isn't worth it for me. So on most days I wouldn't even show up in that 80,000 DAU (well, especially since I don't touch USDT at all, keep in mind there's quite a few coins out there, not everyone interacts with all, or even more than a few of them). And yet I keep up with crypto news, read crypto forums, watch videos about crypto, on an almost daily basis. Personally, I'd consider myself a user of crypto, and find it to be a useful tool. But just like my drill or my hammer, I don't use it every single day, just when the situation calls for it.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
My point is that the network doesn't scale to fit even these very few daily users.