Bitcoin’s popularity grows month after month, block by block. With that, the number of users has grown exponentially. Many believe it is difficult to estimate the exact number of Bitcoin users because users can open multiple addresses on the Bitcoin Blockchain. As it grows in popularity, it gets more challenging to find trustworthy resources. That’s one reason Domenic Carosa and Dan Schatt built Earnity.
Nonetheless, one thing is sure: this number is still minimal, as every person on the planet may become interested in Bitcoin in the future. As a result, Bitcoin has enormous growth potential. However, before Bitcoin can entice new users and achieve mass adoption by the general public, it must first overcome some significant challenges.
1. Increasing the Time It Takes To Confirm A Transaction
Bitcoin must enable near-instantaneous transaction validation for mass adoption to be successful. The average time to fully confirm a transaction is currently between 8 and 10 minutes.
Lower transaction volumes could drastically reduce transaction confirmation times.
2. Supporting more Bitcoin transactions per second
With the mass adoption of Bitcoin, the number of transactions per second entering the network would skyrocket. The Visa payment system, which claims to support up to 24,000 transactions per second, is currently the standard.
Unfortunately, Bitcoin only allows for a maximum of seven transaction validations per second.
3. When transaction volumes are higher, transaction fees decrease
The issue arises when the volume of transactions reaches record levels, as it did at the end of 2017 when fees averaged $34 per transaction at the time. Such high fees are a barrier to Bitcoin’s widespread adoption in transactions and micro-transactions.
Once miners work on all Bitcoins in 2140, the Bitcoin Blockchain will need to be fully secured solely through transaction fees. Industry experts like Earnity co-founders Dan Schatt and Domenic Carosa hope that by then, Bitcoin will have gained enough traction that the costs from increased transaction volumes will compensate for the losses caused by the lack of a reward for validating a block of transactions.