Ask any Bitcoin fan – be it an investor, trader, entrepreneur, or even the dreaded “thought leader” – for their take on what Bitcoin really needs to fulfil its full potential, and they’ll undoubtedly tell you – mass adoption.
It’s understandable, then, that businesses (large or small) are inevitably inundated with requests from persistent bagholders to begin accepting their particular cryptocurrency.
But it seems even after these requests are accommodated, there’s hardly any customers paying with cryptocurrency.
One small business in the UK, Seymour Locksmiths, has been accepting Bitcoin and other digital assets since 2014 – and not a single customer has paid with cryptocurrency in that entire time.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
“In 2014 a large school of thought suggested that the main breakthrough use case for Bitcoin would be peer to peer transactions. That being customers and businesses paying for goods and services directly between one another without having to rely on payment networks such as Visa,” wrote Seymour Locksmiths.
“We decided to put this theory to the test. In September 2014 we officially started accepting Bitcoin for all of our locksmithing services, shortly afterwards we also starting accepting Dash,” the establishment further said. “Since that day over four years ago and the time of writing, we have not had one customer ask to pay in Bitcoin, Dash or any other cryptocurrency.”
Seymour Locksmiths went on to speculate reasons for the non-existent Bitcoin adoption: not many customers had Bitcoin ready-to-go in a hot wallet, and the relatively expensive transaction fees for small cryptocurrency payments were a turn-off.
It also admitted there was a notable uptick in Bitcoin interest on behalf of its customers during the heat of the 2017 bull market, indicating that price is the ultimately interesting factor for regular, non-cryptocurrency folk.
While this might seem like an outrageously localized example, this business is not alone. Last year, altcoin fans made a big stink when Pornhub began accepting various small-time tokens for its Premium service last April.
By October, it was confirmed that less than 1 percent of subscribers paid with cryptocurrency.
Even decentralized apps (dapps) – the other-other use-case for cryptocurrency – are struggling to attract meaningful usage. Years after the first dapps went live, adoption primarily remains with seemingly dubious gambling platforms, with 70 and 95 percent of traffic on EOS and TRON respectively being driven by online casinos.
Sure, the decentralized revolution is still in its early stages. But for it to gain steam, there must be willing participants, and badgering merchants and conglomerates to accept your favorite shitcoin is simply not enough to change our current narrative.
But unfortunately, without that, all we have left is “BUIDL it and they will come” – so it had better be enough.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.