A 2015 report from Magister Advisors, a London-based mergers and acquisitions firm focused on technology, projected that bitcoin could become the world's sixth-largest reserve currency by 2030. Bitco
A 2015 report from Magister Advisors, a London-based mergers and acquisitions firm focused on technology, projected that bitcoin could become the world's sixth-largest reserve currency by 2030.
Bitcoin has grown across every dimension since 2009: user numbers, trading volume, price, market capitalization, and worldwide adoption. This year, major financial and technology corporations—JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Fidelity Investments—have signaled confidence in bitcoin. The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest options market in the United States, is moving to offer bitcoin futures. CBOE Holdings Chairman and Chief Executive Ed Tilly announced in August: "We very much look forward to responding to the growing interest in cryptocurrencies through the creation of bitcoin futures traded on a regulated derivatives exchange, with the many expected benefits that this brings, including transparency, price discovery, deep liquidity and centralized clearing."
More investors and firms have begun treating bitcoin as a digital currency and as a store of value rather than as a speculative investment. Platforms such as Coinbase and Blockchain saw their user bases grow. For bitcoin to match the market size and user scale of traditional reserve currencies, the network must overcome one constraint: handling more transactions at scale. Many investors hold bitcoin for the long term rather than trade it for short-term gains. Bitcoin would need to reach adoption levels where payments, not speculation, drive its use to compete with reserve currencies.
Jeremy Millar, the Magister partner who led the research, told CNBC two years ago: "We have now reached a fork in the road with bitcoin and blockchain. Bitcoin has proven itself as an established currency. Blockchain, more fundamentally, will become the default global standard blockchain for financial transactions."
Bitcoin's performance has matched the projections Magister made. Its market capitalization has surpassed $70 billion since the research was published, and it has outperformed all other asset classes and major currencies. Adoption across Asia, particularly in South Korea, China, and Japan, has driven much of this growth. In Japan, leading technology companies including CME Group have entered the global bitcoin exchange market to create more transparent platforms for trading. South Korea and the Philippines have legalized bitcoin as a remittance method, bringing new users to the network. KakaoTalk, South Korea's dominant messaging application with over 90 percent market penetration, invested in a Philippines-based bitcoin remittance service to expand bitcoin's use in both countries.
Scalability remains the central obstacle to mass adoption. Once the Bitcoin Core team's upgrade, Segregated Witness, gains adoption among wallet providers and the majority of transactions use it, block sizes and transaction fees should decline, making the network more attractive to new users.
