How Many People Own and Use Bitcoin in 2022?

Bitcoin is the world’s leading cryptocurrency, with millions of users and holders worldwide. But how many actually own or use bitcoin? That’s what we dive into in this guide. Read on to learn more about the latest bitcoin usage statistics.

Bitcoin adoption has grown exponentially since its launch

Bitcoin was created as a digital peer-to-peer payment network, creating a cheaper and faster way for people to make payments across borders. In addition, due to bitcoin’s unique features, including a limited supply and a disinflationary monetary policy, it also established itself as a store of value, an inflation hedge, and a popular investment vehicle.

In just over a decade, Bitcoin’s market capitalization temporarily reached $1 trillion, representing close to 1% of the total market capitalization of all publicly traded companies. It’s no wonder that listed companies and financial institutions have started adding bitcoin to their balance sheets.

Bitcoin was primarily valued as an investment opportunity that could help diversify an investment portfolio as it has traditionally had limited correlation with assets such as stocks and bonds. It also appealed as a great hedge against the central bank’s monetary policy and global economic uncertainty.

On the flip side of this, Bitcoin has experienced massive growth since its inception, and has maintained its dominance as the most traded cryptocurrency in the world since day one.

How Many People Own Bitcoin in the US?

There is no definitive way to determine how many bitcoin users there are due to the pseudonymous nature of the Bitcoin network.

As a result, we can only estimate how many holders and users there are based on several data points, including the number of wallets created, the number of active wallets, user numbers at leading Bitcoin companies and third-party surveys that have used similar methods to arrive at an estimate.

So, let’s take a look at what the numbers say about bitcoin users in the US.

Business Insider Intelligence, a research firm, estimates that there will be more than 25 million bitcoin owners by the end of 2022, a growth of 16.7% from last year.

Reverse, A survey conducted in 2021 by the New York Digital Investment Group found that approximately 22% of the US adult population, 46 million Americans, own bitcoin. Responses were received from 1,050 participants with incomes over $50,000 and a margin of error of 3.1%, which is considered statistically significant.

Although another report from US-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini in 2021 had a larger sample of 3,000 people, but estimated that only 21.2 million people own cryptocurrencies. In the same report released in 2022, it states that one in five people in the US own cryptocurrencies, which implies 20% of the current US population of 332,403,650. That is, 66,480,730 people own cryptocurrencies.

The report did not specify the cryptocurrencies, but we can reasonably expect at least 50% to have bitcoin, which is more than 33 million bitcoin owners. The research sample size for the Gemini Crypto 2022 report is 2,300 adults.

Based on the data points we have collected, we can say that it is probably somewhere in between

How many people in the world use Bitcoin?

Bitcoin data on the chain shows that there are now more than one billion wallet addresses. But people can have more than one wallet address or keep bitcoin on centralized custodian exchanges, making it difficult to estimate the actual number of people using bitcoin in the world.

Interestingly, global crypto exchange Coinbase has over 100 million verified users globally, many of whom have bitcoin.

Cryptoanalysis company, Intotheblock, reported in May 2022 that the number of addresses with bitcoin passed 40 million.

How many people use Bitcoin every day?

The Bitcoin network is currently processing around 250,000 transactions per day and has around 1,000,000 daily active addresses.

Bitcoin reached over 330,000 daily transactions in December 2020, and 400,000 in early January 2021.

How many people will use Bitcoin in the future?

Crypto.com’s market size report says the number of cryptocurrency owners globally will reach one billion by the end of 2022, with bitcoin likely leading the pack.

Although this forecast was made during a bullish sentiment in the market, and may not happen in 2022, it is expected that the crypto market will continue to grow in the future.

It is difficult to envision a future with bitcoin. While the digital currency has already established itself as an investment vehicle for all types of investors, the growing use of bitcoin as a payment layer (primarily powered by the Lightning Network) could help the digital currency become a globally used and accepted currency, which could see the number of bitcoin -holders and users exceed one billion in the coming decade.