Cryptocurrency adoption is on track to surpass the much-awaited one billion user mark, which could happen as early as 2026.
According to Pavlo Denysiuk, CEO of Lunu crypto payments firm, the number of cryptocurrency holders could triple over the next two years based on current user growth.
He said during a panel discussion at NFT Fest 2024:
“Within two years there will be at least two times or three times more crypto holders worldwide. This is where we get more adoption everywhere and in terms of payments as well.”
According to the 2024 Cryptocurrency Ownership report by Triple-A, there are an estimated 560 million crypto holders worldwide, meaning that an average of 6.8% of the world’s population holds crypto.
Crypto adoption will happen as soon as the infrastructure is there
With nearly 7% of the world holding cryptocurrency, the adoption of crypto payments is only a matter of time.
According to Denysiuk, crypto payment adoption will occur as soon as mainstream companies like Starbucks start offering the necessary infrastructure. He said:
“[Crypto payment adoption] is not something that you need to convince someone of. Whenever the infrastructure is there, whenever you come to your Starbucks shop or somewhere else and there is a sticker saying ‘we accept crypto’...”
“It’s just another payment method,” added Denysiuk, explaining that crypto payments aren’t significantly different from today’s credit card and neobank-enabled digital payments, which are already popular in the mainstream.
Denysiuk is the CEO of Berlin-based Lunu, a company building a stablecoin-powered payments ecosystem for economic integrations.
Stablecoins are crucial for mass adoption, but user experience remains the biggest challenge
Stablecoins are considered one of the main on-ramps from the fiat to the digital economy and they will remain an important part of reaching the first billion crypto holders, according to Denysiuk.
He said:
“Stablecoins are very important for adoption. In our case, we almost never see people paying in Bitcoin, even though Bitcoin was invented as a digital currency.”
The stablecoin market is currently worth over $163 billion, or 7.7% of the entire crypto market’s 2.11 trillion market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap data.
However, reaching the first billion crypto users will require more beginner-friendly applications, according to Chintan Turakhia, senior director of engineering at Coinbase.
Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph at EthCC, Turakhia said:
“If our goal is to bring in the next billion users — and let’s start with just 100 million — we have to take all those friction points out.”