Blockchain.info logo.
By itself, the number of user-wallets isn’t a huge indicator. There are no limits to the number of wallets or addresses any user in bitcoin can have, and according to many analysts the best security practice is to use a new address for each transaction. In theory, the number of new wallets could reflect nothing more than the same users doubling up their wallets. Human nature, however, suggests that the massive increase in wallet numbers are a strong indicator of new users entering the bitcoin community, even in a period of lackluster price growth, increasingly regulatory oversight and not-insignificant privacy and security concerns.
Blockchain.info is admittedly one of the largest and most-known bitcoin-related websites, but it’s not unreasonable to suspect that other, similar services are seeing similar growth numbers. A month after Blockchain revealed their wallet numbers in January, Coinbase released new data claiming to have also crossed the one-million wallet threshold. Given the major business-adoption coups Coinbase has seen recently, it would hardly be surprising to hear that they too are approaching two million user wallets. Along the same lines, the explosion of Android and iOS wallet apps, as well as the growing number of users in Circle’s quietly growing beta test, hint that overall numbers of new bitcoin users in rapidly rising.
Much remains to be seen, of course, but a massive growth in user adoption can’t stay under the radar for long. Bitcoin’s blockchain is public, after all.
