I.e. if I buy 20 new xboxes but leave them sealed for resale before Christmas, I'm not really an early adopter, instead i'm just a speculating opportunist, even though I did purchase the consoles the day they were released - the same time the "early adopters" did.
Regardless if they are speculators, does their initial reason for adoption matter to the definition of an early adopter? Speculators may at any time become users, and normal users may at any time start speculating.
The people buying into Bitcoin tomorrow are greater fools.
I don't believe I'm a slow learner, but it took me about 1 year from first learning about Bitcoin to becoming comfortable enough with the technology to speculate on it.
I honestly believe it will replace Gold as a store of value, but it will take a very long time for the general public to understand it enough and/or trust it enough that they'll sell any amount of gold for bitcoins. But when they do, perhaps in a slow process that peaks around 15 years from now, the value of a single bitcoin could end up somewhere around $300k.
I personally estimate the likelihood of this being around 10-15%. So yeah, I'm still buying more today.
There aren't many elements on the periodic table, and even fewer are viable as metallic currencies: rare enough to have value in small weight, not so rare as to be foreign (historically) to many cultures. Gold has a visceral, visual advantage, too: it's the only yellow metal.
On the other hand, anyone can launch a new cryptocurrency. There's no natural monopoly there. The idea is valid, but all Bitcoin has to defend itself against competition is the brand/reputation. And people hate Bitcoin because it was clearly set up to favor early adopters for no good reason.
Getting only 15% of your savings is not a good result :)
If Satoshi came out of the high tower and announced plans for his stash, I would feel a little bit better. When/if BTC hits 1m/BTC his stash would be worth 2T and that is a lot of claim checks on society.
For comparison: first GSM call was made in 1991. In 1994 subscribers hit 1 million, nowadays there are several billions. Would you consider someone with GSM phone in 1994 an early adopter or not?
Innovators were the early miners who invested in actually taking BTC from 0 to 1.
Early adopters were those who got into it prior to 2013 when most of the mainstream considered it a scam or were otherwise scared off by the price instability.
With the recent government hearings I'd say we're right at the start of the early majority phase.
First are what I'll refer to as technologists. No elaboration necessary, you get the gist.
Second are Jane & Joe consumer.
People buying into Bitcoin today are early adopters as far as consumers are concerned, and they're years behind on the technologist scale.
Bitcoin has reached enough publicity at this point that a former business partner of mine - she's in her mid 60's, and is a very very light user of technology, that hasn't yet joined Facebook, has never once used Twitter, has heard / read about Bitcoin. She is a CPA, so we had an interesting conversation about the implications of Bitcoin. She gets the premise of digital currencies, but not exactly how Bitcoin works (why mining exists, who controls it, how the encryption works, and so on).
Publicity wise, Bitcoin is quite widespread, it has spent months in the mainstream media at this point. Consumer adoption is clearly still in the first inning however.
Still, I expect it to tank. It might have enough relic power (as the first, if not the best) to hold a value around $50 million in toto (or $6/BTC). Why? Because the forced deflation is a Dick Move of epic proportions: favoring early adopters for no good reason. As it turns out, Dick Moves damage your reputation in the long run, and all Bitcoin has is a brand. What stops someone else from creating a new cryptocurrency without the hard upper limit?
There is something interesting about it, which is it reminds us that we truly really have no fucking clue where value comes from. Nation-states? Companies? Total abstractions, many fraudulent or flimsy. Bitcoin has some transient value because some smart people solved a hard problem, but there's no long-term brand advantage or natural monopoly. But it's still pretty fascinating that smart people can create so much value (often "of out nothing", but sometimes genuine). Or take Magic: cardboard probably worth a billion dollars in totality. The first trillion-dollar business is going to be one that recognizes the value of the time of high-talent people and somehow provides direct access in a scalable way (independent of social networks, because well-connected, talented people are already in-place). I've had a rough idea of how that might work-- a call option exchange on high-talent peoples' time, see http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/fixing-employ...: -- but I admit I have no idea how to scale it (or even deal with the ethical assurance issues).
No good reason? Does there have to be one?
If the protocol succeeds despite your assertion that there is no good reason to favor early adopters, will you change your mind that the reason was immaterial?