Global Bitcoin adoption is ‘still in its infancy,’ but here’s how it might accelerate

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it will also take some time for every country on Earth to adopt BTC.

Bitcoin (BTC) adoption by governments and companies remains a dubious question and the “digital gold” thesis proposed by advocates faced harsh critics after Tesla sold 75% of its holdings in the second quarter of 2022.

Larger entities buying or selling Bitcoin have always moved the needle on how close countries are to using cryptocurrencies as a store of value. Currently, the average purchase price of El Salvador’s Bitcoin holdings stands at $45,000, making it a rather unprofitable investment.

Regardless of how long adoption by the large institutional holders will take, and its subsequent impact on price expectations, it is possible to roughly estimate a minimum price per BTC based on each countries’ foreign currency and gold reserves.

El Salvador might have been the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, but its 2,381 BTC position represents less than 2% of the country’s total reserves. More importantly, the South American republic does not rank among the top 100 countries in terms of its gross domestic product.

Jamaica, on the other hand, has a population that is 56% smaller than El Salvador and its international reserves are 30% higher at $4 trillion. Even Trinidad and Tobago, a tiny island country in the Caribbean with the same population size as San Diego, California, holds $6.9 trillion in reserves.

What becomes clear is how tiny (economically) El Salvador is in comparison to the aggregate $15 trillion held by the 160 countries included in World B