Comparing Apple to Bitcoin? Crypto Occupies a Class of Its Own

A recent article by a Cointelegraph Markets contributor proclaimed that “Bitcoin is the ‘new’ Apple,” explaining just how Bitcoin’s (BTC) price could reach $60,000 by 2023: “Bitcoin hangs near the chasm of the adoption curve, and its price looks similar to Apple’s stock in 2008 before it broke out with a 520% rally.” Michel Rauchs, the head of Paradigma — a consulting firm focusing on the digital assets sector — and a former research affiliate for the cryptocurrency and blockchain research program at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge, told Cointelegraph: “Bitcoin is not a technology in itself, and any comparison with traditional technologies is misguided.”.

Additionally, it may be important here to separate Bitcoin from the more generalized blockchain technology in which it partakes — or risk misapplying Rogers’s diffusion of innovation theory — suggested Theophanis Stratopoulos, PwC Chair Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Accounting and Finance, who further explained to Cointelegraph: But Bitcoin does not behave the same way as other technologies typically adopted by firms — like CRM systems, for instance. Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, the CEO and founder of the BCB Group — a digital assets financial services group — agreed that BTC’s adoption cycle was anomalous, telling Cointelegraph: “The reason Bitcoin’s adoption path has broken formation with established adoption curves is quite technical: In the short term, the more users there are, the less useful it is as a currency.”.

Timeline of Bitcoin