The days when Bitcoin (BTC) was an unknown internet currency are long gone. By the end of 2024, it had broken into the top ten global currencies by market cap, and institutional adoption has gone through the roof. How did this happen, and what does the future hold for this token that has changed the way we think about money? 

The Background and Growing Institutional Involvement

The mystery surrounding Bitcoin’s enigmatic creator – Satoshi Nakamoto – helped fuel interest in this token. He wrote his White Paper, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, in 2008 and later helped launch this as the first cryptocurrency. At the time, the token was virtually worthless and Nakamoto’s personal wallets haven’t been touched since then, despite holding enough BTC to now make him one of the 20 richest people in the world.

Whether or not Nakamoto would have been happy with the mainstream adoption of his creation is one of the questions that divides opinion in the cryptocurrency community. Certainly, in his White Paper, he makes it clear that his idea was for BTC to be widely used as a peer-to-peer, decentralized currency. Whether he envisioned it entering the mainstream financial markets – and what he thought of that – is now anyone’s guess.

Regardless of the creator’s intentions, there’s no doubt that Bitcoin has been entering the financial world at an ever faster rate. GameStop recently announced plans to raise $1.3 billion to buy BTC as a treasury reserve asset, using convertible senior notes. This follows the remarkable success of Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy (now called Strategy), which now holds more than half a million BTC after an aggressive buying approach in recent months.

Added to these corporate strategies, many national and regional governments now see this cryptocurrency as a legitimate reserve asset to accumulate. The US has already announced plans to increase its BTC reserve in a budget-neutral way, while Bhutan and El Salvador are among the countries that have already stockpiled large amounts of tokens worth billions of dollars. Despite this, Bitcoin has a large and diverse group of owners. Although under 100 addresses now own 14% of all the tokens, there are a huge number of addresses with smaller but still significant totals.       

Real-World Use Cases Are Growing

So far, we’ve seen that institutions have been aggressively stockpiling BTC as a reserve asset. However, there’s another element to its mainstream adoption that we need to consider. Bearing in mind that Nakamoto talked about a trustless digital currency that could be used to send money between individual users, it seems likely that he’d be happy with the way that it’s now used to pay for online purchases and other transactions as more use cases are discovered.

News stories regularly appear to tell us about companies that now accept BTC payments. Janover is one of the latest names to be added to the list, as the accounting and financing firm recently confirmed that it will accept Bitcoin and a few other cryptos as it takes its first steps toward the adoption of digital funds and a possible treasury reserve.

Real-world uses have been found in other areas too! One of these is online crypto gambling. Many online casinos accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for a variety of reasons, such as the speed of transfer and convenience. We can see on mBit Casino that Litecoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin are among the other tokens that can be used, which are often speedier and more cost effective than traditional banking methods such as bank transfers. Online crypto gambling has proven very popular among many people.

It also adds to the security element in casino sites, giving another important benefit. The cryptography element of Bitcoin means that it’s almost impossible for the network to be hacked. This fits in neatly with other aspects of online gambling security, such as the way that encryption is used to make sure that user data can’t be obtained by hackers. All of this adds up to a safe and convenient way of gambling where BTC slots in nicely to improve the overall experience.      

The Correlation Between BTC and the Stock Market

The final point to cover is how the increasing adoption of Bitcoin may be leading to a greater correlation with the stock market. Initially, this was seen as being a safe haven like gold in times of economic turbulence with traditional assets. However, recent developments suggest that they are now more closely linked than ever before, perhaps as a result of Bitcoin’s move into the mainstream markets.

Areas like economic policy and economic conditions affect both the stock market and cryptocurrencies. Despite this, not everyone is convinced about the correlation, with Bitcoin still viewed by many people as being an emerging asset that hasn’t yet entered the mainstream enough to be linked to the stock market’s movements. 

BTC’s move towards the mainstream financial markets should continue, as adoption rates grow and more real-world use cases are found. It remains to be seen exactly how big an impact it will have on markets in the future, but there’s no denying that it’s seen a spectacular rise to prominence so far.