ARE WE AT THE VERY BEGINNING?
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The question keeps recurring, in slightly different forms, like a collective murmur that resonates through cycles, bubbles, collapses, and rebirths. Are we still at the beginning, or are we already behind? Is there still time to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon, or is the platform already empty? This seemingly simple question is actually one of the most revealing about our relationship to time, value, and change.
It's not just newcomers who are asking this question. It also haunts those who have been here a long time. Even those who bought early, very early, still ask themselves the same question, but in a different form. Did they truly understand what they were holding in their hands? Did they see what was coming, or only a fraction of what was brewing? In 2011, people were already wondering if it was too late. In 2013, the question was the same, but more urgent. In 2017, it took the form of collective panic.
In 2021, it was caught up in the institutional euphoria. In 2025, it returns, calmer, more serious, stripped of naive excitement, but burdened with a new anxiety. Because this time, the world has changed. Bitcoin is not evolving in a vacuum. It is not an isolated experiment, detached from the rest. It is immersed in a dense, unstable, fragmented historical context, where monetary, political, and technological benchmarks are shifting simultaneously. To understand whether we are at the beginning or the end, we must first accept that Bitcoin's trajectory is not linear. It does not follow a classic adoption curve. It unfolds in fits and starts, through crises, through sudden ruptures.
In the beginning, Bitcoin was a marginal, almost invisible entity. It wasn't intended to be adopted by millions of people. It existed as a technical solution to a specific problem, within an extremely limited circle. At that time, talking about adoption was meaningless. Bitcoin wasn't seeking adoption. It was seeking to function.
Then, gradually, without a marketing plan or a business roadmap, it began to attract the attention of very specific profiles: computer scientists, cypherpunks, heterodox economists, and individuals distrustful of the traditional financial system. This initial phase wasn't adoption; it was intellectual recognition.
The second phase arrived with speculation. Not as a deviation, but as a catalyst. The price acted as a signal. It attracted individuals who would never have been interested in the protocol otherwise. This phase has often been criticized, but it was inevitable. Without speculation, Bitcoin would have remained a niche product. The price played the role of an imperfect, but effective, gateway.
This is where the question of the delay began to emerge massively. Each rise gave the impression that the window was closing. Each correction gave the illusion that it was reopening. This constant oscillation shaped a collective psychology of urgency and doubt. But while the public watched the price, something deeper was taking shape: an infrastructure, software layers, practices, and uses. Bitcoin was slowly ceasing to be a mere experiment and becoming a functional alternative monetary system, even on a small scale.
Today, in 2025, Bitcoin is at a paradoxical stage. It is both extremely well-known and profoundly misunderstood. Almost everyone has heard of Bitcoin. But very few people actually know what it is, how it works, and, most importantly, what its long-term implications are. This disconnect is a key indicator. It suggests that adoption is still superficial.
True adoption isn't measured by the number of holders, but by the nature of the relationship with the protocol. Buying Bitcoin through a banking app isn't the same as owning its private keys. Holding an ETF isn't the same as using Bitcoin as a personal store of value. Speculating on price movements isn't the same as partially withdrawing from the fiat monetary system.
If we look at Bitcoin from this perspective, then it's difficult to argue that we're in an advanced stage of adoption. We're more in a phase of massive exposure, where the technology is visible, discussed, and integrated into public discourse, but rarely experienced in its radical form. This creates an illusion of maturity. Bitcoin seems already established. Already institutionalized. Already digested. But this impression is misleading. What's being adopted today is a simplified, watered-down, often depoliticized version of Bitcoin. The essence of the protocol, its capacity to redefine the relationship between the individual and money, remains largely untapped.
The question, therefore, is not whether Bitcoin is already too expensive, too well-known, or too advanced. The question is how many people are actually using it for what it is. And on this point, the figures are undeniable. The majority of bitcoins are held in custodianship. The majority of users have never verified a transaction. The majority have never considered inheritance, sovereignty, or accountability.
So we are probably still at the beginning, but not the naive beginning. We are at the conscious beginning. The beginning where the implications start to become visible. The beginning where Bitcoin is no longer just a gamble, but a possible response to increasingly evident systemic tensions. The speed at which things might accelerate in the coming years depends less on Bitcoin itself than on the context in which it evolves. Bitcoin is slow by design. Its pace is deliberately constrained. It doesn't adapt. It imposes. External crises are what trigger accelerations.
Recent history shows that Bitcoin adoption doesn't progress steadily. It progresses in bursts: a banking crisis, persistent inflation, increased capital controls, a loss of trust in institutions. Each time, Bitcoin emerges not as a miracle cure, but as a credible option. And that's often enough.
If the coming years are marked by renewed stability, adoption could remain slow, gradual, almost silent. But if monetary, geopolitical, or social tensions intensify, then the acceleration could be abrupt. Not because Bitcoin would suddenly become perfect, but because the alternatives would become unsustainable.
The question of whether it's too late to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon is therefore poorly framed. It assumes that Bitcoin is a finite opportunity, a window of opportunity that's closing. In reality, Bitcoin isn't a high-speed train. It's an infrastructure that's being built slowly, independently of who's watching it.
Those who enter early do so not because they were faster, but because they were more observant. They perceived an inconsistency, a fragility, a structural injustice. They sought an alternative before it became obvious. Those who enter later will not enter for the same reasons. They will enter out of necessity, not intuition.
In this sense, it's never too late to understand Bitcoin. But it can be too late to get in without pain. The more adoption progresses, the higher the cost of ignorance becomes. The more Bitcoin becomes an implicit standard, the more those who haven't given it much thought are forced to adapt in a hurry.
Are we truly at the very beginning of this monetary adventure? Yes, if we're talking about systemic transformation. Yes, if we're talking about a paradigm shift. No, if we're talking about technological curiosity or marginal speculation. Those phases are already behind us. We're in an intermediate, unstable zone where Bitcoin is visible enough to be taken seriously, but not yet understood enough to be fully integrated. It's an uncomfortable zone, prone to mistakes, excesses, and misunderstandings. But it's also a zone of choice.
Those entering today can no longer claim the innocence of the pioneers. But they benefit from greater clarity. The protocol has proven itself. It has withstood the test. It has survived. It has shown what it is capable of doing, and what it refuses to do. The real question, therefore, is not whether we are at the beginning or the end. The real question is at what point along the trajectory each person decides to position themselves. Some will enter out of conviction. Others out of fear. Others out of opportunism. Still others will never enter, and that, too, is a choice.
Bitcoin doesn't promise an arrival. It doesn't guarantee a destination. It offers an alternative trajectory in a world where traditional paths are becoming increasingly unstable. In this sense, the adventure is only just beginning. Not because Bitcoin is new, but because the world is only now beginning to ask the questions it answers. And when these questions become unavoidable, the acceleration will no longer be a speculative phenomenon. It will be a logical consequence. Block after block, without rhetoric, without artificial urgency, Bitcoin will continue to exist. The rest will depend on the world around it.
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