You’re Still Early to Bitcoin – But How Early?

Spend a reasonable amount of time with Bitcoiners and you’ll eventually hear the statement “We’re still so early”.

The suggestion being made here is that the true impact and consequences of Bitcoin have yet to be felt, and we’re still just at the very beginning of the story.

But can this really be true in 2025? Bitcoin is 16 years old, a whole coin costs close to six figures, and even nation states are starting to accumulate it. How could anyone possibly think it’s still ‘early’?

When you’re seeing TV ads from the likes of Blackrock and Vanguard promoting Bitcoin ETFs, suggesting it’s still early feels like a bit of a contradiction.

And this contradiction can be challenging for both experienced Bitcoiners and newcomers alike.

For Bitcoin veterans who’ve held for more than a decade and survived the blocksize wars, endless media FUD, and multiple ‘bear markets’, it’s unlikely to feel particularly early at all. A decade in Bitcoin can feel like a lifetime.

And for those new to Bitcoin, seeing a whole coin trade for over $85,000 when early adopters were buying it for just hundreds, sends them a strong signal that they might have ‘missed the boat’.  

This can create problems for both groups.

Bitcoin veterans who’ve been around a long time can find themselves perpetually frustrated that the world is taking so long to catch up. How could anybody still be ignoring Bitcoin after everything that’s happened? People still haven’t realised the central banks are fleecing them? Why aren’tpeople dumping fiat for Bitcoin immediately?

When the solution has become obvious to you, it can be a lonely and frustrating experience waiting for everyone else to figure it out.

Newcomers face a different challenge. Awe struck by an $80k+ price tag, they often think the opportunity to benefit from Bitcoin has completely passed. This can either dissuade them from learning about Bitcoin at all, or results in them exploring ‘cheap’ shitcoins in a hopeless quest to find the ‘next Bitcoin’.

The latter become easy prey for snake oil salesmen.

So, let’s try and address this apparent contradiction and make the case that it is in fact still very early.

If we can develop a better appreciation of where we truly are on this journey, then we’ll have a far better chance of navigating what’s still to come.‍

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Am I Late to Bitcoin? It’s So Expensive!

Feel like you’re late to Bitcoin? Welcome to the club! You’re anything but unique. Every single cohort of Bitcoin adopters has this same feeling no matter when they got involved.

Want to verify that claim for yourself? Just scroll through old posts on the Bitcoin Talk forum.

Imagine mining 600 Bitcoin in 2010 and feeling like you ‘missed the bus’. Crazy.

Posts like this look hilarious 15 years later. Most people would chew their right arm off to be able to mine 600 Bitcoin in a week. But beyond just being amusing, posts like this also reveal a simple truth:

If you think you’re late to Bitcoin, it’s almost always down to your perspective.

If you pay close attention to the reasons people give for thinking they’re late to Bitcoin, you’ll start to notice a trend. It almost always boils down to the price.

Everyone, even ‘nocoiners’ are painfully aware of Bitcoin’s dramatic increase in value. Everyone you meet seems to have a story to tell about how they heard of Bitcoin back in “2001”, but never took any action, or had a friend that was ‘mining bitcoin back in the 90’s’ and they wish they’d gotten more involved.

Each of these stories told, real or imagined, contain the same principal emotion: regret at not getting into Bitcoin at a better price.

It makes sense. One Bitcoin now costs $80k+ and to most people this represents a small fortune. It’s more money than the average US salary, and could make for a very nice down payment on a house or pay for an awful lot of groceries. Understandably, calling Bitcoin ‘cheap’ is met with a lot of scepticism.

But it’s closer to the truth than people realise.

With a market cap of just $1.5 trillion, Bitcoin is still but a tiny speck in the vast galaxy of global wealth. The stock market is valued at over $100 trillion and global real estate represents $300 trillion. $80k+ per Bitcoin might seem expensive to your wallet, but when you put things into perspective like this, it becomes easier to make the case that Bitcoin might in fact be grossly undervalued.

The bottom line is, trying to gauge how early you are to Bitcoin using its price in a dying currency like the dollar is likely to lead you to the wrong conclusions. Most people find it hard to be objective about Bitcoin’s potential value when the nominal value of one coin is now worth more than their car. (They will find it even more difficult to be objective when one Bitcoin is worth more than their house. Try convincing them it’s still early then).

The reality hiding behind Bitcoin’s price tag is that we are all still extremely early. The fact you can still exchange government coupons for it should be evidence enough. But for those who aren’t convinced, let’s look beyond the price at some numbers that can help prove it.    

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Am I Late to Bitcoin? – A Better Perspective

If price can be a misleading indicator of how early you are to Bitcoin, then where can we look to get a more nuanced view of things?

Well, one of the best ways to understand just how early you are to Bitcoin is to build a clearer picture of how widely adopted and used the network is.

River Financial, a US based Bitcoin exchange, estimated in their 2025 report on Bitcoin adoption that there are less than 328 million Bitcoin owners worldwide.

While that certainly sounds like a lot of people, in reality it’s only a very small percentage of a global population of 8.2 billion. This means if you own ANY Bitcoin in 2025, you find yourself amongst the first 4% of Bitcoin adopters worldwide.

Suddenly, it doesn’t sound like you’re so late anymore.

And things get even more interesting if you drill down further. If estimates suggest that only 4% of the global population owns any Bitcoin, how many of them actually hold the Bitcoin themselves and directly interact with the network?

There is no way to know exactly but one useful indicator to look at is the total number of UTXOs (Unspent Transaction Outputs) on Bitcoin’s network. This number fluctuates but currently sits somewhere around 170 million individual UTXOs.

Now consider that every time you send Bitcoin to your wallet, you create a brand new UTXO. This means that with a total of 170 million UTXOs on the network today, the maximum amount of people that could be holding Bitcoin in self-custody is 170 million if everyone held just one UTXO in self-custody each.

But of course, the true number must be much lower than this. Most people holding Bitcoin in self-custody will control multiple UTXOs in their wallet, either from change outputs from transactions, or from frequent deposits they’ve made. How many UTXOs each individual controls is impossible to know, but what we can do is run some quick numbers to establish some sort of range:

• If on average individuals hold 3 UTXOs in their wallet, and the max UTXO set is 170 million, then there could only be a maximum of 56.67 million people holding Bitcoin in self-custody. (170 million ÷3)
• If on average individuals hold 5 UTXOs in their wallet, then there could only be a maximum of 34 million people holding Bitcoinin self-custody. (170 million ÷ 5)
• If on average individuals hold 10 UTXOs in their wallet, then there could only be a maximum of 17 million people holding Bitcoinin self-custody. (170 million ÷ 10)

This is far from an exact science. Some ‘Bitcoiners’ will hold zero UTXOs because they leave their Bitcoin with an exchange, and it sits inside one giant UTXO shared with other customers. And conversely, some Bitcoinerswill control hundreds of UTXOs.

Nonetheless, this exercise shows that even with conservative estimates, it’s reasonable to estimate that less than 34 million people hold their Bitcoin in self-custody and actually control their own UTXOs.

If people who own Bitcoin are in the top 4% of the population. Then the people who take self-custody find themselves in the top 0.4%!

But let’s go deeper still….

Out of the potential 34 million people holding their own Bitcoin UTXOs in self-custody, how many do you think also run their own Bitcoin node?

Well, data provided by Luke Dashjr suggests that the total node count on the network is a mere 90,000. Even if every single node was run by a different person (which is highly unlikely given our very own Tony Yazbeck runs about 10 himself), then out of a world population of 8.2 billion, less than 0.0011% of the population will be holding their Bitcoin in self-custody AND running a full node!

Still feeling late to the party?

Now for a moment ponder how many people exist that hold their Bitcoin in self-custody, run their own full node, send secure air-gapped transactions, properly manage their UTXOs, and use advanced privacy tools like Payjoins, de-Googled phones and open-source VPNs to protect their privacy?

These people are a very rare breed indeed.

4% of people may ‘own’ some Bitcoin, but only an elite few actually know how to use it.

Late to Bitcoin? Not a chance. The game has barely started.

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Become An Elite Bitcoiner – The Bitcoin Way

If you’re reading this newsletter, you could never be accused of being ‘late to Bitcoin’. It’s much earlier than most people realise.

What the numbers presented above shows us is that the number of people who not only own some Bitcoin, but know how to use to its maximum potential, is probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands at most.

Which means if you commit to mastering self-custody, digital security, and online privacy, then you will find yourself amongst the ranks ofa very small cohort of elite Bitcoiners. A very exciting prospect indeed!

And even more exciting is the realisation that learning these skills properly is much more straightforward than most people realise. Especially with the right training, from the right team!

In less than 6 months, our expert trainers can make sure you become one of the most proficient Bitcoiners on the planet. The only thing you need to do is start.

Book a call with us today, and let’s get your training started.

Greatness awaits.