Step one, okay. Good point. It has taken already more than 15 years. So how can we achieve the jump to Step 2? When will we witness it, 30 years in the future? What will even be Step 2 exactly? Will there be a Step 3 or 4 before Bitcoin can be really "money"?

So I think there should be slowly some thought about the next steps. I think what I wrote here - the "bullish case" depends on an usage change - still is valid. Because otherwise we risk to run eventually (now, in 5 or in 10 years, but not much later) into a really devastating bear market if there is absolutely no progress.

But first it might be useful to get some data about current "payment" usage. Interestingly, there are some numbers to play with.

- CoinLaw says there is a projected 80% growth for the timeframe between 2024 and 2026.
- The only available "hard" 2025 numbers, the use of CoinGate, show some growth, it's a bit lower (~15% growth between January and June), and it's still a small number (~115,000 payments per month, basically nothing. Yes, it's only CoinGate but I see it more frequently as a Bitpay alternative, and it may be one of the biggest payment processors already.
- In contrast, the Kansas City Fed has published a small study based on polls, where the usage of cryptocurrencies "for payments" in the US declined almost 30% between 2021 and 2024 (from 2.7 to 1.9%). At least it grew slightly between 2023 and 2024, and it could be argued that the 2022-23 decline was primarily due to the bear market.

So I think my conclusion is that the usage "as a currency" may be slightly increasing again, but there's still a long way to go for "step 2" to materialize ... Perhaps Ark (a 2nd layer that recently reached mainnet) can help?