Gyft’s Vinny Lingham: Growth of New Bitcoin Users Has Slowed

Although Bitcoin came onto the fintech scene with some real power behind it in 2013, the overall amount of attention paid to the peer-to-peer digital cash system has fizzled out a bit over the past two years. While there is still a die hard user base that believes bitcoin is the future of money, startups in the space have found it difficult to attract new users to the blockchain.
[Read More: Investor Terrence Yang Gives a Much-Needed Reality Check to Bitcoin Startups] At least one company involved in Bitcoin has noticed this slowed growth of new users in bitcoin. GyftCo-Founder and CEO Vinny Lingham talked about the lack of new bitcoin users on a panel related to mass adoption of the cryptocurrency at Consensus 2015. Unlike some other executives in the Bitcoin space, Lingham has a desire to talk plainly about the slowing growth of Bitcoin adoption among the general public.
Slow Growth is an Industry-Wide Issue
When asked whether the large amount of growth in bitcoin users seen in 2013 has sustained itself over the past year or so, Lingham first clarified that the acceptance of bitcoin has been a net-positive for Gyft. After making that comment, he also bluntly stated growth in the number of new people using bitcoin has slowed:
‘We’ve actually retained our customers. It’s been good that people have used our service, [and] we’ve grown as a company. But the [number] of new bitcoin users coming in has slowed. This is an industry-wide issue.’

This post was published at Inside Bitcoins on Nov 30, 2015.