Ben Horowitz, a well-known bitcoin (BTC) bull and co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a giant venture capital firm with over $4 billion of assets under management (AUM), had predicted in 2014 that over 10% of Americans would have bought something with bitcoin every month by 2019, as he expected the cryptocurrency’s use in e-commerce to grow.

Horowitz’s prediction came in the form of a bet he made with financial journalist Felix Salmon during a “Planet Money” podcast five years ago. At that time, bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, was trading in the $360 to $760 price range.

During the 2014 Planet Money podcast, Horowitz said that bitcoin would revolutionize the traditional e-commerce and payments industry. However, Salmon, a financial news reporter who currently works at the Axios media outlet,  bet against Horowitz’s predictions as he had argued that BTC’s rising price would discourage people from using it for everyday purchases.

According to Salmon, bitcoin would not evolve and achieve mainstream adoption as he could not envision more than 10% of Americans using the pseudonymous cryptocurrency for daily transactions in 2019. Fast forward five years, the host of NPR’s podcast Planet Money had conducted a poll to assess how frequently people were using the world’s most dominant cryptocurrency.

900 Americans Respond To Survey

With the poll expected to determine who’d win the bet between Horowitz and Salmon, the survey’s results show that only 3% of US residents had bought something with bitcoin in the last month.

Approximately 900 Americans participated in NPR’s poll which asked them to respond to the following question: “Have you purchased anything using Bitcoin as your payment within the past month?” As mentioned, only 3% (which is well below the 10% expected by Horowitz) of US-based shoppers have been making purchases with the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Adoption Is Steadily Increasing

Although bitcoin adoption may not have reached the level Horowitz thought it would, there are more merchants taking BTC payments today than in 2014. As CryptoGlobe reported in early December 2018, there are around 1,500 restaurants in Denmark that accept bitcoin as payment method through the Hungry.dk online food portal.

Wikimedia, a free online informational resource supporter, has been accepting bitcoin payments for several years now. As the primary organization that supports Wikipedia, the Wikimedia foundation is now also accepting bitcoin cash (BCH) payments. Mainstream crypto adoption could take longer than initially expected, however many analysts remain confident that the market will eventually recover.