By Rob Wile From Business Insider

If you’re reading this story in the U.S., you’re probably someone who’s heard a lot about Bitcoin, but doesn’t know anyone who actually owns any.

If you’re a European reading this story outside the Eurozone, or perhaps a resident of Hong Kong or Russia, the reverse may be true: A majority of your compatriots may not have heard of Bitcoin, but anyone sophisticated enough to have read up on it now likely owns some.

As Bitcoin enters its fifth year in the wild, its largest concentrations of users can now be found not in the U.S. — which enjoys a stable banking system and a galaxy of existing mobile payments services — but rather in places where Bitcoin’s core offerings — a hedge against inflation, a means of quickly executing transactions over long distances — can actually be tapped into.

“The reality is that in North America, consumers have access to a fairly decent set of financial services,” Peter Smith, COO of Bitcoin wallet firm Blockchain, told BI in an email. “This isn’t the case in the majority of the world. In fact, a huge portion of the world has little to no access to anything that would give them an even base level of financial capabilities.”

Here is what the chart looks like for per-capita downloads of Bitcoin software from SourceFourge. In the lead are all the countries in Europe that have not yet adopted the Euro. The U.S. ranks 15th. [See attachments]

On a currency basis, RMB-denominated Bitcoin trades now outrank USD despite a seemingly never ending stream of threats out of the People’s Bank’s of China that they’ll end all transactions.

The list of most Bitcoin nodes, or Bitcoin transaction confirmation servers, by population also shows the U.S. barely cracks the top 10, although there is a bit of a skew towards countries with cooler climates.

Even in Europe, there are more than a dozen countries who don’t use the euro, making cross-border transactions on the continent problematic.

Ironically, overall investments remain concentrated in the U.S., though that may simply be a function that this is where the money is. Still, a third of all Bitcoin VC funds are now outside the U.S.

In an interview with BI last month, Jeremy Allaire, the founder of digital currency payments startup Circle, admitted that while the service is aimed at 18-34 year-olds across the world who have digitized everything else in their lives, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if there were inordinate concentrations of adoption in places like Turkey and Brazil with shaky sovereigns.

“We’ll be watching to see organically where pockets of users come,” he said.

Further evidence can be found at Bitpay, which just closed on the largest-ever round of funding for a Bitcoin investment firm. The location of the firm’s newest office? Amsterdam. Its other two offices outside its Atlanta base are in Buenos Aires and Montreal.

Smith named Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Africa and South America as Bitcoin’s next major growth regions, thanks to their “wildly volatile” currencies and/or large underbanked populations.

“At Blockchain.info, we are seeing huge growth come from emerging markets,” Smith said.

It’s worth pointing out that Blockchain itself is a firm based outside London but run by at least two Americans.

For more on this story go to: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-is-going-to-take-off–just-probably-not-thanks-to-anyone-you-know-2014-6#ixzz34XJaU79T

IMAGE: en.bitcoin.it

Related story:

This 15-Year-old kid made $100,000 From Bitcoin, then used it to launch his own

By Joey Cosco From Business Insider

After turning a $1,000 gift from his grandmother into a $100,000 Bitcoin fortune, entrepreneur Erik Finman cashed in.

Last month he used the money to launch his education startup, Botangle, Mashable reports [see http://mashable.com/2014/06/10/botangle/]

The 15-year-old entrepreneur and programmer is passionate about do-it-yourself education. Since he was young, he’s taught himself and his friends about computing and robotics, Mashable reports. Currently, Finman is furthering his own high school education through homeschooling, and doesn’t plan on continuing to college.

“I actually have a deal with my parents that if I make a million dollars before I turn 18, I don’t have to go to college. I’m going to do it or die trying,” the teenager told Mashable. His other goal with his company, which now boasts 20 employees, is to help other kids do the essentially do the same.

“I don’t think of Botangle as an online tutoring site. I think of it as an online institution,” Finman told Business Insider in an email. “I’m working on making Botangle the best website on the web for some for someone to completely leave the status quo education system and learn completely through the web!”

The young entrepreneur said he faced some situations in school with teachers who made him feel discouraged, but through his internet idols, Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian and PayPal’s Peter Thiel, he found inspiration.

“I wasn’t happy with my local schools in Idaho, even one of my teachers said I would be working in the fast food industry for the rest of my life,” he said.

After reading Ohanian’s book, he decided to take action and start something new, something he would want to use himself.

Finman said, “Peter Thiel shares my vision in that no matter how old you are, you can still change the world. Not just incrementally but create something new, and as Peter Thiel says: Go from 0 to 1.”

For more on this story go to: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-year-old-kid-launches-education-startup-with-bitcoin-fortune-2014-6#ixzz34XIRB1Im