Bitcoin Forum

After using Gavin's bitcointools to work on the Days Destroyed problem (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9300.0 ), I just had too much fun doing it, so I got to work playing some more with the data.

This might have been done before, but I have made a program to find every single transaction output that is unredeemed. Basically, I made a list of every Bitcoin currently in existence and the addresses that they were last sent to.

The code is here: (Just copy these into the bitcointools folder and run bitcoin_age)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28441300/bitcoin_age.py
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28441300/deserialize_unfinishe.py

The results are here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28441300/output_age.xlsx

One thing I thought was interesting was that 3.2 million BTC (nearly half of all current Bitcoins) have not moved this year.

Have fun interpreting the results! :P

https://i.imgur.com/xxpRC.png

Here is a graph showing the amount from each month that hasn't been spent yet. Overall, it's a pretty even distribution until the current year. I'd imagine that a fair amount of these early Bitcoins are lost or forgotten, but as the value has skyrocketed recently, people are holding on to them a little more. Still, a large amount is in current circulation, which I think is a good sign for the future.

would you be able to do a stacked bar graph of what you have along with total bitcoins in the bitcoin economy (total bitcoins generated)

I'd like to see that data as a percentage.

https://i.imgur.com/zJRo6.png

Here is a running percentage of the unredeemed Bitcoins for a particular month compared to the total in existence at the end of that month.

https://i.imgur.com/V5ZFT.png

Here is the percentage of unredeemed compared to the current total in existence.

So for instance only ~1.5 out of 6.4 million BTC have not been moved in May? That’s pretty good actually …

https://i.imgur.com/6SX99.png

I realized that it might make more sense to account for the unredeemed totals from previous months when calculating the running total. So here is the percentage of unredeemed BTC during a particular month, compared to the total Bitcoins in existence at the end of the month minus the past unredeemed totals (i.e. the total still in circulation carried over from the month before plus the total added by mining).

It means that 1.5 million were last spent in May. The rest of the Bitcoins out there have remained stagnant in people's wallets for over a month.

Shouldn’t it be redeemed and not unredeemed Bitcoins per month then? I’m confused.

When a new transaction is created, the network has to go back to previous transactions and redeem them so they can't be used anymore. I looked back through the chain to see all the unredeemed transactions (i.e. all of the currently "existing" Bitcoins). During each month, there are a number of Bitcoins that were generated or sent back then but never used again, and these are the unredeemed Bitcoins. Someone has either been hoarding these Bitcoins for a long time or they're lost forever.

Like I've mentioned before, it's impossible to know whether Bitcoins are lost or not, but looking at the last graph (% in circulation), it's apparent that a large part of the BTC mined initially were permanently kept out of circulation (presumably lost). However, as the months went on, the coins in circulation tended to carry over to the following month. (Note that it's also impossible to distinguish whether the coins actually changed hands or were laundered or shuffled about, but I doubt that those activities comprise a significant percentage.)

For about a year, only 10-20% of the Bitcoins in circulation were completely hoarded away during any particular month. However, this percentage has gone up, likely due to the sudden changes in value. Nonetheless, nearly 70% (about 1.1 million) of the Bitcoins in circulation in April were eventually exchanged during May, so I believe that's a good sign.

Interesting information, thanks!