Bitcoin Forum

What do you think is the best way to measure the popularity of Bitcoin? Some say that amount of transactions or used addresses are good measurements but in my opinion those are not really good.

I think that price is the best way. If moon, it means people are excited, if dump, it means people like fiat more than btc.

The best way would be asking people on the streets no?

1) ask to the supermarket ever month.

2) ask 10 peoples (young to old) in the street every month.

Personally I think this is a really bad way to measure popularity. Price discovery due to the hodl mentality of most bitcoiners is imo quite bad. There are at most 100k or so of the supply traded backwards and forwards. Mostly between the same hands day trading. The price set by that small % of people and coins being traded. As a true measure of popularity a better metric is needed to ascertain any real idea. Number of transactions though a poor metric is still better than price. The best metric would be a measurement of general use in the real world between people and merchants and peer to peer. Discounting those transactions that fall under the send to selfs and gambling transactions.

In modern (and serious = people) economy ... the people only hold the true value of a thing.

so, to simplify : the pay in cash or credit card ... and hold gold or bitcoins.



because, they trust gold/bitcoin instead of cash/credit cash.  8)

No direct way for this I think. Only indirect. How much is written about it, the number of articles in a year, the number of newspapers which wrote about it in a year, the number of conventions in a year, the number of tv shows in one year; even the number of the new youtube videos in a year it is important. But even the number of transactions and the number of wallets are a good indicator.

not convenient and practical at all


could be manipulation, not a good option

i think th best solution is by looking at the number of transaction per day, those that are "cold storaging" will end their work at the end so if the number of TX per day rise, it must be because new people joined in

Go to the DMW and ask every person in lets say a week 5 basic questions, let them take a little questionary.

Also google trends for "bitcoin" , "BTC" search terms.

Best way would be to go to a crowded place and open a booth for free bitcoins. Then see how many people turn up and already know about it. Would be a good measure of how many people are aware of bitcoin and how popular it is.

Since we can't know with exactitude what amount of addresses belong to who and who is actively using BTC or it's a lot of transactions coming from the same source, the best way is simply looking at the Google trends search graph I guess.

No, bro.
As at the time of stress testing and spam attack there were much much greater number of transaction per day,  so this is also not a good way to measure Bitcoin popularity. 

price down: bitcoin doomed

price up: bitcoin moon


 :D


i would look at transactions or

https://panteracapital.com/bitindex/

Nah,  the people will think that free is free and want to get bitcoins even if they don't even know about it.
That's the human nature.   8)

I think if there was a way to count all the nodes connected, would be a good way. I guess a problem with this would be that a lot of people disconnected their nodes because of storage constraints. But I think it would still be a good method to get the big picture of popularity.

that was an isolated case, in a normal activity you can determinate better what TX are genuine or not, and there isn't other way btw, that is the best one without violating the privacy of people

Hi,

try using "Google trends".
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin

Have a nice day!

I remember hearing a news where a group of people went to the street and showed Bitcoin logo to random people. Asked them what is the logo about and the result was like.. seven out of ten think it's a currency. Another small portion know it is actually Bitcoin. You could try doing a similar survey. Such as showing the text "Satoshi Nakamoto" or popular Bitcoin address - 1BitcoinEater.

This is just a misconception about the prices and popularity.
The price doesn't have any relationship with popularity.
Prices of Bitcoin is in the hands of Whales who are manipulating the market.

exactly. it is the dumbest measurement you can look at.

Mostly ask the closest people we had known, ex : friends & family.
AFAIK, the bitcoin popularity still low on growing country rather than develop country who faster adopt bitcoin as the payment for some region

Transactions is the best way to judge how Bitcoin is doing. If Bitcoin really goes mainstream we will know about it pretty quickly...

If i ever hear someone talk about bitcoin i would assume it was getting more popular....

Chances are, 90% people will say they never heard of bitcoin. Some will even say it is some kind of gaming token by hearing the term COIN.

i think we can measure the bitcoin popularity by the amount of merchant that accep bitcoin as a payment in any country in this world..

hey,  no one will think that it is some kind of gaming token just by hearing the term "coin"  associated with it.
Why do you think it like that?

Yes friend,  i think that you are right.
As more and more people will start to believe in Bitcoin, more merchants will start accepting the bitcoin.

You can't measure the popularity of bitcoin by one single figure. I think we have to use a basket of indicators: transactions, volume, merchant, news coverage. We also need to measure the growth of each of these indicators each year.

Amount of bitcoin transaction could be easily tweaked and manipulated, furthermore there are significant number of dust and spam transactions.
Part of Bitcoin philosophy is using new address for every transaction because they are literally endless so you can own hundreds of them.
So you are right, these factors are nothing certain and you cannot measure anything by number transactions and addresses.

I take the cocktail theory for the investment world. Trying to think of the same principles for BTC.

Theory guys like this; If I am at a cocktail party and people come up to me and ask what I do for a living, I reply "I'm in the investment and advisery field" if they look disgusted with me and walk away to go speak to a dentist I know the market is pretty stabilized.

Now Reverse it, if two random people come up to me at the cocktail party, ask the same question and I reply "I am in the investment and advisery field". If they then get excited and start giving me advise on what stocks to buy, and then the dentist comes over and gives me advise on what stocks to buy I know its a good time to start exiting the market because their is to much consumer confidence and froth.

Not really an accurate theory and I wouldn't recommend using this to place any of your trades or engage in the market. It's just one of many things I use to engage in qualified invester confidence.

I would've thought the most reliable way to get a sniff would be the number of verified individual accounts at places like Coinbase, Circle and the big exchanges and whether they're rising, static or falling. That's a long way from being the whole scene of course but a good metric all the same.

Wallet openings and transactions are far too wishy washy.

That's actually really smart, but would be hard to determine specially since people have multiple wallets.

Exchange volume is a nice way to look at it, but captures a certain demographic and leave another demographic that might not trade out. Would be easier if companies posted their earnings and sales number with AUM or Individual account holders. But thats a far step from happening.

Google can show you the popularity of a search keyword I think.

i heard a lot of people talking about bitcoin, especially during the time around end of 2013 when mainstream media reported much about it, but 90% of them have never used or tried bitcoin anyway. so, it is not a good measurement.

I sent a memo out to my firm asking about bitcoin, most for brokers replayed back with "I dont know" or simple "Ponzy". The middle aged brokers seemed more acceptable to BTC and even had a bit of conversations about it.

That's a good sign to me. Most young brokers are idiots, and older brokers are jaded.

My insurance and investment guy didn't even hear of BTC when i asked him if excessive amount of electronic hardware was insurable.

I dont think asking people randomly on the street would work. You'd have to ask alot and it wouldnt be about popularity, it would be more;

"Hey have you ever heard of Bitcoin?" "Ever considered of using it?"

And i suspect most older people to be closed to the idea.

I have Google alerts setup for "Bitcoin" and "BTC", I tend to see a trend of the number of articles per day and movement in price (duh right...) but I also feel its a good metric to gauge adoption to see main stream news outlets reporting on BTC news.

Nor only this but one person can make more than one transaction per day. So he can buy four things with bitcoin and here we are with four transaction from only one person.. Such thing can be made by numerous people. The result. Popularity increased and multiplied per four, five or ten times.

The best way to help bitcoin go mainstream is not to calculat the popularity. If the result is bad no one will invest in bitcoin anymorr. If the result is good big investors will not invest due to the already big market.

it the result would be bad people would invest as they would expect price jumps in the future and if the result is good people expect even more popularity in the future

Don't agree. The investments in bitcoin have nothing to do with popularity. Firstly bitcoin has began from zero without any investment but only with the work of Satoshi Nakamoto and his friends (known and unknown) which developed it in view of its potential. Second is his potential which make him popular in our days and it will be its potential which will make to many others to invest and interesting on it.

Bitcoin as a currency is nothing compare to its technology which will disrupt several technologies in to many was of our everyday life.

The best way to find out usage information from the general public is with a poll or survey. That's why companies spend small fortunes having professionals do product surveys.

Here's a couple that have been done on Bitcoin. I'm sure they'll be more.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/03/05/bitcoin-future-poll/

http://insidebitcoins.com/news/what-do-americans-really-think-about-bitcoin-new-survey-tells-all/29266

I personally think that website traffic rank is a good way to measure something's popularity (especially on the Internet). Some popular sites, like Google, Facebook etc. is having a rank of top few (in world). This forum have a rank of few thousand, and some unpopular altcoin's site have a ranking of few million. Thus it is also a good method of estimating its popularity.

Survey is the better way but not the best. Sometimes the participants of any survey dont represent the whole of people or society, although they have chosen by a random way. The best way imo is counting the participant of any bitcoin forum like this forum, any exchangers site, gambling site, etc

Maybe but traffic counts can be deceiving too. How many trolls are here that don't use Bitcoin? How many Something Awful goons? How many law enforcement officers? How many people don't give two shits about Bitcoin but came here because they heard it's great for signature campaigns and the minute that money dries up their gone? You're going to scoop up a lot of people that you don't want with traffic counts.

Edit: Check out this thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1139726.0

Further to this, you shoudl check out the thread asking people who has 1btc or more. Im gobsmacked that 90% of the people there dont own a whole coin. If you made assumptions that 50% of the accounts on ths forum don't own a whole btc then you can see how any sorts of surveys, traffic counts etc can be deceiving.

Just try this; https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin%2C%20porn%2C%20facebook&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-3

facebook & porn & bitcoin. you'll see ;)

It is quite an eye opening read. On the flip side if Bitcoin was truly popular barely a soul would be capable of owning a whole coin.

There are several leaps to make for a coin owner. Hearing about it, knowing about it, properly understanding what it entails, wanting it and then actually getting hold of some. That process might take years for certain people and most would fall at the final furlong.

Lots of people make lots of noise but most don't have the spare cash or the balls to actually own any.

Yes, we could do some tests such as exchange goods or money with Bitcoins with the people on the street, and see if they would like to exchange with you.

Yeah I have participated that questionnaire
Some people think its too busy for taking their time to participate any survey or poll, and most of those question seems very personal. Thats why just little amount of bitcoin user who want to do that.

Good way is through transactions only, from blockchain because blockchain is best wallet and there's more transactions than any other wallet !!  :)

The concept of a decentralized cryptocurrency without political borders can be challenging at first. Bitcoin forces us to adjust the way that we think about money and value transfer. Fortunately, the bitcoin community has been excellent at consolidating informational data through a loosely-integrated group of dedicated volunteers.

Here are the top 10 bitcoin statistics in no particular order. I have intentionally omitted certain statistics like bitcoin miners’ revenue and mining operating margin because they focus on a subset of the user community. Also, I have tried to provide alternate data sources where available to broaden the statistic’s usefulness. If you don’t see your favorite listed here or if I have missed any important statistics or charts, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

1. Market Capitalization – This displays the historical number of total bitcoins in existence multiplied by the exchange rate for that day in US Dollars. It can be considered the bitcoin monetary base.

2. Price Chart – This chart displays the last trade price for bitcoin (BTC) against a number of currencies and ranks the exchanges by 30-day volume. Advanced charting capability is provided here. The price depth chart of BTC/USD on the MtGox exchange is usually the best indication of overall market price.

ForbesBrandVoice
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USAAVoice
Changing Jobs? What To Do With Your 401(k)
The Forbes E-book On Bitcoin
Secret Money: Living on Bitcoin in the Real World, by Forbes staff writer Kashmir Hill, can be bought in Bitcoin or legal tender.
3. Exchange Volume Distribution – This pie chart displays trading volume distribution by exchange and by various bitcoin currency pairs.

4. Network Hashing Rate – This displays hashing difficulty and the estimated number of Giga hashes per second (computation speed) that the network is performing for various time windows. Calculated by dividing maximum target by current target where target is a 256-bit number, difficulty measures how difficult it is to find a new block compared to the easiest it can ever be. Difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks (or two weeks) and to find a block, the SHA-256 hash of a block’s header must be lower than or equal to the current target for the block to be accepted by the network.

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5. Hash Rate Distribution – This pie chart is an estimation of hash rate distribution amongst the largest mining pools. It is important to monitor because the integrity of the network depends on a single actor not exceeding 50% of the overall hashing power. A more detailed alternate chart using a different data source, IP address that first relayed the block, is Block Origin.

6. Number of Daily Transactions – This chart displays the total number of unique bitcoin transactions per day. An alternate version is also provided that excludes transactions with the top 100 popular bitcoin addresses based on number of outputs. The advent of Satoshi Dice has probably been most responsible for the surge in nominal transaction count since late April.

7. Daily Transaction Volume – This measures the estimated transaction volume per day in US Dollars. An alternate graph visualizes bitcoin network activity in real-time, including transactions, block creation, and currency trade measured in BTC.

8. Bitcoin Days Destroyed – Applying a 7-day average to the non-cumulative chart calculation, Bitcoin Days Destroyed for any given transaction is calculated by taking the number of bitcoin in a transaction and multiplying it by the number of days it has been since those coins were last spent. Bitcoin Days Destroyed attempts to provide a reliable indication of transaction volume that strips out transfers to oneself and immediate account reorganizations since a high value for days destroyed indicates less hoarding and more old bitcoin on the move. It can be considered a measure of monetary velocity. The cumulative version can be found here.

9. Average Transaction Confirmation Time – This measures the average (mean) amount of time in minutes that it takes for a transaction to be accepted into a block. Reasonable estimates differ on the amount of time and confirmations for a transaction to be considered cleared and ‘good’ but that appropriate risk level would be associated with the transaction’s value. Also, see this excellent chart that displays transactions with fees paid against those with no fees paid.

10. Largest Recent Transactions -  Culled from the last 50,000 transactions, this top 100 list gives an indication of actual transaction sizes in bitcoin occurring on the network.

Another useful site with real-time statistics and tools that I like is provided by Bitcoin Block Explorer.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/07/31/top-10-bitcoin-statistics/

I dont think thats a effective way to measure bitcoin popularity, since people could make multiple wallets imo, and we cant know the origin country of the people who do the transaction. And after blockchain got few problems in couple days ago, people began to use other wallet.

People shouldn't be relying on blockchain wallets no, but thats a different story.

As mentioned though just transactions is a terrible metric for measuring popularity. An example if right now while people are 'stress testing' the blockchain by spamming it with transactions. Those transactions are certainly not part of a measurable for bitcoins popularity.

The act of stress testing itself is a measure of popularity in some ways, though. Who would stress test on a useless technology that no one wants?


there aren't many ways to measure the amount of activity around bitcoin accurately. Perhaps one other way is by looking at VC funding. However VC funding also has a lot to do with how good the economy is at that particular time and not just how healthy bitcoin is.

I think once we can walk into high street stores and pay using Bitcoin, this will be a true sign rather then just a few niche stores here and there.  paying for your Mcdonald's with BTC would mean that's it game over job done haha

Popularity of bitcoins can be calculated by the adoption level. If the adoption level keeps on increasing day by day, than the bitcoin is gaining popularity, if a small grocery shops starts accepting bitcoins as a mode of payment than it is gaining popularity. If every single person is aware about the pros and cons of bitcoin than it is popular or else it is not.

I think there are some country which its government ban bitcoin, but most people there have known about bitcoin and getting into it. They dont build any grocery shops that accept bitcoin in their country, but do online transaction actively. So, although there is no bitcoin grocery shop, bitcoin still popular there.

Sure, but the difficulty comes in how to measure such adoption. As far as I am aware there isn't a database of all outlets accepting bitcoin that is updated regularly or for global wide businesses.

People are using it for online transactions that is good, but that brings us to the same point that others who are not involved in online shopping are not aware about the bitcoins, if a common man is aware about the bitcoins then I think it is popular.

I think the best way to measure popularity is by the price, but also the number of transactions happening every day.


One bitcoin can be a lot of money to some people, but some people join this forum to either learn more about it before they take the plunge or to actually try to earn their first coin in some way.

Agreed, There are many people who wants to learn whole concept of bitcoins, like from where they should invest, when to invest, and make sure they don't invest into any ponzi schemes, and they can get valuable information from this forum.

The price could easily be manipulated thus, it is not a good measurement. Lets say there is a big investor who invests $100 mln into Bitcoin. The would cause a price explosion. But it would say nothing about the popularity.

Yes, but if a big business man gets into Bitcoin then Bitcoin is considered to be popular.

Hmmm well the latest news I saw is the Bitcoin is now a global currency in Australia that can explain how much bitcoin is popular
their just look at cointelegraph and the news and you will see reasons !

Xing Ming.

Almost world people have accessed internet, and I'm sure most of them have ever bought something through online shop atleast once or twice. And bitcoin banning by government force people to use it only in internet. But it cant affect the popularity of bitcoin if they really do many transaction with that. So we dont need to make any real shop that accept bitcoin to prove the popularity of bitcoin in the country.

We cannot estimate the number of users from the number of active addresses, transaction volume or price because everyday coins are being sent from one address to another own by the same person and price is distorted by speculation.

The best measure of bitcoin popularity is the number of merchants accepting bitcoin. I do not expect bitcoin to be widely accepted in brick and mortar stores yet, but when you see more and more online shops accept bitcoin, there is no doubt bitcoin gaining popularity.

to measure the level of popularity I think that their use in any sector, preferably in sectors close to the general public or in the micro business sector

as of not we can not measure the popularity of bitcoin
until its not get accepted by goverment and all country..
but  i will rate  bitcoin popularity up 100 for all the people in the world..
i cant say not even 1 percent is the popularity of bitcoin..
in billion people all over the world the people only know about bitcoin..
my higher guess is only over a 1 million..

Probably by opening a survey on ebay, or amazon to see how many people actually have and use bitcoin.

how about the turnover and number of transactions ?

The price of course, high price for popular and low price for unpopular.
Cos when everyone use Bitcoin the price will increase, right?

Yes right point.
When bitcoin hit around $1200 price levels, I did read about bitcoin in yahoo news sections. I heard more people are willing to get paid in bitcoin like that. It means high price will being in more people into bitcoin ecosystem same way more people using bitcoin will make bitcoin more strong and valuable.

Pretty much this...

As for me, I think that the best way to measure the popularity of bitcoin is its price and the way this its quality move in time. If the price remain stable that mean that the popularity is the same. If the price go high slowly and remain in amounts bigger than the previous ones that is the clear fact that the popularity is increased (slowly but increased). Maybe can be even that the existing users want more bitcoin. And in this case are not increase. But normally more popularity mean more need for bitcoin. The newbies want to own some bitcoin. So we will have increase of demand and the price will go high. If the price go high and they return at the same point this is a sign of speculation but maybe even a little increase of popularity. Because we can be in the situation when some buy and some sell. The increase may be a sign of increase of popularity. The speculation can bring the price in the same level. Anyhow the situations which can be created are to many. For sure can be told only that the increase and the not return at the same previous price is a clear sign of the increase of popularity.

Use it wherever you can.

Request to use it at every place you spend money. Maybe ask them if they accept Bitcoin yet every time you make a purchase.

If a place will not accept it, then find a replacement for your purchases that do accept it, then notify the other company exactly why you are choosing the Bitcoin-accepting company.

The fastest way to get someone to change their minds and adopt new technology is by voting with your feet and money.

list of retailers/businesses using bitcoin..

bitpay/coinbase quotes that over 100,000 businesses are accepting bitcoin..

i dont think that user counts or address counts mean much.
after all 1 person can have 20+ addresses on average.
after all signature campains or adsense could send out microtransactions 1000 times a day to a single person..

thus addresses and tx's do not reveal anything useful, unless you can prove the context of each addresss/ tx used,

and that is why i only concentrate on how useful bitcoin is. by looking at how many businesses people can use..

my ultimate popularity neon flashing light moment. is when grocery stores accepting bitcoin have enough coverage that anyone in any town can buy their toilet roll and baked beans with bitcoin.

More or less the same way you measure the popularity of other things: by how much people are talking about it and how much and where it is being used.

Number of transactions always will be misleading with off chain transactions

There are very little offchain transactions and the onchain ones would give you a rough estimate of the amount of Bitcoin transacted. Many shop uses POS such as Bitpay and would require onchain payments. I would use the number of unique address used as a rough estimate.

I think Media coverage and the geographical distribution of bitcoin will be better measure of its popularity along with transaction volume.

Yeah. Those are not really a good indicator of the popularity of Bitcoin. It could just be the same people making transactions over and over again. Or it could be people with multiple addresses. There is really no good indicator of how popular Bitcoin is. All I can say is that it is becoming more popular as you see more and more places starting to accept Bitcoin.

I would say the best way to measure Bitcoin popularity is by researching it. Just do your research to find it out.

A combination of many things - mainstream news, people that you know talking about it, price rise.  There were significant gains in press in 2015.