Bitcoin Forum

Is there any good way to measure the number of people currently using Bitcoin?

I suppose, to make the question unambiguous, I'd have to form an operational definition of "using". I'd include at least

• buying or offering to buy bitcoins;
• offering to give or accept bitcoins as payment;
• holding bitcoins for their value;
• generating blocks;
• keeping a balance at some bitcoin exchange.

I'd exclude people holding bitcoins because they downloaded the client last year, mined for a few weeks, and then forgot about it---though presumably most of them will remember if they ever hear about it again, so maybe I shouldn't.

I was considering getting a lower bound based on the number of members here who have made a post in the last four months or so, but there are no advanced member search options that I could find. Maybe an admin or someone could scrape the database for that information.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3149.msg44294#msg44294

Found only this. These are nodes currently online, I think...

The admin search tool doesn't support your exact request, but there are about 1740 users who have been active in the last four months and have at least one post.

Not everyone is on the forum.