Bitcoin Forum

Okay, so if you've read the "Research on the Bitcoin Community" thread ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85967.0 ), you'll know that I've been working on a little survey project to try to learn a little more about all of us Bitcoin users.

It will only take a few minutes of your time (14 questions), so if you could help out I would really appreciate it!

https://bitcoinsurvey.herokuapp.com

Feedback is also appreciated. Thank you!

Completed. It's actually very quick, I like it.

I'm curious about the results as well :)

Great survey...

I even declined the bitcents lol :)

Shh. Don't give away the secret!  ;)

How are you checking if people aren't giving repeated responses if you aren't saving the email-addresses? Are you saving the hash value of the email-addresses? I would love to help you out, but Gmail is explicitly stating the survey is asking for my email-address:

Bitcoinsurvey.herokuapp.com is asking for some information from your Google Account xxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
•  Email address: Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx (xxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com)

Yes, I'm only saving a hashed value of the e-mail addresses. (A repeatedly hashed value to be more precise. You can never be too paranoid. :D)

Okay, sounds great! I just completed the survey, looking forward to the results!

That was painless.

Thank you to everybody that's responded so far! Less than two hours and already over 30 of you have helped out. Keep it up!

Shoot, sorry. Something has apparently gone wrong. I'm currently fixing it now.

Okay, the issue should be resolved now. I'm so sorry about that.

Just so you know, it wasn't catastrophic data failure or anything like that. I just accidentally overlooked a syntax error while trying to fix a different small issue (Someone was getting redirected to the first question for a bizarre reason).

Done. I'm curious to see the results.

So am I! We've got about 50 responses so far, so that's the best $6 I've ever spent! ;D

Nice survey. Since this one was largely demographics and very general Bitcoin questions, what sort of topics did you have in mind for future surveys?

Well, I have some ideas. One of the things I'd like to explore more (and others expressed interest in this) are the challenges that might be turning people away from Bitcoin, like negative perception or difficulty to use, and see if there are things we can do to help change it.

Part of the reason I'm doing the demographics right now is to figure out more about why certain types of people might be more likely to use Bitcoin than others, at least at this stage. We'll have to look at the results, but if I had to speculate, I would imagine that we have a relatively high proportion of younger users, as they would be more willing to adopt something new, who are also more technically oriented (programmers, etc.), because Bitcoin would be easier to understand. This might suggest that we should figure out ways to explain and market Bitcoin better to non-technical younger people if we want Bitcoin adoption to increase.

First of all, I applaud the initiative. Second, the title of the post (mybitcoin...) raised an eyebrow for a moment  ;D
Finally, I hope you will use the answers to design a more specific and detailed questionary in future.

Thank you! This is the first time I've ever done something like this, so I hope that this experience will help me make the next one a lot better.

On a side note, we have now hit 75 responses! (I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seats)

How is this more secure?

Well, I'm not an security expert or anything, but as far as I know, there's no computationally easy way to reverse a hash function (let alone several times), so if anybody were to (somehow) get into my database, they wouldn't suddenly have a handy list of plain e-mail addresses they could use to spam with.

I just did it. So the results will be made public?

I made a couple of simple surveys. The second one didn't get many respondents (~50) but the first got over 200 which was OK.

http://kwiksurveys.com?u=BitcoinSurvey
http://kwiksurveys.com?u=BitcoinSurvey2

" I'm looking forward to publishing the results soon. "

Missed that at first.

Yes. As soon as the results slow down (kind of like with popcorn popping), or my fund runs out (whichever comes first), I'll get to work compiling the results and putting them up, along with a raw version for anyone that wants to more in-depth analysis.

It's good you ask the participants to forward the link, but have you advertized on other forums? Perhaps bitcoincharts or other high-traffic sites could donate a banner space for a few days. This is for the common good anyway.

I have posted a link on the Bitcoin subreddit (I have a semi-active account there), but not anywhere else. Though I'd like more people to take it, I'd rather not spam on sites that I don't actually participate on.

i think he meant 'how is more secure to hash repeatedly'? and the answer would be in the time it takes to brute force it.  eg. 1 hash vs 100,000.

by the way, i didn't do the survey because of google... just letting you know, i'd happily do one without such a restriction.

It's also less reversible because the number of preimages of f^n is greater than or equal to the number of preimages of f only applied once. In other words, hash functions applied multiple times ultimately reach a fixpoint containing a bijection between a subset of the entire output domain. There is a trade-off however: collision is easier with f^(large_number), but reversing is harder. In realistically large modern hash functions, neither is easy... and we have no idea how to test whether a given hash value is on the fixpoint or not. Even finding a relatively small cycle would be significant.

-bgc

If I knew a better way to deter spam, I would use it instead.  :(

Side note: We've passed the 100 responses mark!

I took it and shared it (https://twitter.com/bitcoininfo/status/215389235795083264)

So, a lot of people have taken it so far, but I've gotten a lot of feedback, especially on the Reddit post, not liking the authentication procedure. I don't want to exclude people from the survey, so I'm thinking about modifying the app so you can access the survey with a one-time token from me.

Once I do this, then I suppose you can PM me and, as long as you're not a new account, I'll give you a token (should I still offer the Bitcents, though?) Does this sound like a reasonable solution?

Ok, so I've implemented the token idea. If you want to take the survey, but haven't because you didn't want to authenticate through Google, just PM me and I'll send you a link. I really do want as many people as possible to be able to take it.

(P.S. 150 responses!)

pm me a token please but be aware that I will not accurately answer questions about my balance and similar questions that i wouldn't answer publicly here neither.

That said, maybe you should take your survey on the next bitcoin conference where people know it is anonymous.

That would actually be rather interesting, but someone else would have to run it because I'm just too darn broke to travel to a conference any time soon.  :-\

(Update: 175 responses now. I was hoping for about 200, so I'm pretty happy, especially since this was honestly a pretty amateurish operation. If there aren't many more responses by tomorrow, I'll call it good and release the results!)

I forgot to mention one thing on the survey that I really think is important. Bitcoin obviates false authority. That is the major reason that I am involved with and learning about bitcoin. Please make a point to put that in the database somewhere.

Alright, so I've closed the survey now. Expect the results soon!