Bitcoin Forum

http://www.box.net/shared/static/ieou6vgykm.png
Source: http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0 (http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0)

Russia and China I can understand.  But the U.S. is #7.
My friend lives in Sweden. He is interested in bitcoin. :)
Any ideas? 

Sweden is in front with technology here in Scandinavia. not a surprise for me.
but Finland i have difficult to understand.

hell sweden came with the pirate bay, they have been in front since the '90.

im a danish. i live in Danmark, and has knowledge about this.

Finland is where Linux and IRC came from :D


Nordic lands (germany sorta included) as whole, is where Demoscene came from.


If taxes were not absurd on those countries, I would promptly move there.

Barter > High taxes

There has been a lot of talk about Bitcoin in the Swedish blogosphere, much due to Rick Falkvinge (founder of the Swedish Pirate Party) proclaiming that he has invested all his savings in bitcoins. (At least that's how I found out about it.) See this link (in English): http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

But my profession is programmer, and my possible second profession is teaching or having a blog about geopolitics and history... (yep, those two have everything to do with each other XD), barter is not something I can do easily.

Must be some news focus we have missed?

Scandinavian socialism.

he is swedish, but he mostly(only) writes in english, and is a representant for the pirate party in EU. he is known all around EU, it might be why.

How I can see more countries on that list?

Can this partly be due to Chinese and other internet sensitive countries going through http://www.mullvad.net or similar VPN services?

Plus Mullvad accepts bitcoin as a payment :)

With internet restrictions as they are over China if  Bitcoin grows maybe they will be left behind and their inminent lead as #1 world power will delay a few years.

I don't think this is an explanation, because the above mentioned statistic gather search results, not actual use of bitcoins, or direct access to bitcoin related sites.

I think that everyone everywhere can search and learn about bitcoins risk-free, and only would have to go through a VPN to actually buy/sell BTC.

Sweden is full of early adopters in a high tax country with long winters and high technological knowledge. Bitcoin offers some of the freedom and excitement that we need.

I love your side-name thing  ;D

GOD

newbie

Posts :1

Sweden have always been on the front when it comes to technology.
Some ISPs in Sweden can provide 1 Gbit/s Internet to regular people... 10-100 mbit/s is standard.
I wish I lived there. :(

sweden isn't a big surprise really. I guess the news is spreading there quickly.

What I'm waiting for is for the giants in Asia to wake up and smell the bitcoins. Looking at China and India specifically.

there are some fairly draconian laws in china about the use of any kind of cryptography.  it's hard to say how they'd react to the use of the essentially unbreakable crypto in Bitcoin - but poorly, i would think.

china might be the first serious test of a Bitcoin v/s a major government scenario.  the reg'lar folks in china... they sure do like their money...

I totally agree, @Jaime Frontero.  The Chinese people have a very high savings right (~50%, IIRC?) and I imagine they would love to save their money outside of walls of the Communist Party.

Tor nodes?

China is very lax on VPN though.  Perhaps it's because big business can't operate without VPN.