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Title: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on August 07, 2011, 03:38:29 AM As many deem business acceptance of bitcoin one of the -if not THE- major indicator for bitcoin's future prospects and well-being, I decided to monitor the number of sites accepting bitcoin as payment for their services/goods. I will also pursue the number of sites accepting bitcoins for donations. Continued data can be found here.
If a rising number of professionals accept bitcoin as legitimate tender, it can be seen as an indicator for future stability and possible rise of the exchange rate. On the other hand a decrease or stalemate in accepting business numbers will indicate a lack of confidence in bitcoin on the businesses site and therefore loom future decay of price and confidence. This is the current data*: http://i50.tinypic.com/35m2p6o.png *currency exchanges not counted; count starting from indent "4 Internet & Mobile services" to the end The total numbers are results from additions and deletions to/from the list in between the intervals. Continuous evaluation is in progress by the many active users of bitcoin.it/wiki, although the entries on the list may not be totally up to date, due to businesses vanishing, changing their minds on accepting bitcoins or being not listed yet. Help in evaluating the correctness of list entries is highly appreciated! Thanks to everybody who has contributed to the correctness of the list! During my last random check I noticed some old or abandoned domains that want to be deleted from the wiki list. Keep up the good work guys (so will I :))! Download: I will publish here the raw data used and archived for conducting the census (includes more detailed information): Table: Merchants_&_Donations.ods (http://dfiles.eu/files/utggvq80h) Adobe Illustrator file (graph): No. of Traders4.ai (http://depositfiles.com/files/c9geuj9rw) Tasks: Please sort out sites that SELL stuff for bitcoin and those that only ACCEPT DONATIONS in bitcoin but not as pay and therefore belong to the list of donation accepting projects/organiszations (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects) *Results of current census biased by all multiple listings News: 16.10.12 A BTCIG THANKS TO EVERYONE THAT PARTICIPATED IN WEEDING OUT THE WIKI! It seems only currently bitcoin accepting sites are still on the list now. That makes the whole directory much more valuable when you look for places to spend your bitcoins. On the other hand there is a big difference between the 1100 merchants accepting bitcoin that bitpay claims to have in its client base and what's on our list. The big decline in numbers must not give any false impressions as the bitcoin economy is still growing with new entries and whole categories (like "Film/Movies (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Film.2FMovies)" in "7 Physical Products" or "Insurance (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Insurance)" in "8 Professional Services") on the list this time. Some vendors seem to have tried out bitcoin to satisfy their curiosity or pay tribute to the idea and on the fly may have discovered that their business is just not ready yet for bitcoin adoption. Others may have just liked the extra attention to their business from the bitcoin crowd but seized to use bitcoin when it didnt yield the anticipated results. They may have lacked enthusiasm and the right strategies also. Other businesses however seem to prosper with this new source of revenue. Categories such as "Decicated Virtual Servers (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Dedicated.2FVirtual_Server_Hosting)" and "Electronics (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Electronics)" have even grown in numbers, while nearly all others have significantly decreased after the weeding out (see spread sheet in Download section above for details). My 3 favorite entries this month: http://www.judge.me/images/logo.png Judge.me provides easy and swift arbitrage of disputes of all kinds. Faster then any court and binding in 149 countries. If you are arguing with someone (maybe with your latest ponzi provider), why not give it a go with judge.me to come to a quick agreement with your counter part on the other end of the world instead of pursuing him physically? Give it a look at: www.judge.me http://shieldmutual.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/websitelogo41.png Are you engaged in dangerous/potentially illegal activity that could get you in trouble, such as whistle blowing, hacktivism, human rights, leaking sectret information or similar? Then shildmutual might be the right address to aid your cause and provide you with support, once things go wrong. This young enterprise claims many years experience in public relations and campaigning for just causes, mostly for individuals like you might be. For only 4$/month they promise to ring the big bell for everyone to hear once you get yourself in trouble. And if you are unsatisfied with their work: They also offer a 12 month money-back-guarantee ;) Naturally shieldmutual accepts bitcoin and is proud to join the revelution. Pay a visit, because a friend in need is a friend indeed! www.shieldmutual.com http://www.bitcoingunparts.com/logo.png Armory reloaded? - This online shop takes bitcoins and buys the desired gun parts for you and organises the shipment to your desired address. The inventory seems quite spartan atm but surely the friendly shop keeper may order any gun parts of your fancy if nicely asked for it. To get in touch with him/her seems the best option atm anyway, because when I tried to put something in my cart it gave me an error message. Nevertheless, to my knowledge the only place on the internet that sells guns for bitcoin atm. Happy hunting! www.bitcoingunparts.com 18.08.12 This time I did some browsing among the entries and look what I found: http://www.bitcoinchurch.org/images/uploaded/jmreneau_mugshot.jpg The Church of BITCOIN! Ever wanted to know more about the allmighty and plentyful teachings of Satoshi Nakamoto (hallowed be Thy name)? Do you feel like to entering into the bond of marriage under the fullmoon of bitcoin?? Reverend Jim makes it possible for a small BTC donation. He is fully licensed by the state of Ohio to solemnize weddings or alternatively handfastings. http://www.bitcoinchurch.org/ http://www.tineye.com/query/211c06900059ed66c6fa22c1bdf5bf6990663d67 A kind of kickstarter that accepts bitcoin to start projects of all kinds. Not much going on right now, but in a creative community like ours, it cant take long till we see some activity on those pages. A little advise for the owner: Please link to the fee schedule, so that people know what they pay before they create projects here. Also, maybe some promotion in the development subforum would be a good idea? https://bitcoinfunding.com/ http://i48.tinypic.com/14njkty.png The Holton Gallery offers great painting by Maui born Artist Matt Holton. Take a look. http://www.holtongallery.blogspot.de/ Will be updated.. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Maged on August 07, 2011, 06:19:07 PM @Mod: Pls move this thread to speculation (and whitelist me while ur on it pls) Done.Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on August 07, 2011, 06:21:20 PM thx
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: GeniuSxBoY on August 07, 2011, 06:43:37 PM What's a scource?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kiba on August 07, 2011, 06:50:46 PM What's a scource? Source. Also, wouldn't it be better if somebody write a program to automate said data gathering of such effort? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on August 07, 2011, 07:13:26 PM What's a scource? Oh my god! The bitcoin witch struck again :o http://i53.tinypic.com/2aaaglu.jpg Also, wouldn't it be better if somebody write a program to automate said data gathering of such effort? Yep, totally agree. Unfortunately I'm a complete no0b in programming anything. If anyone's up to the challenge it would be much appreciated ;) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Shortline on August 07, 2011, 07:40:05 PM Sadly, the number of btc-accepting businesses on the wiki aren't reliable indicators because the wiki doesn't include black market stuff.
I mean, it's better info than most of the technical "analysis" garbage I see around here, mubmo-jumbo with charts and stuff, but it's still skewed. I'd say Silk Road does more btc-related biz than pretty much every site listed on the wiki right now... they've got over twenty thousand members. Do you think any of those other btc businesses have had twenty thousand unique hits? I doubt it very strongly. All the same, good idea OP, keep us updated. I used to check the trade page history every day. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Anduril on August 07, 2011, 08:05:11 PM The trade page is not an accurate reflection of who accepts Bitcoins right now. I conducted a small sample recently of one sub-section (educational software), and found that only 3 of the listed businesses still seemed to be accepting BTC. My own unscientific impression of the market at the moment is that there are quite a lot of sites that thought about accepting BTC, but no longer do.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: vulgata on August 07, 2011, 10:53:59 PM The trade page is not an accurate reflection of who accepts Bitcoins right now. I conducted a small sample recently of one sub-section (educational software), and found that only 3 of the listed businesses still seemed to be accepting BTC. My own unscientific impression of the market at the moment is that there are quite a lot of sites that thought about accepting BTC, but no longer do. Exactly, before we try to make any indicators off of the page, we need to have someone go through and actually verify all of them first (and check back regularly). We have to work at the speed of Internet. Title: Update 11.08.2011 Post by: Spekulatius on August 12, 2011, 12:41:16 AM Updated.
Although the entries alltogether may not respect the exact current status, evaluation of existing entries seems to be in progress, as I have noticed that some entries have actually been deleted, while new ones were added during my last count. However, the work in progress seems insufficient in order to keep pace with the changes done to the lists. If you've got some time left and would like to see this indicator grow up to a reliable statement of the current bitcoin economy, I'd highly appreciate if you could check some of the entries on the lists, whether they still exist and accept bitcoin. Thank you, -Spekulatius Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on August 21, 2011, 08:26:43 PM updated
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: FlipPro on August 22, 2011, 07:56:40 AM The trade page is not an accurate reflection of who accepts Bitcoins right now. I conducted a small sample recently of one sub-section (educational software), and found that only 3 of the listed businesses still seemed to be accepting BTC. My own unscientific impression of the market at the moment is that there are quite a lot of sites that thought about accepting BTC, but no longer do. Exactly, before we try to make any indicators off of the page, we need to have someone go through and actually verify all of them first (and check back regularly). We have to work at the speed of Internet. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on October 07, 2011, 01:14:31 AM updated
The good news: The Bitcoin Economy® is still growing at steady pace. I also noticed people working on evaluating valid entries on the list at en.bitcoin.it/wiki/trade THANK YOU GUYS!!! The bad news: I still am not dirty rich! Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: panerai on October 07, 2011, 02:17:41 PM Wonder if there's a way to show how big Silk Road's market is
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Technomage on October 07, 2011, 05:40:54 PM This is a good indicator that gives us a picture of the long-term prospects of Bitcoin. Something to think about while the price looks for a new, and very likely final, bottom.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: quartz92 on October 07, 2011, 08:59:38 PM This is a good indicator that gives us a picture of the long-term prospects of Bitcoin. Something to think about while the price looks for a new, and very likely final, bottom. To be honest, we need a lot more than this, btc needs a major hit, otherwise it will die.Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Nagle on October 07, 2011, 09:26:36 PM If we had a list of "companies that have accepted at least 1000 bitcoins", that might be useful. Below that threshold, it's just something being toyed with as a promotion.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Technomage on October 07, 2011, 10:25:42 PM To be honest, we need a lot more than this, btc needs a major hit, otherwise it will die. I don't think it needs any "hit", it already has everything it needs to succeed. With all the potential in gambling, porn, gaming (these are not to be laughed at, we're talking about significant markets) and the fact that Bitcoin is great as a store of value for very-long-term. A good shield against inflation like gold, but more convenient. This role will be more valued when the market gets bigger and the price won't be so dominated by speculation. This stability can eventually be achieved by both increased usage as a medium of exchange and increased usage as a store of value. All of this added with the fact that some pretty neat ways of paying with Bitcoins both online and physically have already been developed and are going to be developed further. And the low fees don't hurt either. Of course Bitcoin needs more publicity and massive marketing, but all of that will follow once the potential of Bitcoin is fulfilled further. I see the June peak as only the peak of the hype wave that had a lot of expectations for Bitcoin. That was the beginning. Now we're recovering and it'll take a long time for the economy to truly develop which will start the next wave that'll be more based on what's actually been done and what's going on, not what we expect to happen some day. This is a long struggle and everything is in the hands of the enterpreneurs developing the Bitcoin economy. Are they going to despair because the price has been on a downward spiral, or will the think clearly of what Bitcoin can do, and work on it? This will decide if Bitcoin really succeeds or not. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: mp420 on October 08, 2011, 04:03:44 PM I believe the "killer app" for bitcoin would be a payment processing service. Making smallish payments across borders is very troublesome and expensive, and I think various third parties could easily compete directly against credit card companies and Paypal.
This is what I have in mind: A US-based company that can make bank transfers (write checks or make direct deposits) to US banks. The company holds a largish amount of BTC and USD in an exchange and hedges itself against fluctuations in BTC value. The recipients provide their identification to the company so that the payment processing company can cooperate with law enforcement and comply with money laundering laws. The money senders just send BTC (and remain anonymous if they so wish), the processing company covers its costs (+profit) with fees and then just sends the USD to the recipients. Everything is perfectly legal, I think. And even if the fees might initially be higher than even Paypal, I believe there could be demand for this service. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Fiyasko on October 08, 2011, 04:07:20 PM Can we please get a list of all those sites?
Lol seriously, It's too hard to google bitcoin accepting merchants. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Andrew Bitcoiner on October 09, 2011, 05:24:50 AM I believe the "killer app" for bitcoin would be a payment processing service. Making smallish payments across borders is very troublesome and expensive, and I think various third parties could easily compete directly against credit card companies and Paypal. This is what I have in mind: A US-based company that can make bank transfers (write checks or make direct deposits) to US banks. The company holds a largish amount of BTC and USD in an exchange and hedges itself against fluctuations in BTC value. The recipients provide their identification to the company so that the payment processing company can cooperate with law enforcement and comply with money laundering laws. The money senders just send BTC (and remain anonymous if they so wish), the processing company covers its costs (+profit) with fees and then just sends the USD to the recipients. Everything is perfectly legal, I think. And even if the fees might initially be higher than even Paypal, I believe there could be demand for this service. http://bitcashretail.com Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Cluster2k on October 09, 2011, 09:42:18 AM I believe the "killer app" for bitcoin would be a payment processing service. Making smallish payments across borders is very troublesome and expensive, and I think various third parties could easily compete directly against credit card companies and Paypal. This is what I have in mind: A US-based company that can make bank transfers (write checks or make direct deposits) to US banks. The company holds a largish amount of BTC and USD in an exchange and hedges itself against fluctuations in BTC value. The recipients provide their identification to the company so that the payment processing company can cooperate with law enforcement and comply with money laundering laws. The money senders just send BTC (and remain anonymous if they so wish), the processing company covers its costs (+profit) with fees and then just sends the USD to the recipients. Everything is perfectly legal, I think. And even if the fees might initially be higher than even Paypal, I believe there could be demand for this service. http://bitcashretail.com How does your service get around money laundering and anti terrorism legislation in the USA and other countries? Do people who want to transfer money have to identify themselves with sufficient ID? This is more a follow up to the original question of transferring money between countries, and bitcashretail.com was cited as the answer to that. Also you have at least 2 spelling errors on your front page. "onvert" and "BitCashRetai.com" "BitCashRetail.com is designed for Merchants and Sellers to get the maximum rate of return on what they have to sell at no cost*" "* Some fees apply, please read the Terms Of Service" Aren't these two statements directly contradictory? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on December 18, 2011, 08:25:13 PM Updated
Since my last update 2 month have past. In despite of a continued devaluation of bitcoin against real world currencies, the number of businesses accepting bitcoin on- as well as offline has risen constantly. Especially the segment of professional services, like software- consulting or creative services has picked up. Some previous entries vanished and are not part of the count anymore, others were created. I will continue to illustrate the stats of the list at irregular intervals, feedback and contributions welcome! Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on January 16, 2012, 01:46:20 PM I was very suprised to see this number has only increased by 100 or so in 6 months. I was expecting to see exponential growth instead of linear. Estimating the black market growth would be interesting. It was attempted in this thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40758.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40758.0)
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Technomage on January 16, 2012, 02:03:36 PM I was very suprised to see this number has only increased by 100 or so in 6 months. I was expecting to see exponential growth instead of linear. Estimating the black market growth would be interesting. It was attempted in this thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40758.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40758.0) I believe it will continue to be linear until Bitcoin is accepted as payment by a prominent, well known merchant. We need only a couple of those and it'll explode to exponential growth. But not before. There is simply not enough marketing potential yet to fuel massive merchant growth. I'm very confident that this will change in a couple of years though, it requires a spark of some sort. It's just a matter of time.Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on January 16, 2012, 08:04:08 PM Update :D
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on February 08, 2012, 09:43:57 PM I keep checking this thread hoping for updates:)
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on February 08, 2012, 11:23:17 PM updated monthly,
next update in T-07 days.. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on February 17, 2012, 08:38:37 AM DECLINE!
update (watch first post of thread) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Technomage on February 17, 2012, 11:57:28 AM DECLINE! Just like you explained in the first post this is due to a cleanup process. In recent months there has been talk that the list needs to be evaluated from top to bottom, not many have participated in it but I think this has already had a significant effect. It will probably lead to more decline when evaluation of all entries is finished.update (watch first post of thread) It's a good thing for Bitcoin users because the list had a good number of dead/zombie sites, which will now be removed. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on March 07, 2012, 10:23:05 PM how do you view the Merchants_&_Donations.ods file? What program can I use?
And this does not include brick & mortar stores, correct? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on March 09, 2012, 04:02:59 PM use open office, libre office, gnumeric,..
Yes it includes real world stores as well. All entries from indent "4 Internet & Mobile services" are counted. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on March 21, 2012, 09:27:52 PM How is march coming along?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on March 22, 2012, 11:42:57 AM I suggest adding some more colors like orange, pink, yellow, dark green, etc. Right now there seems to be a lot of shades of blue that are a little tougher to distinguish. Not that big a deal, but thought I'd throw it out there.
Looking forward to seeing if the trend changes this month! I haven't had a chance to review the data with open office. I've been too bust @ work preparing for my vacation. Ciao! Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on April 15, 2012, 10:37:53 PM updated!
--> see first post! :o Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: RaggedMonk on April 16, 2012, 08:56:05 PM Awesome! Always reassuring to see growth :)
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on May 19, 2012, 02:49:09 PM updated
--> OP ;D Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on May 20, 2012, 12:29:18 AM I wonder if merchants could be convinced to contribute to this project themselves. They would have to respond to an email once a month to verify they are still in business or something. Also, maybe they would be willing to fill out a poll asking how much business (roughly) they do each month.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on May 20, 2012, 12:41:56 AM whoa! That sounds like alot of work :o
more work than I can handle. Maybe some one wants to step in..? ;D mayyyybeeeeee...???? ??? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: ShireSilver on May 20, 2012, 02:08:05 AM I wonder if merchants could be convinced to contribute to this project themselves. They would have to respond to an email once a month to verify they are still in business or something. Also, maybe they would be willing to fill out a poll asking how much business (roughly) they do each month. What I do for merchants listed on my Shire Silver site is have them pay $1/month. If they decide to no longer participate, they have an incentive to update that status. It might be a trivial amount, but it does help ensure only those who are serious in acceptance are listed. Perhaps a satoshi/month or so might work for this. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 18, 2012, 09:16:12 PM updated :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: uuidman on June 21, 2012, 05:37:26 AM This is great work, thanks.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 21, 2012, 10:09:55 AM Thank you kind Sirs!
I only wish Id see more action in the wiki going on. If you like and value those findings you all can help to improve them by checking a couple of entries in the list, whether they are still valid and businesses behind them actually use bitcoin right now. Help is very much appreciated! Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant :D Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: nimda on June 21, 2012, 10:30:53 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :)
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on June 22, 2012, 06:13:33 AM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on June 22, 2012, 08:42:29 AM Interesting stuff, subbing. Keep it up :)
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 22, 2012, 11:46:20 AM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Yeah, if I had a shitload of money, I would consider your offer or just pay a horde of Indians to do it for me. But unfortunately (especially for me) Im only a small fish in the bitcoin pond, so: NO MONEY FOR ANYONE! But thx for the offer anyway. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: nimda on June 22, 2012, 02:37:52 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant I will write a professional-grade multi-platform script to automate it for a commission...Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on June 22, 2012, 02:47:56 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant I will write a professional-grade multi-platform script to automate it for a commission...Heh, fair enough. My comments still apply. He can't pay for it, but if someone donates it, that'll help this effort. If he doesn't have money to pay others to do his work, what makes you think he has money to pay to automate his work? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 22, 2012, 03:37:04 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant I will write a professional-grade multi-platform script to automate it for a commission...You WILL do it?! Did you find someone to pay you? ;) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on June 22, 2012, 03:47:36 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant I will write a professional-grade multi-platform script to automate it for a commission...You WILL do it?! Did you find someone to pay you? ;) To phrase another way: He will do it IF he's paid a commission. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 22, 2012, 04:11:10 PM naa, I think he cant
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on June 22, 2012, 05:29:08 PM naa, I think he cant haha, well that's a completely different discussion. I'm guessing you're probably right... Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: nimda on June 22, 2012, 05:47:30 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant I will write a professional-grade multi-platform script to automate it for a commission...Heh, fair enough. My comments still apply. He can't pay for it, but if someone donates it, that'll help this effort. If he doesn't have money to pay others to do his work, what makes you think he has money to pay to automate his work? Also, unsuccessful trolls are unsuccessful. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: notme on June 22, 2012, 09:12:39 PM I'll do it for a BTC commission :) ??? This guy is doing this of his own free will... he's looking for other volunteers... he's not looking to pay people to do something that he's doing voluntarily. How the heck does that make sense? Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant I will write a professional-grade multi-platform script to automate it for a commission...Heh, fair enough. My comments still apply. He can't pay for it, but if someone donates it, that'll help this effort. If he doesn't have money to pay others to do his work, what makes you think he has money to pay to automate his work? Also, unsuccessful trolls are unsuccessful. The one trolling for money is the most unsuccessful troll. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: nimda on June 22, 2012, 09:16:44 PM If you call a coding offer "trolling for money" and not having any takers after a few days "unsuccessful" then sure...
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: notme on June 22, 2012, 09:20:56 PM If you call a coding offer "trolling for money" and not having any takers after a few days "unsuccessful" then sure... When it is in response to a call for volunteers, absolutely. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 22, 2012, 09:41:06 PM I dont think you know how to do it
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: nimda on June 22, 2012, 10:15:20 PM If you call a coding offer "trolling for money" and not having any takers after a few days "unsuccessful" then sure... When it is in response to a call for volunteers, absolutely. Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant As a call for volunteers. I apologize.I dont think you know how to do it I don't think you're really Bill Cosby ;)Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 22, 2012, 10:25:04 PM Zappadi Bibbedi!
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: enmaku on June 22, 2012, 10:29:33 PM Seems like you could just yank the HTML of the wiki page and count <li> tags, keep historical records and whip up some charts. I have zero time, but any old PHP wizard should be capable of that, right?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: notme on June 22, 2012, 10:49:29 PM Seems like you could just yank the HTML of the wiki page and count <li> tags, keep historical records and whip up some charts. I have zero time, but any old PHP wizard should be capable of that, right? That will get you the table of contents as well as a few other things you don't want. Counting <a> tags with class "external" should get you pretty close. So, yeah, in many languages this could be done in 5 lines. You'd miss out on some of the restaurants that don't have a link, but it wouldn't be too hard to special-case those. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: enmaku on June 22, 2012, 11:03:06 PM Seems like you could just yank the HTML of the wiki page and count <li> tags, keep historical records and whip up some charts. I have zero time, but any old PHP wizard should be capable of that, right? That will get you the table of contents as well as a few other things you don't want. Counting <a> tags with class "external" should get you pretty close. So, yeah, in many languages this could be done in 5 lines. You'd miss out on some of the restaurants that don't have a link, but it wouldn't be too hard to special-case those. Those things don't really change though, so it should be easy to count those and subtract them from the total. In any case, it should be easy enough to implement. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 22, 2012, 11:30:39 PM would it be possible to group the resulting numbers in categories, like physical goods, professional services, restaurants, etc.?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on June 25, 2012, 06:36:54 PM If you call a coding offer "trolling for money" and not having any takers after a few days "unsuccessful" then sure... When it is in response to a call for volunteers, absolutely. Quote Oh, and the best thing would of course be, if someone could actually write a prog that counts the entries automatically and keeps them up to date, making me redundant As a call for volunteers. I apologize.I dont think you know how to do it I don't think you're really Bill Cosby ;)Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on July 06, 2012, 10:56:07 PM This one's been going round my head a few days, but one evening and a few glasses of red wine, and I think I'm on the right track. Here's a dump from my script in its current take:
http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.json (Best viewed with some kind of JSON-prettifier in your browser.) It runs through a set number of revisions in the Trade History, and grabs the last version for each month that it finds, then does a bunch of parsing to count the items in each category. It's pretty basic at the moment - it's not handling any special exceptions or tables in the page, for instance. I figure some kind of CSV output might be useful too, and I'll probably get it running once a night to keep the latest timepoint up to date as well, at some point. Sticking the data into a database would make it easier to do the counting as well. Feel free to suggest anything else, or point out inaccuracies. My spare coding time is fairly limited these days, so don't expect miracles to happen too quickly though. And if it's useful, small tips go a long way... :) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: vokain on July 07, 2012, 12:32:00 AM would it be possible to group the resulting numbers in categories, like physical goods, professional services, restaurants, etc.? Can we keep a Google Docs or Wiki up on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page? That way we can edit as need be and also keep track easily :) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Fiyasko on July 07, 2012, 02:23:22 PM Can we please get a list of all those sites? Lol seriously, It's too hard to google bitcoin accepting merchants. Im noticing alot of chatter related to people reading some form of list of the sites... All i have is en.bitcoin.it/wiki/trade How/where can i get a list of the 800+ sites that accept bitcoin. Also, Fwiw, Screw 4shared, "no account? No download" Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on July 08, 2012, 12:20:04 AM This one's been going round my head a few days, but one evening and a few glasses of red wine, and I think I'm on the right track. Here's a dump from my script in its current take: http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.json (Best viewed with some kind of JSON-prettifier in your browser.) It runs through a set number of revisions in the Trade History, and grabs the last version for each month that it finds, then does a bunch of parsing to count the items in each category. It's pretty basic at the moment - it's not handling any special exceptions or tables in the page, for instance. I figure some kind of CSV output might be useful too, and I'll probably get it running once a night to keep the latest timepoint up to date as well, at some point. Sticking the data into a database would make it easier to do the counting as well. Feel free to suggest anything else, or point out inaccuracies. My spare coding time is fairly limited these days, so don't expect miracles to happen too quickly though. And if it's useful, small tips go a long way... :) Thanks for your efforts mate! It seems to do a pretty good job at counting already. Although the tables need to be included in a future version. I used http://jsonviewer.stack.hu/ to look at your script from above. Is there a more appropriate one to use? Maybe some output in tables would be handy. Quote Can we keep a Google Docs or Wiki up on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page? That way we can edit as need be and also keep track easily Smiley Quote Also, Fwiw, Screw 4shared, "no account? No download" I will consider a new hoster for my next update. It would need to facilitate .png, .ai, .ods -file hosting and downloading. Will look into google docs as well. Any other suggestions? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on July 08, 2012, 09:10:00 PM This one's been going round my head a few days, but one evening and a few glasses of red wine, and I think I'm on the right track. Here's a dump from my script in its current take: http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.json (Best viewed with some kind of JSON-prettifier in your browser.) Thanks for your efforts mate! It seems to do a pretty good job at counting already. Although the tables need to be included in a future version. I used http://jsonviewer.stack.hu/ to look at your script from above. Is there a more appropriate one to use? Maybe some output in tables would be handy. Done and done - have included tabled items, and also added in CSV output for exporting into spreadsheets. Here's data taken from the last 3000 edits, which goes back to February 2011: CSV: http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.csv JSON: http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.json The CSV version means you can load it straight into a Google Doc using =importData(), like this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnMuKQGBY6LhdFZsbzU4WlFSS3J6TDIyUHItdXFtWlE (Second sheet contains a quick chart. I'll leave charting the breakdowns up to you...) And thanks for the jsonviewer link. I usually use browser plugins, but might come in handy when I can't do that. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on July 08, 2012, 10:10:21 PM Thank you very much!
Ill look into it tomorrow and will give you my feedback. The best thing would be, that I would only have to insert the values your application gives me into my graphical chart on the front page and thats it! We'll see how we get there. Cheers, Spekulatius Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on July 20, 2012, 07:54:08 PM UPDATE! :D :D :D :D :D
@ scribe: Thank you for your nifty tool, today I compared its results with mine and they match pretty well (some differences due to differing ways to count or different due days). I would like to update my graph solely based on your tool, but in order to do that I would like to know what dates exactly it uses to set the numbers for its output, like what calendar day (and time) does it set for March 2012 for example? Also, I like the google docs table you have provided. Unfortunately the graph looks disgusting from an aethetic point of view. Is there any way to beautify it a bit? Unfortunately, I cannot alter anything on there to make it look different, maybe you can? Would it in those regards even be possible to have an ever updating graph on the front post? Thanks, you are my man, Spekulatius Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: tgmarks on July 20, 2012, 08:01:27 PM This a pretty tight and informative chart. I appreciate it being put together.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on July 30, 2012, 11:37:57 AM Thanks for the update - late reply due to being on holiday here...
@ scribe: Thank you for your nifty tool, today I compared its results with mine and they match pretty well (some differences due to differing ways to count or different due days). I would like to update my graph solely based on your tool, but in order to do that I would like to know what dates exactly it uses to set the numbers for its output, like what calendar day (and time) does it set for March 2012 for example? Good question - because it's based on wiki edits, I used the latest edit available for each month, i.e. state of the wiki page at the end of each month. I could change this to use the first edit of the month fairly easily, if that's better - or possibly an average of the two. (I'm not keen on averaging all edits, just to avoid hammering the wiki...) Some more info/ideas from my blogpost write-up here: http://bitcoinlife.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/counting-bitcoin-merchants/ Also, I like the google docs table you have provided. Unfortunately the graph looks disgusting from an aethetic point of view. Is there any way to beautify it a bit? Unfortunately, I cannot alter anything on there to make it look different, maybe you can? Would it in those regards even be possible to have an ever updating graph on the front post? Yeah, Google Docs is, uh, "basic" - to be kind. Colours are basically flat, Google-style. Highcharts is much nicer in terms of output - I'll see if I can change the JSON output to feed out as Highcharts format, but not sure how easy it is to then save that as an image somewhere. Would also be good to save stats into a database rather than pulling from the wiki history each time (for historical data) - and maybe do a version for the German list... Edit: Highcharts output wasn't too tricky. Still need to play with the look, but a first draft version exists here, with "export as image" button included in top-right corner: http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/highchart.php Not sure why older categories don't show up, so there's a bit of a mismatch before the start of 2012. Also managed to get it to read the script's previous JSON output, so I don't have to scrape the whole history each time the script runs now. (Easier than handling a database...) I'll set it up at some point to run daily, at which point the highcharts page above should at least update the latest figure whenever changes to the wiki page are made. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on August 19, 2012, 02:38:32 AM Update >:(
This time some nifty merchant reviews included!! @ Scribe: I tried to do it with your charts this time, but unfortunately they dont seem to update and dont show the August stats atm. Would that change automatically at the end of the month? Do you think you could get this highcharts implementation done? Cheers, Spekulatius Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on August 24, 2012, 08:54:49 PM @ Scribe: I tried to do it with your charts this time, but unfortunately they dont seem to update and dont show the August stats atm. Would that change automatically at the end of the month? Do you think you could get this highcharts implementation done? Finally got round to setting this up to run daily - http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.csv should update the latest month's figure when any changes are made. Not got much time to look at highcharts for a few weeks. The current page has an "export image" button top-right, but can't think of a way to do this automatically. Also for some reason the chart isn't displaying properly in my browser until you turn some categories off and on. Keep up the analysis :) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on September 17, 2012, 02:06:47 AM With BitPay recently accepting its 1000th merchant, how can this chart show less than that for the entire community?
Title: . Post by: inbox on September 17, 2012, 02:21:23 AM .
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on September 17, 2012, 04:56:40 AM With BitPay recently accepting its 1000th merchant, how can this chart show less than that for the entire community? Not every merchant is listed on the wiki databases these charts are based off of. The fact that they are close seems reasonable given how prominent and convenient Bitpay services are (were?). However, I doubt Bitpay has the entire bitcoin community processing payments... I'm guessing that puts the total number of businesses somewhere around 1,500, but monitoring these other databases and lists are still helpful from a relative month to month point of view to show the rate of growth. So far, it's been slow & steady with similar number of businesses getting listed each month. We'll see when it switches to exponential (2013?)! Make sure to buy your bitcoins before that happens! Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: notme on September 19, 2012, 01:08:43 AM With BitPay recently accepting its 1000th merchant, how can this chart show less than that for the entire community? Not every merchant is listed on the wiki databases these charts are based off of. The fact that they are close seems reasonable given how prominent and convenient Bitpay services are (were?). However, I doubt Bitpay has the entire bitcoin community processing payments... I'm guessing that puts the total number of businesses somewhere around 1,500, but monitoring these other databases and lists are still helpful from a relative month to month point of view to show the rate of growth. So far, it's been slow & steady with similar number of businesses getting listed each month. We'll see when it switches to exponential (2013?)! Make sure to buy your bitcoins before that happens! All that, plus I'm a bit pay merchant. Click the button here to buy me a dollar ;): http://www.yrral.net/pay_me.html *note bit-pay.com seems to be down at the moment, so if you really want to buy me dollars you'll have to wait :(. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: damnek on September 19, 2012, 08:05:33 AM I'd like to see a list of those 1000+ merchants though (so I can support them). I've asked for it before but they seem to be hesitant to give it out.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: kjlimo on October 08, 2012, 03:43:43 AM Probably time for an update.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on October 09, 2012, 04:38:17 PM Did you guys know how heavily edited the wiki is now? Hardly any of the sites I use are even listed on it! MagicalTux said something about how the trade page is supposed to be a short list of merchants. This makes sense as new users should see a list of the best sites, but there should be a complete list somewhere. Perhaps someone should make one?
I found this thread from last year "Uncensored list of Bitcoin sites", where someone made a new trade page, but it doesnt work anymore. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7258.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7258.0) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Technomage on October 09, 2012, 04:47:18 PM Yes there is a problem with this whole thing. Even here in Finland many Bitcoin accepting merchants are simply missing from that list because nobody has taken the initiative to put them there. We have our own map and own listing for the Finnish community... it's just tiresome with many lists and everyone seems to be too lazy to update them all.
I'm quite sure that the Wiki list is missing A LOT of merchants. The list is far from complete. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: rpietila on October 10, 2012, 06:33:07 PM Yeah. Few people even know that there is tax-free silver for EU citizens available in Estonia. It is the cheapest in EU and can be bought for BTC :)
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on October 13, 2012, 09:19:32 PM The wiki is fine, but we need a comprehensive directory of bitcoin sites that doesnt filter based on legality. I would spend a lot more coins if I could find where to spend them easier. Putting a tiny bounty on each added site would probably get the whole thing populated real quick for under $100
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on October 16, 2012, 01:21:00 AM Update ;D
@ all: Thanks for weeding out the rotten entries in the wiki! :-* Also, Scribe contributed his magnificent json script to count all the entries automaticallly and order them by category and date (see above). Unfortunately he didnt finish on the project and as it is right now, the script stops to count new entries to the database since July 2012. Scribe also seems too busy to finish his work on the script so that I could simply rely completely on it to keep the census updated. I have been busy lately also too much to do the counting last month for example and will likely be busy in the future some month long as well. To keep an up to date (even on a daily basis!) ledger of bitcoin accepting merchants (and donation receivers,..) someone please has to finish the script scribe has begun! What needs to be done: - The script has to continue counting - The output needs to brush up on its looks (the goolge charts just look ugly. Scribe mentioned High Charts at one point) - Optional but desirable: The output should be hosted somewhere (for free?) to link and display it directly in this thread (or any other site) Thx and happy bitcoining! Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on October 16, 2012, 05:15:39 PM It doesnt even seem worth it to continue at this point, as that graph is totally meaningless. I can spend bitcoins at way more sites today than I could a year ago. We must come up with a better indicator of bitcoin acceptance.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on October 16, 2012, 09:12:58 PM Hey, sorry for being out of contact, one of those lives.
Agree with both sides - I'm happy to get/keep the script running, but sure, it's not an indicator for number of Bitcoins merchants, just an indicator of wiki activity. In fact, it'd be good to add in "churn" as well - number of sites removed as well as added, as an indicator of the "health" of the wiki page. Not an indicator or the number of overall merchants, but interesting nonetheless. Anyway, I think I see what happened with the script - it *is* actually updating (once a day), but the stats are being added to the bottom of each section, rather than in time order, e.g.: Code: Currency exchanges {The CSV version should list them a bit better: http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.csv Interestingly, October shows a large dip so far. Has someone been cleaning up the wiki? I'll try to "fix" the JSON ordering soon, plus might put the code up on github in case anyone wants to run/help. One change I'd like to do is to merge or drop categories where an old one has been renamed/moved about. And yeah, if anyone has any bright ideas for exporting as an image automatically, let me know. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on October 16, 2012, 09:30:53 PM Thx Scribe!
@all: Any ideas where to get a more comprehensive list from? Maybe crawl lists on different pages and sort out doubles to pick up on those that are not in the bitcoin.it/wiki/trade list? Is that even possible within reasonable limits of scripting work? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on October 18, 2012, 04:04:48 PM In reply to concerns that this indicator becomes useless as time goes on, Id like to remind you that it was NEVER a comprehensive representation of the total amount of merchants accepting bitcoin at all. The gap between bitcoin accepters and those listed on the wiki page will naturally grow with time and bitcoin adoption. Just like all telephone connections of a town could easily be listed in a small book in the early days of the technology, but soon with mass adoption the number of connections grew beyond what any directory was capable to index. Some telephone owners deliberatly chose not to be listed, others simply didnt care. Same deal with this "central" directory of bitcoin accepting merchants (just think Silk Road ;) )
Despite its inherent flaws this census is the best representation we currently have and if we keep in mind that with time the true number of bitcoin accepters and those on the list will gap apart we can still estimate the true numbers better then any unbased guess ever could. I have written an inquiry to bitpay representatives in hopes to receive an educating answer to how they managed to raise their client base to more then 1100 already and who those customers are, quite obviously they have a more comprehensive list of outlets then the wiki currently provides. We may even find a way to improve this indicator with combined efforts and facilitate a better experience for people that look to spend their coins. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on October 18, 2012, 04:15:11 PM I think tracking the number of real world shops would be a much better indicator.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops) Seems that it would correlate at a certain ratio to the estimated number of websites. You may be able to reconstruct a monthly graph from the edit history. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on October 18, 2012, 04:31:15 PM I think tracking the number of real world shops would be a much better indicator. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops) I dont think its a better indicator per se as bitcoin's main advantages over traditional currencies can most easily be exploited over the internet and therefore online merchants will probably dominate bitcoin adoption for a long time IMO. It seems a very valuable indicator nevertheless. Quote Seems that it would correlate at a certain ratio to the estimated number of websites. You may be able to reconstruct a monthly graph from the edit history. Agreed @ Scribe: Do you think you can add a graph parsing the real worls shops as well in a future update? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on October 18, 2012, 06:03:16 PM You don't really need a script when there is only 50 shops, and only 3 categories. You can just look at the wiki revision history once a month and see what got added.
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on October 18, 2012, 06:15:48 PM You don't really need a script when there is only 50 shops, and only 3 categories. You can just look at the wiki revision history once a month and see what got added. Yeah, but if we can implement it in the script now, why wait? It will surely grow in the future, by then I will be happy not to have to count them all by hand. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on October 18, 2012, 09:17:51 PM @ Scribe: Do you think you can add a graph parsing the real worls shops as well in a future update? Should be pretty simple - most of the code will be the same, but there may be differences in how the lists are structured (I use headings a lot, but in theory it should be a simple job...) Will have a look soon, probably after the weekend. On a side note, is there any way to do a Google search to find out how many sites use the bitpay code, or something similar? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on October 19, 2012, 03:53:04 PM Even here in Finland many Bitcoin accepting merchants are simply missing from that list because nobody has taken the initiative to put them there. We have our own map and own listing for the Finnish community... https://bittiraha.fi/content/bitcoin-karttapalvelu (https://bittiraha.fi/content/bitcoin-karttapalvelu) Is this the map you are talking about? I just googled "bitcoin kartla" to search for the finnish bitcoin map. Google refuses to translate the page, but I see at least one shop that is not listed on the english RealWorldShops wiki. http://vegemesta.com/ (http://vegemesta.com/) This clip from Finnish TV shows that shop with a bitcoin logo in the window. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vYH1JH73pw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vYH1JH73pw) So I added vegemesta to the map. If you start making a graph of that, we should probably have criteria for what qualifies to be on the map, as some of the stuff in the "other" category is just an office headquarters for a web service. I think this map should only include places you can actually walk in and spend some bitcoins. EDIT: Is there a way to see the traffic hitting that wiki? Don't want to waste a lot of time adding stuff if no one looks at it. Just noticed the Russian forum is by far the biggest, with almost twice the amount of posting as the German forum, yet the map has no Russian entries. This leads me to believe that a russian map of shops exists, but I can't find one. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on November 21, 2012, 04:12:15 PM Hi B-People,
Here would be the popular "updated ;D ;D ;D"-entry; if I wouldnt have problems with my HDD right now. That means I cannot currently use Adobe Illustrator to alter the .ai file that I always use to generate the front post picture. I did however count all the entries as usual and did update the list "Merchants_&_Donations.ods (http://depositfiles.com/files/5db8i6utx)" for everyone to use. If one of you would like to take the "No. of traders.ai (http://depositfiles.com/files/c9geuj9rw)" file from the front and just add the missing month of November to the graph with the numbers from the Merchants_&_Donations.ods file, I would be very thankful. Otherwise the next update will have to wait a couple o days till I got my shit sorted out. Thx. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: ElectricMucus on November 22, 2012, 10:55:03 AM Hi B-People, Here would be the popular "updated ;D ;D ;D"-entry; if I wouldnt have problems with my HDD right now. That means I cannot currently use Adobe Illustrator to alter the .ai file that I always use to generate the front post picture. I did however count all the entries as usual and did update the list "Merchants_&_Donations.ods (http://depositfiles.com/files/5db8i6utx)" for everyone to use. If one of you would like to take the "No. of traders.ai (http://depositfiles.com/files/c9geuj9rw)" file from the front and just add the missing month of November to the graph with the numbers from the Merchants_&_Donations.ods file, I would be very thankful. Otherwise the next update will have to wait a couple o days till I got my shit sorted out. Thx. Somehow that dramatic drop can't be right, could it be that there were just alot of dead links accumulating and that got removed recently? Or did you account for dead links in your previous graphs? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: elux on November 22, 2012, 12:30:26 PM Somehow that dramatic drop can't be right, could it be that there were just alot of dead links accumulating and that got removed recently? Yes. Quote News: 16.10.12 - A BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE THAT PARTICIPATED IN WEEDING OUT THE WIKI! It seems only currently bitcoin accepting sites are still on the list now. That makes the whole directory much more valuable when you look for places to spend your bitcoins. On the other hand there is a big difference between the 1100 merchants accepting bitcoin that bitpay claims to have in its client base and what's on our list. The big decline in numbers must not give any false impressions as the bitcoin economy is still growing with new entries and whole categories (like "Film/Movies" in "7 Physical Products" or "Insurance" in "8 Professional Services") on the list this time. Some vendors seem to have tried out bitcoin to satisfy their curiosity or pay tribute to the idea and on the fly may have discovered that their business is just not ready yet for bitcoin adoption. Others may have just liked the extra attention to their business from the bitcoin crowd but seized to use bitcoin when it didn't yield the anticipated results. They may have lacked enthusiasm and the right strategies also. Other businesses however seem to prosper with this new source of revenue. Categories such as "Dedicated Virtual Servers" and "Electronics" have even grown in numbers, while nearly all others have significantly decreased after the weeding out (see spread sheet in Download section above for details). Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: teukon on December 08, 2012, 06:13:09 AM Does anyone have a reasonable estimation for how many sites accept Bitcoin but which are not on the list? I've known about goshrine.com for a while but recently have been running into other examples such as f-droid.org, brainworkshop.sourceforge.net, and thepythongamebook.com.
Is there a separate list for sites using Bitcoin for donations? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on January 18, 2013, 09:02:40 PM Still got this on the radar, but realistically ot got time to do much development at the moment. Any PHP devs willing to lend a hand? Feels like there's some potential for at least tracking wiki usage...
I've put the code on github here if so: https://github.com/exmosis/btc-wiki-trader-count Will do some if I have time/mojo, but things pretty busy these days... - scribe Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 19, 2013, 01:21:39 AM what was the problem with it? Here is one in R that should work as long as the wiki doesn't change too much, I dont know how to host it though.:
Code:
Produces (with made up February data to show it could update automatically): Code:
And this: http://i48.tinypic.com/33a3otc.png Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on January 19, 2013, 08:34:04 PM what was the problem with it? Here is one in R that should work as long as the wiki doesn't change too much, I dont know how to host it though.: R? nice :) Check back through the thread for other requests, but the things I had in mind was stuff like: - ignore/merge/map sections on the wiki page for when they got reorganised - fix the HighCharts output which I think has too much stuff in (doesn't show for me anyway) - see http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/highchart.php - count across different language versions, eg. take the German page into account as well, to get a more global view on activity Hosting on github is pretty easy - sign up, download the GUI, start a new repo, copy files in. Something like that :) Happy to help via PM, or might just put a copy up in my repo for reference. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spaceman_Spiff on January 20, 2013, 07:44:30 PM How informative is this data? I mean, Bitpay says it has over 2000 merchants right?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on January 20, 2013, 10:31:59 PM How informative is this data? I mean, Bitpay says it has over 2000 merchants right? And thats all they say about it. They dont want to get anymore specific then that. So we dont know WHO those merchants are, if they are the same outlets only with multiple accounts and IF they even exist. Its a claim after all, that has not been backed up with facts. I think it is also important to not only rely on one single source, but all available and veryfiable information there is. @ bitcoinbitcoin123 & scribe: Thanks for the effort! Looks great! Maybe you guys can work out something with the functionality of scribe's earlier builds and the appeal of high charts or similar? I trust in you! ❤ Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 21, 2013, 12:36:00 AM Ok, I modified it to get all the historical data:
http://i49.tinypic.com/2v31y00.png The following categories were renamed (effectively merging them). The new name is on the right: "Bitcoin paymennt systems"<-"Bitcoin payment systems" "Currency exchange"<-"Currency exchanges" "Hotels."<-"Hotels" "Material products"<-"Material / Physical Products" "Travel / Tourism "<-"Travel / Tourism / Leisure " "Hotels"<-"Travel / Tourism / Leisure " "Internet services"<-"Internet & Mobile services" "Professional Services"<-"Professional services" "Sex related services"<-"Adult" Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spaceman_Spiff on January 21, 2013, 12:39:18 AM the drops are wiki updates?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 21, 2013, 12:40:53 AM the drops are wiki updates? Every data point corresponds to a wiki update. Drops are probably people culling the lists/ vandalism Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on January 21, 2013, 02:03:05 AM Ok, I modified it to get all the historical data: http://i49.tinypic.com/2v31y00.png The following categories were renamed (effectively merging them). The new name is on the right: "Bitcoin paymennt systems"<-"Bitcoin payment systems" "Currency exchange"<-"Currency exchanges" "Hotels."<-"Hotels" "Material products"<-"Material / Physical Products" "Travel / Tourism "<-"Travel / Tourism / Leisure " "Hotels"<-"Travel / Tourism / Leisure " "Internet services"<-"Internet & Mobile services" "Professional Services"<-"Professional services" "Sex related services"<-"Adult" Ok thanks. Now we only have to make it a little prettier ;D Why did you rename the categories?? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 21, 2013, 02:12:52 AM Ok, I modified it to get all the historical data: http://i49.tinypic.com/2v31y00.png The following categories were renamed (effectively merging them). The new name is on the right: "Bitcoin paymennt systems"<-"Bitcoin payment systems" "Currency exchange"<-"Currency exchanges" "Hotels."<-"Hotels" "Material products"<-"Material / Physical Products" "Travel / Tourism "<-"Travel / Tourism / Leisure " "Hotels"<-"Travel / Tourism / Leisure " "Internet services"<-"Internet & Mobile services" "Professional Services"<-"Professional services" "Sex related services"<-"Adult" Ok thanks. Now we only have to make it a little prettier ;D Why did you rename the categories?? Because the categories and names used in the wiki changed over time. After I renamed them its pretty consistent. Perhaps there were more mergers that I missed. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 21, 2013, 11:02:17 PM - ignore/merge/map sections on the wiki page for when they got reorganised - fix the HighCharts output which I think has too much stuff in (doesn't show for me anyway) - see http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/highchart.php - count across different language versions, eg. take the German page into account as well, to get a more global view on activity Someone needs to check the categories in my chart and see which (if any) should be merged with the current set of categories on the page. Also someone needs to go to the forum language versions and tell which english they correspond to: eg: Currency exchanges<-Exchange-Plattformen / elektronische Börsen I think this chart could have promise for setting a lower bound on number of merchants once that is done. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: sethsethseth on January 21, 2013, 11:26:21 PM If someone knows how to fix the map of Real World Shops to use https google maps that would be great.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops) Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: scribe on January 23, 2013, 07:33:00 PM Nice job, bitcoinbitcoin113 - and is it possible to automate to generate an auto-updating image file? This was Spekulatius' other request to make the job a little easier.
On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 23, 2013, 08:22:40 PM Nice job, bitcoinbitcoin113 - and is it possible to automate to generate an auto-updating image file? This was Spekulatius' other request to make the job a little easier. On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... The script will automatically create an updated chart every time it is run. I don't know how to do this then have it update the image on a webpage though. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on January 24, 2013, 04:12:20 PM On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... Thx scribe ;) Will do once a month. If you like you can post in this thread as well if you like and I will paste your reviews on the front page. ---------- Concerning the new graph: I think it provides a better understanding when the categories on it and on the list share the same names. Otherwise it is unclear what entries in the list are combined in what category in the graph. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 24, 2013, 06:27:12 PM On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... Thx scribe ;) Will do once a month. If you like you can post in this thread as well if you like and I will paste your reviews on the front page. ---------- Concerning the new graph: I think it provides a better understanding when the categories on it and on the list share the same names. Otherwise it is unclear what entries in the list are combined in what category in the graph. What list? Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on January 27, 2013, 03:20:00 AM On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... Thx scribe ;) Will do once a month. If you like you can post in this thread as well if you like and I will paste your reviews on the front page. ---------- Concerning the new graph: I think it provides a better understanding when the categories on it and on the list share the same names. Otherwise it is unclear what entries in the list are combined in what category in the graph. What list? The one on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: bb113 on January 27, 2013, 10:53:26 AM On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... Thx scribe ;) Will do once a month. If you like you can post in this thread as well if you like and I will paste your reviews on the front page. ---------- Concerning the new graph: I think it provides a better understanding when the categories on it and on the list share the same names. Otherwise it is unclear what entries in the list are combined in what category in the graph. What list? The one on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade So how do you propose we deal with people who edit the wiki merging categories in the past to get what we have now? I think there may be a miscommunication somewhere. Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Spekulatius on February 24, 2013, 06:15:25 PM On a side note, I did like Spek's summary of 'interesting new entries' too, would love to see more of that... Thx scribe ;) Will do once a month. If you like you can post in this thread as well if you like and I will paste your reviews on the front page. ---------- Concerning the new graph: I think it provides a better understanding when the categories on it and on the list share the same names. Otherwise it is unclear what entries in the list are combined in what category in the graph. What list? The one on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade So how do you propose we deal with people who edit the wiki merging categories in the past to get what we have now? I think there may be a miscommunication somewhere. Not quite sure I understand you, but if you are concerned about getting the correct historic values for the categories, pls see my own list from the front page: http://dfiles.eu/files/utggvq80h Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: Domrada on February 24, 2013, 06:29:38 PM Why does the graph have those sudden drops?
Title: Re: New Indicator: Number of sites accepting bitcoin Post by: ElectricMucus on February 24, 2013, 06:31:51 PM Why does the graph have those sudden drops? Because when checking for expired links one usually does this in bulk. |
