Bitcoin Forum

I've been interested in Bitcoin for a while now, partly for technical reasons and partly for political ones, but lately I've become more interested in learning more about the Bitcoin community itself. Who is using Bitcoin and why? How are we using it? What are our backgrounds, our interests, our plans, our goals? I suppose all that might seem rather boring to some, and I'm not quite sure why I find it fascinating to be honest. I suppose I just feel that whatever is behind the allure of Bitcoin has the potential to really be a game-changer in the future.

I've read a lot of the informal polls here on the forum, but I was curious about whether there have been any larger scale studies on the subject (I haven't found anything with my feeble google-fu). If not, would anybody be interested in helping with, participating in, or at least reading the results of a informal study? I'm not a sociologist, but I'd love to put my web skills to work on a project that could potentially benefit the community as a whole.

Anyway, thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think.

this does sound interesting

i would be participating and reading the results.

I have found it interesting that bitcoin attracts such an unlikely selection of people. We've got the geeks here for the interesting applications of cryptology and the opportunity to work on interesting projects, the economists and stock traders or investors for the chance to make some money off the budding market, and the privacy fanatics (maybe bordering on conspiracy theorists at times) who like the chance to get away from government controlled money supply. It's led to some interesting discussions, projects, and clashes of opinion between people who would otherwise never meet. I'm interested in seeing whatever you end up putting together.

I'd surely participate.

Don't forget the entrepreneurs like myself who see the myriad advantages to accepting bitcoins over credit cards and PayPal.

You left out the spooks.

Seriously, at one point they were the single largest demographic.  It was like a Communist Party meeting around here.

If you want to benefit the community, study what happens when people first learn about Bitcoin and try to use it. What separates people who "get it" from those who don't? Nature or nurture? With these answers we'll know what we can improve to greatest effect and what to stop wasting time on.

We want to get filthy stinkin' rich. No seriously, we do. Heh! There are many threads on the subject here. Good luck with the research.

Everything you need to know is in #Agora.

You might check with @Heathervescent

I don't remember if she made available to us the results.
 - http://www.heathervescent.com/heathervescent/2011/06/announcing-bitcoin-usage-survey.html
 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26239.msg327558#msg327558

Nothing else that I am aware of.  If you come across any, don't forget to add it to the wiki.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Research

-This

I like this idea. Maybe something along the lines of a focus group would help for this?

Perhaps you could not only introduce a focus group to Bitcoin and get their initial feedback, but even walk them through the process of setting up a wallet (preferably through some kind of simpler client or online wallet) and give them a few Bitcoin as compensation for their time.

We are all the same.


There is no individuality among us.

A focus group definitely has it's uses and this does sound like one of those. You might float this idea as something with its own thread and look for contributions to encourage respondents. $25-$50 would probably draw many people into spending an hour. Even $5 will get you tons of people to spend 15-30 minutes.

I might donate some if the focus group was comprised of a fairly wide range of individuals from different backgrounds. I'd recommend drawing from more than a single geographical location, as well.

I suppose forming some kind of online focus group would be the most cost-effective solution. Though, I'm not quite sure what sort of demographics we'd want to aim for (if any particular ones), or how we could recruit people for the group in a cost-effective yet relatively unbiased way.

Does anyone happen to know of an existing non-profit group or organization, hopefully with a little more experience in this sort of thing, that we might be interested in helping out if we were to raise the funds? I know that many organizations accept Bitcoin for donations, but are there any that endorse increased Bitcoin adoption?

There was one that put out a press release about how they were paying their subs with bitcoin but I can't recall who that was. Peer to peer something.

Oh, I think I found what you're talking about.

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/why-the-p2p-foundation-is-paying-its-salaries-in-bitcoin/2012/03/28

Yes, I think they would be a good potential partner. BTW, are you doing this as part of a school project or independently?

I'm just doing this for fun, interest and out of the goodwill of my heart. :D

Are we Anonymous?

I hope not. Whatever your opinion, I think it's clear that if adoption is going to increase, we will have to try to keep Bitcoin from being directly associated in people's minds with Anon and that whole cyber-prankster ethos.

I guess that was a bit off topic. So, anyway, I suppose as a first step I might start by throwing together a quick survey app, maybe start off by asking some basic demographic questions.

One quick question, if I required Google account authentication to deter spam or abuse (like the Bitcoin Faucet), would that turn a lot of you away? I understand if you would rather not give out your email and risk spam for yourself.

Every choice has the potential to skew your results. If you wanted to focus on new users however, the impact of using google for antispam is likely minimal. If money is involved, you will probably want to at least review the list of users before letting them do the part that is rewarded. The faucet does a version of this to guard against some obvious automated coin grab.

Well me... heres my two cents.

I'm an aspiring entrepreneur, and computer developing wizard where all my past USD businesses flopped because of some restriction mostly high barriers of entry put in place, how ever I found Bitcoin with the intention to make money off my CPU cycles, after much question asking I found out that Bitcoin is far my wildest dreams -- It presented me with a free market, an opportunity to cut the cord from the system that forces me to be apart of and spread my own wings.

Back down to earth,
 Im' just a regular 22 year old that does nothing but program/contribute Bitcoin projects all day(besides my PIPBOY 3000 project but that project will also have a Bitcoin app so hehe )

Well, the more I think about it, there probably isn't any easy way to get nice statistically sound data when on the Internet, and especially in the Bitcoin community as a whole. But I guess that's okay, depending on our goals.

On one hand, I'd like to study outside the community, with focus groups and the like, to learn more about the general perception of Bitcoin and potential obstacles to adoption. In that case, statistical bias probably isn't that big of a deal as long as we cast a wide net for our groups.

On the other hand, I'd like to look within as well, to learn about what brought us to Bitcoin in the first place. It'd be useful if we could use it to learn more about the future of Bitcoin, but I guess we can only predict so much. I think I'm more interested in the less useful, but perhaps more inspiring, qualitative aspects of the community, and especially the active, out-going people we see on the forums.

I don't really know how to put this, but I guess I just feel so drawn to Bitcoin, not because of Bitcoin itself, but because it is an alternative, and I think the world is sorely lacking in alternatives. But with technology, you can take a brilliant idea and it can take a life of its own, and it can become that alternative. And those alternatives could maybe grow and perhaps finally overcome our dismal status quo. I think the seeds are within us here. I mostly just want to know that I'm not alone with these feelings. Sorry for the rant. I'm pretty tired.

You are definitely not alone. While I tend to turn my bitcoin tinted glasses toward business ventures, I read threads about using bitcoin to combat the erosion of privacy and civil liberties, to fund humanitarian and scientific breakthroughs, to crowdsource just about everything imaginable, etc and I can't help but feel that bitcoin might just be the tool the human race needed to allow those of us with a little foresight to point the way toward a brighter, better future.

I tend to get a little carried away with things, so I am trying to be too irrationally exuberant about Bitcoin. It may never really be the global currency we dream of, but I guess what I'm saying is that if we can take something like Bitcoin this far, then who knows what potentially lies in store. You know?

Anyway, I would participate/help/whatever, but..


..yeeaahh, that would turn me away, sorry. Call me paranoid tin-foil hatter, but I don't trust google even that much anymore.

I would participate. And I think it would make an interesting sociology paper. I have a friend who is a sociology professor. He was interested in it himself until I got into cryptography and foreign currency arbitrage. This is exactly what he looked like. --->  ???

Ok, so I think my app is almost ready, so what kind of questions would be good initially?

I'm thinking about keeping this first survey not too long (5 minutes or so). So, I think I'd start with a few basic demo questions:

Location
Age
Gender
Education
Work
Political leaning
Etc. (Let me know if I'm missing something)

And then ask a few bitcoin related questions:

How and when did you first hear about Bitcoins?
How do you use Bitcoins, and how often?
Why do you use Bitcoins?
Are you optimistic about Bitcoin adoption, stability, etc?
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community?

What do you all think? Does that seem like a good start?

Religious affiliation.
Are you Satoshi Nakamoto?
Do you know Satoshi Nakamoto?
Are you a government agent?
Are you now, or have you ever been an SA goon?
What is your favorite anti-bitcoin meme?
How many times have you changed positions on bitcoin? (pro/anti)
How many times have you been scammed?
How many times have you scammed others?
Are you now, or have you ever been, secretly the head of Bitcoinica?
When will we get our money back from Bitcoinica?
No seriously, tell me when we get our fucking money back from Bitcoinica, I need it yesterday.
Etc.

the questions should be able to be answered with radio buttons
maybe 1 or 2 questions you can ask the user to write a bit of text.
I'd also like to see a Personality test, lets see if most bitcoiners fall in particular personalty group

For most of them, I'll give radio buttons (maybe multiple checkboxes) and try to outline most of what I would suppose are the common answers, and then give an "Other" choice with a open text box, just in case.


You mean like the MBTI or Big 5? I suppose that could be interesting, but I don't know how useful it would really be for the time it would take.

App?  as in mobile app?  Or will this be a web-based survey?

It's just a web application. I could have used a survey site, I suppose, but I figured it would be fun to make it myself.

Sounds interesting,

Count me in once your app is done  ;D

Doesn't google docs let you make a quick easy survey?

http://bitcoinmedia.com/catherine-flick-bitcoin-and-the-dual-use-dilemma/

So, I guess that I was a little too optimistic about how close I was to finishing... But, it looks like I've got a working app now. Before I release it, though, could I please get a couple volunteers to try it out and make sure it works first? Just let me know and I'll PM you the link. Thank you!

I'll take it.

Send me the link and I'll test it as well.
Better get a cup of coffee ;)

I will as well.

As a bookend to this thread, the results are here:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88927.0