Hi everyone,

My name is Caitlin Lustig (contact: clustig@uci.edu).  I’m a PhD student in the Informatics department at the University of California, Irvine and I am studying the Bitcoin community.  Some months ago, I put out a survey here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=311261.0) and /r/bitcoin (http://redd.it/1ojfxx).  I had intended to give some preliminary results shortly after my survey was completed, but analyzing the results took much longer than expected.   However, I am happy to say that I finally have some results that I can share with you.

First, though, a few notes:

I will be gathering more data in the form of interviews and will be doing more analysis over the next few months.  I’ll be sure to share any papers that I publish with the community!  Also, a big thank you again to everyone who participated in my survey.

Some people have asked me whether I will share my data with them.  Unfortunately, I cannot and will not share the full dataset.  It is really important to me to keep the participants as anonymous as possible.

Lastly, I know that I could really only reach people who know English with this survey, so I recognize that these results cannot necessarily be generalized to the entire Bitcoin community.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS:

Number of people who took the survey: 510

Observations based on open-ended questions:

1. Many of the participants were very against the use of Bitcoin for illegal purposes.  I did not ask about illegal activity in my survey, but many people volunteered their opinion on the matter and stated that they felt dismayed that the community has been associated with illegal activities by media outlets.  They felt that many people outside of the community misunderstand why someone would be motivated to use Bitcoin and tried to clear up this misinformation when speaking to non-Bitcoin users.

2. As for participant’s motivation, many stated that they liked Bitcoin because it is not tied to any government and it offers some degree of anonymity.  Some also stated that they did not trust credit card companies, payment intermediaries like PayPal, or banks, and Bitcoin offered an alternative to all of these institutions.  Another thing that came through in the survey was the participants’ excitement in being a part of something that they found cool, novel, and fun.  Fun was not necessarily a word that I expected to see in the results (or one that I see associated with Bitcoin often in news articles) and I’m interested to learn more about what makes Bitcoin fun for people!

3. When asked about the future of Bitcoin, many participants had very high hopes that Bitcoin would revolutionize monetary systems across the world.  However, some participants expressed concern about government regulations in the future and some perceived weakness in the design of Bitcoin (i.e. lack of absolute anonymity and centralization through large mining pools).  They expressed the belief that a different crypto-currency would solve these issues in the future.  These participants seemed to indicate that they weren’t committed to Bitcoin, per se, but to the promise and value of crypto-currencies in general.

Demographics:

Most of the participants were between 25 and 34 years old, heterosexual, atheist or agnostic, American, and male.  The political beliefs were varied and many participants chose multiple political labels for themselves.  For those that selected at least one political label for themselves, nearly 60% selected libertarian.  However, the open-ended question about political beliefs revealed that many participants had differing opinions about what these labels meant and many rejected labels or felt uncomfortable identifying with any particular label.  I think, as a result, it might be unfair to characterize the participants as primarily libertarian, as the open-ended question revealed that the political views of the participants much more varied and nuanced than a label could describe.

Gender:

• Male (96.29%)
• Female (2.09%)
• Other (1.86%)

Sexual orientation:

• Heterosexual (92.42%)
• Other (4.27%)
• Bisexual (3.55%)
• Homosexual (2.13%)

Religion: (participants were allowed to pick multiple options)

• Atheist (47.75%)
• Agnostic (33.81%)
• Christian (17.97%)
• Other (11.11%)
• Buddhist (6.86%)
• Jewish (2.13%)
• Muslim (1.42%)
• Hindu (0.95%)

Country of residence:

• US (50.72%)
• Germany (6.92%)
• UK (6.49%)
• Canada (5.77%)
• Australia (4.09%)
• Netherlands (2.16%)
• Sweden (1.20%)
• Finland (1.20%)
• Norway (1.20%)

There are 39 other countries that represented the current residence of less than 1% of the survey participants:

Switzerland, France, Singapore, Russian Federation, Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, India, Ireland, Austria, Slovenia, Greece, Philippines, Argentina, Romania, Denmark, Croatia, China, Serbia, Israel, Brazil, Portugal, Japan, South Korea, Belarus, Malaysia, Slovakia, Mexico, South Africa, Moldova, Hungary, Lithuania, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, and Benin.

Most popular state for US participants: California (25.13%)

Self-reported income:

• 44.71% higher than national average of participant’s country
• 27.40% around the national average of participant’s country
• 27.88% less than national average of participant’s country

Education:

• Less than a high school degree (2.11%)
• High school degree or equivalent (7.28%)
• Some college but no degree (23.24%)
• Associate degree (4.69%)
• Bachelor degree (35.92%)
• Graduate degree (26.76%)

Age:

• 18 to 24 (18.82%)
• 25 to 34 (50.12%)
• 35 to 44 (21.41%)
• 45 to 54 (6.82%)
• 55 to 64 (2.35%)
• 65 to 74 (0.24%)
• 75 or older (0.24%)

Political beliefs: (participants were allowed to pick multiple options)

• Libertarian (59.25%)
• Moderate (36.25%)
• Anarchist (27%)
• Left-wing (25.25%)
• Green (18%)
• Socialist (11%)
• Right-wing (8.25%)
• Communist (2.50%)

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know, I'll be closing the survey to new responses at the end of the day (12:00 AM PST).  After that I'll start doing some analysis and will report back here with some preliminary findings!

Thanks,

Caitie

Thanks!  If I understand your question correctly, you're correct.  I'm sure there's large groups of bitcoin users that I'm missing by only posting my survey on bitcointalk and /r/bitcoin, which are my main sites of research.  I'll be supplementing my findings from the survey with interviews, hanging out in forms, reading blogs, and hopefully attending some bitcoin events IRL. While I'll really only be able to make claims about the communities of bitcointalk and /r/bitcoin, my focus is on the community aspect of bitcoin, and as far as I am aware this and /r/bitcoin are two of the largest, if not the largest, bitcoin communities online.

If you meant responder bias in terms of people not answering questions entirely truthfully in an attempt to make the researcher happy, I think the same answer more or less applies.  By sticking around here and talking with a number of people, I should get a good feel for the community.

I am also taking great care to protect the anonymity of my participants and am trying to very transparent about what I am doing to protect people's privacy.  So I hope that helps people feel more comfortable with talking to me.

Does this answer your question or did I misunderstand you?

Thanks for the input!

I think that's the trick, right?  It's not actually very difficult to use but if you aren't very computer literate, it might be a little difficult or daunting.  But once you've got it down it's easy to use.


Hm, so the social aspect is part of the appeal then for you?  Have you met any of these people offline or is this all online?

To everyone who's been posting in this thread: thanks for doing the survey and for promoting it!  It's been exciting to see the number of responses go up through the day.

Also regarding the open ended questions: I know they're not everyone's cup of tea.  I'm really excited to analyze the results of those questions, but I know that not everyone is going to do them and that's okay.  I just appreciate that people are taking the survey and answering as many questions as they are comfortable with.

Hi, imperial--I just sent you a PM, but again, thanks for promoting my survey!  Once I have the survey is closed, I'll do some analysis of the results, and come back and post my preliminary findings here.  I'll also be sure to link to any publications that I get out of this research.

Hm, I wonder what the Eternal September would look like for bitcoin.  A lot of people coming into forums and asking for help getting started with bitcoin?

I primarily got interested in bitcoin because people I knew were into it, but as a computer science geek, I also thought it was pretty technically interesting.  I think this was probably during the second wave that you mentioned.

I'm curious what the future will bring for bitcoin as well!  I get the impression that there may be some mixed feelings about more mainstream internet users getting involved with bitcoin.

Could you elaborate a little on what you think the different waves have contributed to bitcoin culture?  Also, do you feel like people from the different waves interact together well?

(Feel free to PM me a response if you'd prefer to talk in private.  And of course, please don't feel obligated to respond if you don't want to answer my questions!)

Lol, yes, I am actually female.  There definitely are other women interested in bitcoin, though!  I'm definitely not the only one

Oh yeah, I agree that it's an interesting issue.  I know a lot of people who predicted that bitcoin would go down a lot in price now that SR has been shut down.  But obviously that wasn't the case at all.  It's an interesting time for bitcoin for sure.

I had to get my study cleared with my institutional review board, which makes sure that all of the research with human subjects done at my university is ethical.  From an approval standpoint, there are added complications with including minors in a study.  So, that's why I decided to only include people over 18 in my study.

That being said, I'll definitely take including minors into consideration for future studies.

Yes, sorry about that.  Here's the original post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=308727.msg3311237#msg3311237

The short version is that I'm a graduate student doing a research project on the bitcoin community.  I've developed this survey as a part of this research project in order to better understand the motivations and values of bitcoin users.

Hi everyone,

It's me again!  I just posted this in the Bitcoin Discussion section of the forum, but in case you didn't see it, my survey is ready!

If you are 18 years old or older and use bitcoin, you are eligible to participate in my survey.  The survey will take about 10-30 minutes to complete, depending on how much time you spend on the open ended questions.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bitcoinsurvey

If you have any questions for me about the study, I am happy to answer them.  You can post them here, PM me, or you can send me an email at clustig@uci.edu

Thanks for your help!  I am really looking forward to seeing the results of the survey.

Caitie

EDIT: Left out some important info.

I introduced myself in this forum earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=308727.0), but just to introduce myself again, my name is Caitie Lustig and I am a graduate student in the Informatics department at the University of California, Irvine.  This survey is part of my research project on the bitcoin community.  The goal of the survey is to better understand the motivations and values of bitcoin users.

Hi everyone,

I introduced myself in newbie section recently (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=308727.0), but just to introduce myself again, my name is Caitie Lustig and I am a graduate student in the Informatics department at the University of California, Irvine.  I am researching the bitcoin community.  I have recently put together a survey to in order to better understand the motivations and values of bitcoin users.

If you are 18 years old or older and use bitcoin, you are eligible to participate in my survey.  The survey will take about 10-30 minutes to complete, depending on how much time you spend on the open ended questions.

The survey is located here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bitcoinsurvey

If you have any questions for me about the study, I am happy to answer them.  You can post them here, PM me, or you can send me an email at clustig@uci.edu

Thanks for your help!  I am really looking forward to seeing the results of the survey.

Caitie

Hi!  Thanks for the input, that's very interesting.  I hadn't really considered how bitcoin might be more accessible for young people than other forms of online payment!

Thanks!  I actually ran across that post a week or so ago and found it really interesting and helpful.

Hi everyone,

I want to introduce myself: my name is Caitie Lustig and I am a graduate student in the Informatics department at the University of California, Irvine.  I am just beginning my research on the bitcoin community and am excited to be a member of this forum.  It seems like there's a lot of research about the bitcoin community that's been focused on the technical aspects of bitcoin but not the community aspect, and there's been a lot of news articles about bitcoin that are a bit sensationalist.

So, I want to do something different.  I really want to learn from you guys about what's actually happening in the community and why you're drawn to bitcoin.  I really want to hear your stories and what you like about it.

Anyway, I'll also be making another post in the next day or two that links to my survey about bitcoin.  It's for the first part of my research project and if you have a chance to fill it out, it'll help me a lot.

Looking forward to getting to know all of you here