I know that there are margin trading platforms for the Bitcoin/currency exchanges, but would anybody be interested in one for the GLBSE? I've been working with the GLBSE API lately, making a couple trade bots (I've turned them off for now, to ease the load), and I think it would be fairly straightforward. Basically, I would just provide an interface to allow people to borrow and trade on margin accounts, but controlling the withdrawal so that they can't just abscond with the money. What do you all think?

Before I present these initial compiled results, I would like to thank everybody who participated and made this little project of mine a big success! Also, I would like to thank those who donated for their generosity.

So, these are just some basic compilations of the answers I received for each question. If anybody has more experience analyzing this sort of data, I'm working on putting together an Excel file listing each of the individual responses in case you want to run anything more in-depth.

I'll just initially post the results for you all to see while I work on adding some commentary.

(This table might be a bit hard to read... Sorry..)

*****************************************************************
Question 1:
What country do you live in?
Answer	#	%
United States	72	38.9%
United Kingdom	18	9.7%
Canada	14	7.6%
Germany	8	4.3%
Australia	7	3.8%
Netherlands	5	2.7%
Norway	5	2.7%
Belgium	4	2.2%
Finland	4	2.2%
France	4	2.2%
Poland	4	2.2%
Other (European)	28	15.1%
Other	12	6.5%
Question 2:
How old are you?
Answer	#	%
Under 18	12	6.5%
18 - 24	51	27.6%
25 - 30	56	30.3%
31 - 40	46	24.9%
41 - 50	13	7.0%
51 - 60	5	2.7%
Over 60	2	1.1%
Question 3:
What is your gender?
Answer	#	%
Male	171	92.4%
Female	9	4.9%
N/A	5	2.7%
Question 4
What is the highest level of education (or its equivalent) that you have completed?
Answer	#	%
Some secondary education (High School)	22	11.9%
Completed secondary education	16	8.6%
Some higher education (College, Vocational training, etc)	54	29.2%
Completed 2-Year Degree	10	5.4%
Completed 4-Year Degree	48	25.9%
Graduate level study (Masters, Ph.D., M.D., J.D.)	35	18.9%
Question 5
If employed, what would best describe the field you work in?
Answer	#	%
Internet and Computer Technology	72	38.9%
Student	50	27.0%
Not employed	12	6.5%
Services	12	6.5%
Government	9	4.9%
Construction	5	2.7%
Finance, Insurance and Real Estate	5	2.7%
Retail and Wholesale Trade	5	2.7%
Manufacturing	2	1.1%
Transportation	2	1.1%
Agriculture, Energy and Mining	1	0.5%
Health Care	1	0.5%
Other	9	4.9%
Question 6:
What term would best describe your political views?
Answer	#	%
Very Conservative	4	2.2%
Conservative	11	5.9%
Centrist	9	4.9%
Liberal	35	18.9%
Very Liberal	16	8.6%
Libertarian	67	36.2%
Apolitical	17	9.2%
None of the above	26	14.1%
Question 7:
How did you first hear about Bitcoin?
Answer	#	%
Online media (Blog, podcast, Wikipedia, etc.)	116	62.7%
Word-of-mouth (Direct, social media, etc.)	44	23.8%
Internet search	15	8.1%
Mainstream media (Newspaper, magazine, television, etc.)	7	3.8%
Other	3	1.6%
Question 8:
Approximately how long ago did you first hear about Bitcoin?
Answer	#	%
In the past month	5	2.7%
1 - 3 months ago	5	2.7%
3 - 6 months ago	6	3.2%
6 - 12 months ago	37	20.0%
1 - 2 years ago	112	60.5%
2 - 3 years ago	16	8.6%
Over 3 years ago	4	2.2%
Question 9:
How do you use Bitcoin? (check all that apply)
Answer	#	%
Buying goods or services online	106	57.3%
* Internet Services (VPN, server hosting, etc.)	46	24.9%
* Technical or creative work (programming, web design, etc)	29	15.7%
* Entertainment (Music, games, etc.)	39	21.1%
* Clothing, Artwork, Other Crafts	19	10.3%
* Electronics or computer hardware	35	18.9%
Direct (face-to-face) trade	32	17.3%
Gambling	64	34.6%
Lending or Borrowing	34	18.4%
Donating to non-profit organizations	68	36.8%
Using as a store of value (comparable to gold)	141	76.2%
Other (Speculation, Investment)	8	4.3%
Other	18	9.7%
Question 10:
How have you obtained most of your Bitcoins? (check all that apply)
Answer	#	%
Purchasing in exchanges	129	69.7%
Mining	92	49.7%
Selling goods	23	12.4%
Providing services	24	13.0%
Other (Gifts, donations, promotions, etc)	8	4.3%
Other	7	3.8%
Question 11:
Why do you use Bitcoins? (check all that apply)
Answer	#	%
Convenience	104	56.2%
Low transaction costs	107	57.8%
Ease of international transfer	96	51.9%
Potential for anonymity	110	59.5%
Ideological or political reasons	131	70.8%
Opportunity for profit	135	73.0%
Other (Fun, curiousity, excitement, etc.)	9	4.9%
Other	10	5.4%
Question 12:
In your opinion, what are the greatest problems with Bitcoin? (check all that apply)
Answer	#	%
Security (Website hacks, etc.)	74	40.0%
Scalability (Growing block-chain size, etc.)	76	41.1%
Speculation	30	16.2%
Slow transaction times	44	23.8%
Difficulty of exchange with other currencies	73	39.5%
Difficulty of use for non-technical users	114	61.6%
Negative outside perception	84	45.4%
Other	17	9.2%
Question 13:
Overall, would you consider yourself to be optimistic about the future of Bitcoin?
Answer	#	%
Optimistic	156	84.3%
Neutral	26	14.1%
Pessimistic	3	1.6%
Question 14:
And finally, would you be willing to participate in another survey sometime in the future?
Answer	#	%
Definitely	92	49.7%
Maybe	84	45.4%
Probably not	9	4.9%
Bonus Information
How many responders accepted the 0.02 BTC gift?
Payment Accepted	#	%
Yes	145	78.4%
No	40	21.6%

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

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

https://bitcoinsurvey.herokuapp.com

Feedback is also appreciated. Thank you!

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.

After using Gavin's bitcointools to work on the Days Destroyed problem (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9300.0 ), I just had too much fun doing it, so I got to work playing some more with the data.

This might have been done before, but I have made a program to find every single transaction output that is unredeemed. Basically, I made a list of every Bitcoin currently in existence and the addresses that they were last sent to.

The code is here: (Just copy these into the bitcointools folder and run bitcoin_age)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28441300/bitcoin_age.py
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28441300/deserialize_unfinishe.py

The results are here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28441300/output_age.xlsx

One thing I thought was interesting was that 3.2 million BTC (nearly half of all current Bitcoins) have not moved this year.

Have fun interpreting the results!

So, I just became aware that apparently Paypal sucks for these sort of transactions, but I'm willing to pay extra to anyone willing to take the risk. I'm still a newbie and that must be a big red flag, but honestly the last thing I want to do is ruin my chances for building a good reputation. If you're willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, please send me a PM.

(As for why I'm looking for 0.63, it's honestly all I can afford at the moment, and my OCD is nagging me to make my balance a nice round number. )

If there are any college or high school students around, I'm a senior Physics student, and I'm more than willing to help out anyone with math or physics homework for a few bitcents. Send me a message if you're interested. Thanks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk basically allows people to pay others to complete tasks requiring human intelligence from simple tasks like tagging pictures to more complex ones like transcription. Currently Amazon charges a 10% fee, a fair portion of which I assume goes to cover the cost of distributing funds. If bitcoins were used instead, I would think that you could charge a much more competitive fee. So are there any other sites like this? And if not, do you think it would be a good idea to make one?

I just happened to find out about Bitcoins earlier today, and I'm quite intrigued. Unfortunately, I'm a student and rather broke at the moment, so I'm curious to know if there happens to be any work that I can do.

I'm willing to do pretty much any boring or menial task (data entry, etc). I have done some programming, but I'm admittedly rather inexperienced. On the other hand, I'm willing to work for cheap (at least until the novelty wears off), so if you're willing to give me a little extra time to study and figure things out, I'm up for programming work. Thanks!