I'll wait and see what the final results are in June,  but there's hopefully some interesting reading there for people, and hopefully I'll get some more people doing the survey this month!

Hi all,

As promised at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=987941.0;all, today I have sat down to prepare an interim report on the #BitcoinSurvey. Donations to help advertise the survey (particularly to try and get more ladies to participate), are gladly accepted at 1LQhPptJ4FTLHydvf6jN1xNQus8FTe8mcy

This is also published at http://bitcoinsinireland.com/bitcoinsurvey-first-interim-report/ which features some images.

Last week, as promised, we distributed our first 0.25 bitcoin to five of the nearly 150 respondants who filled in the survey in March. The proof of payment for this is at https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/978d631ccdd56e8b664fc2c0d48bcfc9316c8000dbcc316302a0a10f0b593bf3

I have also deposited the 0.25 bitcoin to cover the April respondents today which you can see sitting at https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/address/1LUD7xavJo1um3toduKCpKu1tcKM4RmgPD

As we enter the second month of the survey, which hopes to have 1000 respondents by the end of May, this article gives a short summary of some interesting findings so far. This is a summary at this time, so not to prejudice future responses.

The survey has so far received responses from 51 countries across the world, plus a couple of unknowns that were submitted via proxies. The majority of those responding got into bitcoin in 2013 and 2014.

The age profile of responses shows that the respondants are generally in their twenties, thirties or fourties, and heavily male (despite several ad campaigns promoting the survey at females via Facebook and Twitter), with 89% of respondants being male.

Over 51% of respondents are actively using bitcoin with 27% of respondents saying they’ve used bitcoin in the week prior to them doing the survey, and 22% saying that they had made a transaction that day. Respondents are also actively recruiting people into bitcoin, with 80% responding saying that they have gotten friends, family or a company to use bitcoin. 28% also reported that they had gotten several friends to use bitcoin.

On wallets, 99% of respondents said they had one, with 30% saying they are using a desktop wallet, and 26% using a mobile wallet. Paper wallets came in third at 15%, followed by the Bitcoin Core at 13%. 72% responded saying that they have tried several bitcoin wallets, and found one they’re happy with, with just 11% saying they hadn’t found one they’re happy with yet. 16% have lost access to a wallet, although most people responded that this was either in the early days, when bitcoin was worth nothing, or if more recently, it was a nominal amount.

On exchanges, 80% of respondents said they were registered with an exchange, and 25% of respondents use it to buy bitcoin for themselves to spend. 26% of respondents said that they had lost some bitcoins due to an exchange being “hacked”, closing down, or their exchange account being compromised.

On bitcoin faucets, 89% of respondents knew what one was, with 32% responding they used them a few times, and 20% saying they regularly use them.

On bitcoin gambling, 51% of respondents replied that they have used a bitcoin gambling site, with dice roll sites clearly the most popular with 38% using them.

On bitcoin mining, 37% identified themselves as bitcoin miners, with 62% commencing mining during 2013 and 2014. When asked on how often they have purchased mining hardware, 31% responded once, and it’s not in use, and equally 31% answered several times, to give themselves more hashing power. Very few reported problems with hardware.

The #BitcoinSurvey is ongoing, and runs up until May 31st 2015. Survey participants in April have a chance of getting one of five 0.05 bitcoin prizes. The link is http://ads.bitcoinsinireland.com/click/0I7UVYDRUI?btcirl=btctalk-0804 if you don't mind us seeing that you came from bitcointalk, and http://bitcoinsinireland.polldaddy.com/s/bitcoins-in-ireland-worldwide-survey-2015 if you want to go directly or are using adblock.
 

Ok, so just doing this now.

I went in and checked, there's 134 bitcoin addresses which were entered into the survey in March before the deadline.

I put these in a text file, and then copied them all into http://www.miniwebtool.com/random-name-picker/

I then take this out of the list, put it back in, and select another

1BF4jonmLRCtfcA2mxFBZgyRpdHviCTK5M
19ipAnFTQMhztbbhtsUS25jqMFjpPgR6ot
3QdkdEyttwcqSiRG6wBdDo6rEsrZL7JywT
1Ld3jWnaTCb6mLA3aPHjA17VXNpjhgqk9R
1987dnkKKyKCJQRb1UFhePdWdcDBZTufFp

So congrats to you whoever you are. Proof of payment is at https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/978d631ccdd56e8b664fc2c0d48bcfc9316c8000dbcc316302a0a10f0b593bf3

Cheers

Jamie

I'm getting a server down message on the pool today. just waiting to see what happens over the next few days. I got paid my older difficulty bitcoin the other day but still have a bit due.

0.25 bitcoin at https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/address/1LUD7xavJo1um3toduKCpKu1tcKM4RmgPD gets split into 5x 0.05 prizes for #BitcoinSurvey tomorrow

121 people out of 134 respondants from 51 countries so far put in their bitcoin address, so everyone who participated so far has a 4% chance of getting 0.05 bitcoin worth about €11.38 euro.

I know people will ask, so I will export all bitcoin addresses received before midnight GMT tonight in the morning.

These will then be dumped into http://www.miniwebtool.com/random-name-picker/ and I'll pick an address.

I'll take this out of the list, and repeat it four more times until I have five addresses.

Then I'll do a transaction to the five addresses, and post proof of payment here. I have an extra 0.001 in the wallet to cover fees.

I'm waiting for my next mining payment to come in, and then I'll transfer in another 0.251 bitcoin into the same wallet, which will set there for people who participate in April.

But if you don't win, don't despair. People who didn't win in March will be eligible for the grand prize of 0.25 bitcoin which will be sent when I publish the report at the end of the survey.

Thanks to everyone who's participated so far, and if you have friends who don't use bitcoin, i'm equally interested in getting them to participate.

OP has also been updated with a new map

Cheers

Jamie

still no response now to two emails via the affiliate platform, or a chat conversation three days ago. I'm pulling my links to this.

it's built into polldaddy

I'm going to do a second push now that I've put up https://twitter.com/BTCinIreland/status/581477422039752704 which if people could retweet would be great.

The countries so far are in the image below



I'm also hoping to have Spanish and German localisations of the survey finished over the weekend, which I can give the links to when I put out an initial report next week, as promised

I know from when I looked at it back in my original review, the pool (when it's on top of itself) pays out on the set time basis when you have a balance above 0.001 btc.

But when it's behind like it is now (although found 3 blocks today which will make a dent), it then starts to pay out once the blocks mature and I guess the hot wallet is filled up. From looking through the logs over the last few days, it seems to go through people in order of balance due, ie there's a few of the big miners who've built up balances that go out from the first block, and then it works it's way through from highest balance down, and so clears all the 0.2's, 0.1's, 0.09's etc. Although sometimes I've seen it work the other way, clearing tons of smaller balances.

just catching up on the thread, i got paid the other day for current difficulty payments, but also have a balance from the old ones pending. I checked and registration is closed today to the pool for new miners. But this popped up on my alerts, I'm not sure if it's been posted already - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.msg10877674#msg10877674

can't access the website

Error 522 Ray ID: 1ccb67b50f1c13ad
Connection timed out

the survey has 120 responses now from 49 countries.

i've been using an anonibet affiliate link on one of my sites recently, and despite me tracking a lot of clicks, I'm seeing zero in their system. No responses to emails or messages via their platform either. I think from reading this thread, I probably should pull the link, as it sounds from here like the service doesn't work, am i correct? Or just intermittant?

We've seen a good few retweets from twitter bitcoin news places on #BitcoinSurvey, and Cointelegraph UK wrote this a little while ago, and I forgot to post it before.

http://cointelegraph.uk/news/113701/bitcoins-in-ireland-offering-one-bitcoin-in-prizes

Cheers!

Jamie

Thanks for the offer, I have a friend here in Dublin from games who said he'd be able to localise it for me into Spanish, but having someone to proof read it for terminology would be a great idea. I've also a few friends who are French, so definitely, I want to get that language done to.

I've also just received a German localisation from another games friend, so just trying to see if I can get different language versions of the same survey, or if I have to clone the survey and run a fresh localised version of it. I'll get a couple of languages together first, and then maybe launch them with the first interim report around Easter.

I just checked there, we're up to 113 responses from 47 countries now

Well strangely mining on a pool for 6 months will give you reason to post on a thread! Some people are so paranoid in this forum

nope, i was reviewing half a dozen pools, and came across it then looking through blocktrail, posted a review, and had a bunch of people jump on me and troll the hell out of me. if you actually looked at my profile you can see exactly who i am unlike a lot of anonymous people here.

And nope, I didn't like the fact that I had to wait ages for payouts waiting to hit a minimum transaction fee, and that most of my shares got eaten up by zero block shifts. I ran a spreadsheet for all the pools, side by side, and this one gave me regular earnings, nice interface, and is the only pool that is actually constantly updating it's UI and interface. Every other pool is sitting on it's fee having done work two or three years ago, and Slush is the only other pool that's actually stepped up in response to the kind of data BAN is giving, to improve their own offerings. BTC Guild was my favourite look and feel wise before, but I'd left before they dropped their payout threshold to 0.001 and it wasn't enough to attract me back. I can choose where I point my own hardware, like everyone else.

From what I can see Eleuthria has always been fine and very open with his pool members in his own way, but PPLSN wasn't for me with a small amount of hashing power I have. I didn't want to mine on Discus Fish because of their %, and their interface is terrible. gHash is badly integrated with CEX, Antpool is ok, but again big. I've just spent the last month mining across MMPool, Triplemining, Bitminter, Kano and a load of others too, and none of them have as good an interface as BAN.

And the pool owner is contactable on the pool irc channel at least two or three times a day should i have a question, he sends newsletters occasionally with updates (ie the recent one about the DDOS extortion attempt), and if i can't reach him there i can submit a ticket and get a response in a day or two. Most pool owners I email don't even reply.

+1. I'm not day trading on mining and I've tried now 14 plus pools and think BAN still has the best interface. s0br does talk to people directly on irc, and i'm sure if he posted here again, certain people will jump on it. I've flagged a couple of times to him about the donation not working. His response as always is he's been building out the data, and responding to things reported here, even if he's not posting. He said the pool is being bipolar which made me laugh too!

But for Kano's stuff, every pool will have the same issue if it has a relatively fixed hashing rate (ie eligius and btcguild were always around the same) compared to a fluctuating world hash rate, and you can't use luck in the past to compare to the future. The only pools that will be able to swim against the current by maintaining their relative luck is either by getting more people mining week on week, piling on hardware (chinese pools/knc) or riding out the rough patches. This pool can hit five blocks a day if it wants to and luck is in favour, but I'd nearly give a 100% donation for a week to help go towards clearing the backlog - if it worked! I don't have much at the end of the day, but the pool's been my replacement to BTC Guild which I mined for most of 2014.

Thanks for the responses, I've updated the OP with a new map and a list of the 44 countries. It's kind of like a reverse jigsaw! There's between 190-200 out there, so nearly a quarter of the way there. Anyone mining in Antarctica? ;p Some countries are getting several responses too now which is great. I'd probably get better responses if I could get it translated, but unfortunately I only speak English :/

Any volunteers to localise the questions? I know it's quite long, but I could probably set up another wallet with something like 0.5 bitcoin in it, and then divvy it up by the people who do translations. pm me if you can help with a particular language! - update, one bitcointalker has offered Dutch, and two of my games friends have offered Polish and German. Sweet ;p

the survey is up to 96 responses from 42 countries