Anyone tracking "real" BTC transactions? Is it even possible?

[marvinmartian]

I'm talking about BTC transfers for goods, not from mining pools to miners or miners directly by finding blocks.

I think that's what we need to start looking at.  Unless people start using it more to buy and sell goods & services ... BTC won't survive.

[LeonGeeste]

I'm talking about BTC transfers for goods, not from mining pools to miners or miners directly by finding blocks.

I think that's what we need to start looking at.  Unless people start using it more to buy and sell goods & services ... BTC won't survive.

No, it's not possilbe, except if maybe people report their "real" transactions to a central database ... which would kind of defeat the purpose of Bitcoin.

Incidentally, this is why all proposals to tie bitcoin (or new bitcoin-like currencies) money growth to the volume of transactions are fundamentally flawed.

[marvinmartian]

Well, pools and whatnot (who I think make more than 50% of all mining) might voluntarily report their "send from" addresses.  That would allow us to subtract those transactions and leave a rough estimate for the others.  The assumption there would be that "the others" constitute "real" transactions.

Come to think of it, it should be possible to do this without any type of voluntary reporting on the part of pools. 

Simply taking the total off all the pool hashrates and mapping them to the corresponding BTC/day should do it.  The assumption here being that everyone takes payout pretty often and doesn't store BTCs with their favorite pool(s).

I guess there needs to be some work done on the # of transactions and the avg. value of those transactions.  EG., 10 transactions at 0.1 BTC each != 10 transactions at 10 BTC each with respect to what I'm trying to find out.

[Fakeman]

You only mentioned transfers of freshly mined coins and transfers where "goods and services" are purchased, what about transfers to and from exchanges? Is it a "real" transaction if I'm just using the BTC to day trade or cash out?

[marvinmartian]

You only mentioned transfers of freshly mined coins and transfers where "goods and services" are purchased, what about transfers to and from exchanges? Is it a "real" transaction if I'm just using the BTC to day trade or cash out?

Yeah, I don't think there is a perfect way to do what I'm trying.  But I wouldn't mind even some rough estimates.  Would be nice if exchanges also reported transaction numbers too.  That and pool numbers would be a decent sum to factor out of the global transaction figure.  The remainder, I contend, would be mostly goods and service based transactions.

[iamzill]

Solo miner -> Restaurant -> Exchange

Solo miner -> Solo miner's other address -> Exchange

Only one of these transactions is "real", but how can you tell them apart?

AFAIK there is no way unless all the "real" merchants are forced to register with a global merchant database. Since there's no benefit for the merchant to register, I don't see why any businesses would sign up unless draconian anti-money laundering laws forced them to.