Time for some good news, BTC Userbase (Full Nodes) grows again.

[Akka]

With all the drama going on here, I'm happy to say that the Number of full nodes (which is probably the best indicator for BTC users) shows a constant grow for the first time in over a year:




Finally

[Atlas]

Maybe its more P2Pool miners?

[Akka]

Hey, don't destroy this for me.

I'm sure our userbase grows again.

[kokojie]

I pity those running the official client.

[Atlas]

I pity those running the official client.

The sooner we stop calling it official, the faster it will disappear from the Google frontpage for Bitcoin.

[stevegee58]

I've been running the Satoshi client for some time now and don't plan to stop.

I'm not sure the number of listeners is any indicator of BTC growth.

[Gavin Andresen]

I pity those running the official client.

There's no such thing as 'official.'

I think the best term is "reference client."

[Stephen Gornick]

Awesome, I thought that service was down for good.

Lots of great info there:
 - http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk

[evoorhees]

Wow this is pretty excellent news. The reason this had been falling forever was the macro trend of users switching primarily to e-wallets, and I doubt that trend will stop. So for the standard client number to be rising -despite- this macro trend is extremely positive.

[Technomage]

Wow this is pretty excellent news. The reason this had been falling forever was the macro trend of users switching primarily to e-wallets, and I doubt that trend will stop. So for the standard client number to be rising -despite- this macro trend is extremely positive.

Exactly. I think that this is very good news but I strongly disagree that it's a good indicator of the actual Bitcoin userbase. Full nodes are only a portion of the userbase because so many people use Bitcoin directly from web wallets and exchanges and sites such as Silk Road.

Also, this graph hides the real amount of unique Bitcoin full nodes quite well. Even in late 2011 we had 800 000 unique (based on IP) full nodes online in a 3 month period. Apparently a large amount of nodes are only online occasionally.

When we combine that data with the fact that certain nodes represent a large amount of users behind the node, we can conclude that the larger Bitcoin userbase is well over 1 million. That is the occasional users though, the number gets a lot smaller when we count active users only.

[Akka]

Wow this is pretty excellent news. The reason this had been falling forever was the macro trend of users switching primarily to e-wallets, and I doubt that trend will stop. So for the standard client number to be rising -despite- this macro trend is extremely positive.

Exactly. I think that this is very good news but I strongly disagree that it's a good indicator of the actual Bitcoin userbase. Full nodes are only a portion of the userbase because so many people use Bitcoin directly from web wallets and exchanges and sites such as Silk Road.

Also, this graph hides the real amount of unique Bitcoin full nodes quite well. Even in late 2011 we had 800 000 unique (based on IP) full nodes online in a 3 month period. Apparently a large amount of nodes are only online occasionally.

When we combine that data with the fact that certain nodes represent a large amount of users behind the node, we can conclude that the larger Bitcoin userbase is well over 1 million. That is the occasional users though, the number gets a lot smaller when we count active users only.

Important thing is that the actual userbase probably grows. And I still think its the best indicator, I didn't mean to switch it 1to1 to how much users we have, but it's the best measurable variable I know of to calculate actual userbase from (the other variables, like % using webwallets, are unknown, though).

[Atlas]

I hate to be a filthy capitalist but the best measure of Bitcoin adoption is the price. The more goods and services exchanged for Bitcoin, the higher the price is. It's really simple.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I hate to be a filthy capitalist but the best measure of Bitcoin adoption is the price. The more goods and services exchanged for Bitcoin, the higher the price is. It's really simple.

<(me, talking to myself) Don't do it! You'll regret it! Think before you act!>

+1

<(other voice) It's only a +1. What harm could... Where did you go?>

[Technomage]

I think that the amount of nodes is not the best indicator, not even among the best. I prefer market capitalization, exchange liquidity, the amount of transactions in the network (top addresses excluded), the amount of unique Bitcoin addresses used and of course price itself.

I don't have a good graph for exchange liquidity but I know it has increased significantly. This indicator for me is basically "how much the market moves when x amount of fiat is used to buy bitcoins". X could be $100k for example. I don't have data but I know it's a lot better compared to last year. For the others there are some pretty good graphs that I found. All time graphs, 7 day average.

Market cap: http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

Tx amounts (top 100 excluded): http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

Unique Bitcoin addresses used: http://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

Price all time: http://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

Conclusion: Bitcoin is not just growing, it's growing fast!

[stevegee58]

I hate to be a filthy capitalist but the best measure of Bitcoin adoption is the price. The more goods and services exchanged for Bitcoin, the higher the price is. It's really simple.

Price in relation to what?  Fiat currencies?  That means nothing.

But I do agree that the more goods/services exchanged for BTC the better.

[Atlas]

I hate to be a filthy capitalist but the best measure of Bitcoin adoption is the price. The more goods and services exchanged for Bitcoin, the higher the price is. It's really simple.

Price in relation to what?  Fiat currencies?  That means nothing.

Justify this statement. Please, if you wish.

[twoglovedanny]

nice

[evoorhees]

I hate to be a filthy capitalist but the best measure of Bitcoin adoption is the price. The more goods and services exchanged for Bitcoin, the higher the price is. It's really simple.

The price is most certainly not the best indicator, though it is a very important one.

The reason is that price is influenced extremely easily by very short term changes in sentiment and myriad psychological factors. These factors are transient and flippant. The price could double tomorrow and it doesn't mean Bitcoin is twice as healthy. I will caveat this by saying perhaps the 90 day moving average price may well be the best indicator, but certainly not the spot price.

I'd say the basket of most important indicators are (in no order):
- Transactions per day (exclude top 100 addys if you want)
- New addresses created per day
- USD price and/or 90-day moving average price
- Exchange volume as measured in USD
- Transaction volume as measured in USD
- Tweets per day which include the term "bitcoin"

[notme]

Not really a great gauge of growth. My case is an example: I was mining directly to an exchange because I was playing the market a little bit but then a hack happened. I didn’t lose anything during the hack but decided that wasn’t a good idea and brought up a full node to transfer my coin. Forgetting how frigin long the catch up is I decided to leave it engaged 24/7. Just one example, I know, but this kind of thing can be happening too.

Good point.  The recent BTC losses might be causing people to rethink their storage habits.

[niko]

Wow this is pretty excellent news. The reason this had been falling forever was the macro trend of users switching primarily to e-wallets, and I doubt that trend will stop. So for the standard client number to be rising -despite- this macro trend is extremely positive.

Traffic analysis described by Dan Kaminsky requires the attacker to have significant numbers of zombie nodes. We do need more users running the full client.