Bitcoin days destroyed

[Jet Cash]

I'm becoming fascinated by the structure of Bitcoin. There are so many interesting features hidden away inside it. "Bitcoin days destroyed" is one such feature. You can read about it here.
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/845/what-are-bitcoin-days-destroyed

I found this by reading the stickies at the beginning of this board and the main Bitcoin board, and I would recommend that anyone new to Bitcoin takes a bit of time to read through them.

[Dixi]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way   

[Velkro]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way   

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way   

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

With "bitcoin days destroyed", the idea is instead to give more weight to coins which haven't been spent in a while. To do this, you multiply the amount of each transaction by the number of days since those coins were last spent. So, 1 bitcoin that hasn't been spent in 100 days (1 bitcoin * 100 days) counts as much as 100 bitcoins that were just spent yesterday (100 bitcoins * 1 day). Because you can think of these "bitcoin days" as building up over time until a transaction actually occurs, the actual measure is called "bitcoin days destroyed". This is believed to give a better indication of how much real economic activity is occurring on the bitcoin network.

[jaberwock]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way   

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

Old coins being moved = more coins in the market, because they were out of the market for some time and are not being dumped.

Also it is an indicator that people are not moving coins to themselves, or only to be dumped and have no effect in price

[VirosaGITS]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way  

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

Old coins being moved = more coins in the market, because they were out of the market for some time and are not being dumped.

Also it is an indicator that people are not moving coins to themselves, or only to be dumped and have no effect in price

Its a purely statistical thing, its just something like the coin weight used, which is calculated by the coin age and size.

Basically if 10 BTC has been idle for 100 days and are then moved, it is going to equal to 1000 BTC days destroyed.

Imo its a statistic that hold very little interest for the majority of users.

[achow101]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way  

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

Old coins being moved = more coins in the market, because they were out of the market for some time and are not being dumped.

Also it is an indicator that people are not moving coins to themselves, or only to be dumped and have no effect in price

Its a purely statistical thing, its just something like the coin weight used, which is calculated by the coin age and size.

Basically if 10 BTC has been idle for 100 days and are then moved, it is going to equal to 1000 BTC days destroyed.

Imo its a statistic that hold very little interest for the majority of users.

IIRC it is part of determining transaction priority. It is what allows some transactions to not require a fee and still be confirmed quickly. There is a portion of each block set aside for such priority transactions.

[VirosaGITS]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way  

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

Old coins being moved = more coins in the market, because they were out of the market for some time and are not being dumped.

Also it is an indicator that people are not moving coins to themselves, or only to be dumped and have no effect in price

Its a purely statistical thing, its just something like the coin weight used, which is calculated by the coin age and size.

Basically if 10 BTC has been idle for 100 days and are then moved, it is going to equal to 1000 BTC days destroyed.

Imo its a statistic that hold very little interest for the majority of users.

IIRC it is part of determining transaction priority. It is what allows some transactions to not require a fee and still be confirmed quickly. There is a portion of each block set aside for such priority transactions.

The coin age/weight system is used, priority depends on amount of BTC too and unconfirmed tx age. But coinage destroyed is just a statistic based off some of the former which is a useful tool but does not do anything by itself afaik. Just some feature on some of the blockchain explorers.

[Jet Cash]

It's interesting to know if people are using Bitcoin as a form of saving. It seems to me that a lot of  people in this forum don't really believe in Bitcoin, they just use various mechanisms to "earn" coins, and then convert them into feral as soon as possible.

[GannickusX]

Anyways these are just statistics and there is still no way to determine when someone is using bitcoins to purchase something or if it just a transaction to am exchange

[ranochigo]

yes I have never fully understood this, and I will keep it that way  

Same here, never fully understood this days destroyed statistic.
Why it is important or it matters when old coins moves? What this tells us?

Old coins being moved = more coins in the market, because they were out of the market for some time and are not being dumped.

Also it is an indicator that people are not moving coins to themselves, or only to be dumped and have no effect in price

Its a purely statistical thing, its just something like the coin weight used, which is calculated by the coin age and size.

Basically if 10 BTC has been idle for 100 days and are then moved, it is going to equal to 1000 BTC days destroyed.

Imo its a statistic that hold very little interest for the majority of users.

IIRC it is part of determining transaction priority. It is what allows some transactions to not require a fee and still be confirmed quickly. There is a portion of each block set aside for such priority transactions.

The coin age/weight system is used, priority depends on amount of BTC too and unconfirmed tx age. But coinage destroyed is just a statistic based off some of the former which is a useful tool but does not do anything by itself afaik. Just some feature on some of the blockchain explorers.

Transaction priority is determined by

priority = sum(input_value_in_base_units * input_age)/size_in_bytes

. It is also affected by the size. There is no such thing as unconfirmed TX age.

[CoinBoerse.com]

That is an interesting article as also I've never really understood that process either.