comparison of google trends

[niko]

I know, yet another "google trends" thread... but please bear with me. I want to look at search volume for "bitcoin" in the context of various money-transfer options.



As you can see, interest in Bitcoin has always been higher than in Dwolla.  Recently we have beaten ukash as well, and are breathing behind moneygram's neck... Even IBAN doesn't seem to far ahead.

Granted, people search for "bitcoin" for various reasons, some unrelated to money-transfer schemes, but this comparison is still a good way to understand the level of bitcoin awareness and interest. When somebody asks you "what percent of people has actually heard of Bitcoin?" you can say it's comparable to the percent of people who heard of Moneygram...

[Sukrim]

Well, Dwolla is quite US-centric as far as I know and probably doesn't offer something different than PayPal (which is NOT included on the trends list...).

Ripple and the freshly launched "Masterpass" by Mastercard might be something to watch as well as Google wallet.

[niko]

Well, Dwolla is quite US-centric as far as I know and probably doesn't offer something different than PayPal (which is NOT included on the trends list...).

Ripple and the freshly launched "Masterpass" by Mastercard might be something to watch as well as Google wallet.

Good points, duly noted.

[mobile4ever]

If you were the "bitcoin predictor", when would you say that bitcoin will reach 15 to 18 percent adoption?

[Spekulatius]

I know, yet another "google trends" thread... but please bear with me. I want to look at search volume for "bitcoin" in the context of various money-transfer options.



As you can see, interest in Bitcoin has always been higher than in Dwolla.  Recently we have beaten ukash as well, and are breathing behind moneygram's neck... Even IBAN doesn't seem to far ahead.

Granted, people search for "bitcoin" for various reasons, some unrelated to money-transfer schemes, but this comparison is still a good way to understand the level of bitcoin awareness and interest. When somebody asks you "what percent of people has actually heard of Bitcoin?" you can say it's comparable to the percent of people who heard of Moneygram...

sauce? (I know, just for posterity reasons)

[niko]

If you were the "bitcoin predictor", when would you say that bitcoin will reach 15 to 18 percent adoption?

Percent of what?

[niko]

sauce? (I know, just for posterity reasons)

I thought it was clear from the post - the source is Google Trends, with search terms shown on the left of the picture.

[mobile4ever]

If you were the "bitcoin predictor", when would you say that bitcoin will reach 15 to 18 percent adoption?

Percent of what?

Adoption like Firefox, Android... etc.

[Spekulatius]

sauce? (I know, just for posterity reasons)

I thought it was clear from the post - the source is Google Trends, with search terms shown on the left of the picture.

URL would be handy

[knight22]

here

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=bitcoin%2C%20iban%2C%20moneygram%2C%20ukash%2C%20dwolla&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q

[niko]

If you were the "bitcoin predictor", when would you say that bitcoin will reach 15 to 18 percent adoption?

Percent of what?

Adoption like Firefox, Android... etc.

That still doesn't answer my question. In case of Firefox, for example, when people talk about adoption percentages, they refer to the percent share of the browser market. What arena are you referring to when you talk about the adoption of bitcoin?  Online payments? Overall payments? Online non-government-currency-denominated payments? Currency exchange? Preciuos metal trading? Percent of people's savings?  Percent of salaries paid out in various currencies? Online donations? We have to be specific and clear, since bitcoin has so many facets.

[eleuthria]

im shocked at dwolla, does no one outside of btc use it?

Dwolla is basically a BTC<->USD exchange that won't admit they're a BTC passthrough.  I remember back when they had their big brag press release about how much they were growing without mentioning Bitcoin, yet the growth timeline had a direct correlation to when different BTC exchanges started using Dwolla as a method for funds transfers, and the price increases during the 2011 bubble.

[mobile4ever]

If you were the "bitcoin predictor", when would you say that bitcoin will reach 15 to 18 percent adoption?

Percent of what?

Adoption like Firefox, Android... etc.

That still doesn't answer my question. In case of Firefox, for example, when people talk about adoption percentages, they refer to the percent share of the browser market. What arena are you referring to when you talk about the adoption of bitcoin?  Online payments? Overall payments? Online non-government-currency-denominated payments? Currency exchange? Preciuos metal trading? Percent of people's savings?  Percent of salaries paid out in various currencies? Online donations? We have to be specific and clear, since bitcoin has so many facets.

Total payments and total online payments. When do you think bitcoin will become 15 to 18 percent of those? Thanks.

[niko]

Total payments and total online payments. When do you think bitcoin will become 15 to 18 percent of those? Thanks.

not sure why you would choose me to try and guess, but here it goes:
15%-18% of overall world trade volume: never. Too much inertia with the old system, too much vested interest in government currencies and gold, and too much room and time for similar, bitcoin-like innovation to creep in.

About total online payments (as opposed to POS) - chances are still slim to nil. If no major disasters strike, including unintended/unforseen consequences of the block size limit algorithm, we might get there in a year or two. The trend so far is great, no? What do you think?

[FreeMoney]

im shocked at dwolla, does no one outside of btc use it?

I'm pretty sure I've googled bitcoin way more times than anyone would google dwolla no matter how much they love it, there is just so much more to learn and read about bitcoin than dwolla.

[niko]

im shocked at dwolla, does no one outside of btc use it?

I'm pretty sure I've googled bitcoin way more times than anyone would google dwolla no matter how much they love it, there is just so much more to learn and read about bitcoin than dwolla.

Good point, this skews the results.

[apetersson]

add "paypal" to the query and it looks quite different

[mobile4ever]

Total payments and total online payments. When do you think bitcoin will become 15 to 18 percent of those? Thanks.

not sure why you would choose me to try and guess, but here it goes:
15%-18% of overall world trade volume: never. Too much inertia with the old system, too much vested interest in government currencies and gold, and too much room and time for similar, bitcoin-like innovation to creep in.

About total online payments (as opposed to POS) - chances are still slim to nil. If no major disasters strike, including unintended/unforseen consequences of the block size limit algorithm, we might get there in a year or two. The trend so far is great, no? What do you think?

I believe bitcoin will be the mobile choice for payments, making it surpass many currencies. One example is Africa:

They find that people will skip a meal or choose to walk instead of paying for a bus fare so that they can keep their phone in credit.   Meanwhile, mobile-phone operators have been giving free access to sites such as Wikipedia to entice customers.

Still, only 16% of respondents said they were using their phones to browse the internet. The real breakthrough in the Kenyan market has been in people’s ability to send and receive money, with more than two-thirds doing so by phone.

They will actually skip a meal in Africa for their cellphone. When they find out the small or lack of fees with bitcoin, they will switch.

Mobile is changing everything, adding bitcoin to it will be even more revolutionary.

[Ente]

So, what would be the next step with this? Translate all (mobile) client software to africaans and the like? How about a bounty for this? This may be some very, very well invested few bitcoins here..

Ente

[niko]

add "paypal" to the query and it looks quite different

Yes, Sukrim pointed it out already. I wouldn't say it looks different - the numbers are what they are, regardless what comparisons we make. I picked several well known systems with comparable search volumes, so we can get a feel for the level of global awareness. Sure, PayPal is much bigger than any of these. We should include it all on log scale. Unfortunately, Google Trends only lets me pick up to five terms at a time, and normalizes and scales data so 5+ comparisons are complicated.