How Many Millions of People Use Bitcoin?

[JayJuanGee]

I think that this is a decent topic, and I appreciate a lot of the responses regarding the difficulties in knowing the answer, exactly.

I would like to see some kind of poll that attempts to suss out what is meant by user, too.

So, for example, if the definition of a user is anyone who has at any time held more than .001 bitcoin and continues to hold at least .001 bitcoin, then that gives us a certain broad picture that is not really very well defined.

Some users may have several wallets and 100s of addresses, and surely, if some bitcoins are held on exchanges, then the number of users is somewhat difficult to suss out, because exchanges are not very forthright about how many users they have (even if they are fairly certain that some of their users are not the same person under a different guise).

[JayJuanGee]

I think they or we are only around 2 million because we were open to adventure and opportunities.  Some people were too afraid to venture on this kind of currency.  They are too cautious and do not want to be scammed.  But who would want their money to be wasted.  It is just maybe it was not considered as a legal currency by the government.

there might be even less regular users in my opinion, there are a lot of holders but not users unfortunately

I understand that it matters to some extent to differentiate between users and holders, yet I don't really see any reason to criticize folks merely because they are holders.  Holders likely become users the more that they hold onto the asset, and really holders do not hurt the bitcoin infrastructure, overall.

critics of bitcoin frequently attempt to denigrate holders further by calling them hoarders, yet in the end, it doesn't really matter if a whole lot of folks believe that there is some value in holding bitcoin for the longer term.. They do risk that the direction of the price may not go in their favor, yet bitcoin is certainly capable of handling such a matter with whatever coins are available, in terms of liquidity in the even that some folks may want to use bitcoin for the holding  and/or transfer of larger amounts of value.

[JayJuanGee]

the results from the poll dont look good for the crypto planet because this translates to less than 10% of the world polution
we need more people to use bitcoins to help in the price boost

What is the need to rush matters?  The amount of use and adoption is what it is, and many of us likely recognize that there is a considerable value in investing in bitcoin currently because the level of adoption remains so low, yet the utility and future potential of bitcoin remains so great - even under current circumstances and current developments. 

I see no need to get anxious  merely because you believe adoption is not happening as fast as you would like it to happen, and surely, there are some advantages to slower rates of growth in order to continue to develop the space in order that the space is more ready for when the additional users come.

[Andre#]

I would assume there is something like 2-3 million people using Bitcoin daily, maybe a few thousand to a few ten-thousands of people using it at any one time, and maybe something like ~5 million people with some money in it in some way.

That's just a really rough estimate that doesn't really have any specific data to back it up, but I think those are probably decent numbers considering the community.

Bitcoin allows for a quarter of a million transactions per day. So there are at most a quarter of a million people who use Bitcoin daily.

[clickerz]

Bitcoin allows for a quarter of a million transactions per day. So there are at most a quarter of a million people who use Bitcoin daily.

Or maybe less than a quarter of  a million as some are having multiple transactions maybe? I voted 5 - 15 million people, that is too ambitious estimate LOL but may be that is its reach. Some may not be active and just curious about bitcoin and could be a potential bitcoiner someday

[PremiumCodeX]

If we knew how many million people use bitcoin, we would have a serious problem, Sir  Bitcoin addresses' are anonym so I cannot tell how many people own how many addresses that ever done any transaction. Maybe, we could count the bitcoin addresses that has ever done transaction from analysing blockchain, though.

[AsaroUk]

If we knew how many million people use bitcoin, we would have a serious problem, Sir  Bitcoin addresses' are anonym so I cannot tell how many people own how many addresses that ever done any transaction. Maybe, we could count the bitcoin addresses that has ever done transaction from analysing blockchain, though.

Indeed you are right about that, no one knows how much users it really got because some people have a lot of wallets due to that you cannot simply count or something..

[Andre#]

If we knew how many million people use bitcoin, we would have a serious problem, Sir   Bitcoin addresses' are anonym so I cannot tell how many people own how many addresses that ever done any transaction. Maybe, we could count the bitcoin addresses that has ever done transaction from analysing blockchain, though.

Indeed you are right about that, no one knows how much users it really got because some people have a lot of wallets due to that you cannot simply count or something..

Given that there can be no more than 7 million transactions per month, you can set upper bounds, depending on the average usage.

- So if an average user does one transaction per month, then there are less than 7 million users.
- If an average user does one transaction per week, then there are less than 1.6 million users.
- If an average user does one transaction per day, then there are less than 250,000 users.
- If an average user does five transactions per day, then there are less than 50,000 users.

I do about 4 tx per day. So if I'm an average Bitcoin user, there are about 63,000 users.

[n691309]

I think that the number of people that use bitcoin is a little more than 5 millions because I read that 2-3 milllion bitcoin users are only on coinbase so imagine the other wallets and other exchanges with other millions people.

[zimmah]

Pretty sure we're still at less than 2 million. At the very least less than 5 million.    

Definitly not higher than that. But we will get there eventually, at least if we make room for them. Current,y there's no room for more users and that's slowing down adoption.

I think that this is a decent topic, and I appreciate a lot of the responses regarding the difficulties in knowing the answer, exactly.

I would like to see some kind of poll that attempts to suss out what is meant by user, too.

So, for example, if the definition of a user is anyone who has at any time held more than .001 bitcoin and continues to hold at least .001 bitcoin, then that gives us a certain broad picture that is not really very well defined.

Some users may have several wallets and 100s of addresses, and surely, if some bitcoins are held on exchanges, then the number of users is somewhat difficult to suss out, because exchanges are not very forthright about how many users they have (even if they are fairly certain that some of their users are not the same person under a different guise).

I have once shown that you can get a pretty good estimate based on the information about wallets. Even when you don't know anything about the owner of the wallets, you can say a lot about the demographics by statistics. And you can estimate the number of users and the average amount of bitcoins owned.    

At the very least you will know the maximum amount of users Bitcoin can have.

[MWesterweele]

The usually using bitcoin in this world is not that much and its really not big bitcoin is not yet fully popular where people think it twice before they going to use bitcoins for currency or not we cant convinced people use this curency because they have freedom to choose what will they gonna use.

[JayJuanGee]

Pretty sure we're still at less than 2 million. At the very least less than 5 million.    

Definitly not higher than that. But we will get there eventually, at least if we make room for them. Current,y there's no room for more users and that's slowing down adoption.

I think that this is a decent topic, and I appreciate a lot of the responses regarding the difficulties in knowing the answer, exactly.

I would like to see some kind of poll that attempts to suss out what is meant by user, too.

So, for example, if the definition of a user is anyone who has at any time held more than .001 bitcoin and continues to hold at least .001 bitcoin, then that gives us a certain broad picture that is not really very well defined.

Some users may have several wallets and 100s of addresses, and surely, if some bitcoins are held on exchanges, then the number of users is somewhat difficult to suss out, because exchanges are not very forthright about how many users they have (even if they are fairly certain that some of their users are not the same person under a different guise).

I have once shown that you can get a pretty good estimate based on the information about wallets. Even when you don't know anything about the owner of the wallets, you can say a lot about the demographics by statistics. And you can estimate the number of users and the average amount of bitcoins owned.    

At the very least you will know the maximum amount of users Bitcoin can have.

Even though we can have some decent estimates, the fact that the poll is all over the place seems to demonstrate that we continue to kind of guess about how many actual people are attached to wallets and addresses. 

Even though I am not really surprised to hear propositions that "users are maxed out", I still find such propositions to be quite speculative and lacking in meaningful evidence to establish the truth of the matter asserted.  Sure, bitcoin experiences are going to change with more transactions and more traffic, but to say that we are maxed out, seems a bit of a stretch when transaction times still continue to be less than a couple of hours to confirm and fees remain pretty low (frequently in the under $.10 per transaction range).  With seg wit seemingly on the cusp of going live, it seems that there remains decent space for growing and no kind of real emergency in terms of reaching maximum capacity as folks seem to like to frequently speculatively assert.

[prabowo96]

We shouldn't be counting bitcoin users by stuff like known bitcoin addresses & blockchain.info wallets. People have multiple addresses & wallets across multiple platforms.

I'm not basing it on anything other than an educated guess but I'd be surprised if there were more than 2 million individuals currently involved in bitcoin (holding coins or whatever).

The guessing / wisdom of the crowd can usually predict the right answer. I think there is some actual research on this, something to do with guessing how many jelly beans there are in a jar. By removing outliers and averaging out the rest, people tend to get the right answer.  

Are you watching NatGeo? hahahah I saw this program too, nice way of thinking.

So, by the pool results... 2-5 millions?

Bitcoin have a lot to grow yet.

[reddibrek]

Couple of million have some Bitcoin; a lot less actually use it.

[1 currency now]

If you look at the blockchain you could see how many transactions there is. It is kind of important to see that Bitcoin is young and there isn't many people using it, the number of people using Bitcoin these past 7+ years have drastically increased so that is progress.

[sirazimuth]

well we could always look at total users as a function of total market cap.
for example todays market cap (according to CCMC) is just under $10 billion.
so assuming oh... lets say 2 million users, then each user has an average holding
of $10 billion divided by 2 million = $5000= 8btc+
so if you think the average bitcoin user holds around 8 btc then that would equate to 2 million users.
etc...

...or i could be just talking out my ass...

[hajimasan]

I think there are less then 2 million people who uses Bitcoin . because in every country there are only few selected person who knows about Bitcoin . so I think if we consider only non officially user of Bitcoin then about 2 million people are using people Bitcoin .

[SpiritOfLife]

i think arround 4% of total population in the world using bitcoin.

[knightkon]

I have to say way count, because there is not enough!!!  We need more people using bitcoin so that it will be accepted more places than the limited locations it is currently accepted.  I am hoping the year 2017 will bring more bitcoin users to the building!!!  Tell the world!

[warwar]

We shouldn't be counting bitcoin users by stuff like known bitcoin addresses & blockchain.info wallets. People have multiple addresses & wallets across multiple platforms.

I'm not basing it on anything other than an educated guess but I'd be surprised if there were more than 2 million individuals currently involved in bitcoin (holding coins or whatever).

The guessing / wisdom of the crowd can usually predict the right answer. I think there is some actual research on this, something to do with guessing how many jelly beans there are in a jar. By removing outliers and averaging out the rest, people tend to get the right answer.  

Are you watching NatGeo? hahahah I saw this program too, nice way of thinking.

So, by the pool results... 2-5 millions?

Bitcoin have a lot to grow yet.

2-5 millions? as of now? I think that is pretty low though it is 2016  sort of a lot of new users are coming everday and everyweek our populations every year is getting double or more because it is very famous i think we are in 6-9 millions users of bitcoin as of now