Best metric for evaluating Bitcoin adoption rate over time

[franky1]

blocksize on the right.. most 999kb
https://blockchain.info/blocks

average blocksizes
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?scale=1&timespan=60days

you get the occasion blocks which are near empty.
this is not due to low demand or anything about trends.. growth or popularity of usage, this is about the pools doing "empty block" or spv mining.
meaning they start a new block empty and while hashing away they validate the prvious block. if valid, then they start filling the block with unconfirmed transactions and keep hashing.

sometimes they are lucky to get a new solve thanks to starting before everyone else hense the block isnt full.

learn context of the stats you pull. especially if you only want to use one statistic.
if you cannot learn the context of why one stat is what it is. then its best to use many stats and combine them to find a pattern. but even then you still need to attach some context to explain your opinion of the stats your using.

[deisik]

blocksize on the right.. most 999kb
https://blockchain.info/blocks

average blocksizes
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?scale=1&timespan=60days

Could you please give a link to a chart at a normal scale, not logarithmic? As I can judge, the blocks are filled only at around 80% of their capacity on average, though the logarithmic scale makes them all appear filled up to the hilt, which is no more than a false impression. Let's look at what a normal scale chart would reveal...

I bet we still have enough empty space on average

The most accurate measure of the adoption rate, would be when regulated exchanges release their data for specific periods to see if there was a increase or a decrease during these periods.

Yup. That's one of the few reliable ways of telling. Transactions don't mean a great deal. Free to open wallets don't mean anything at all. And really not that many people ever get anywhere near an exchange either, but it is something. I'd put Localbitcoins volume in there too even though much of the trading on there probably takes place away from the site too.

The data you would get from such an exchange could mean anything for the reasons I gave in this post

[franky1]

blocksize on the right.. most 999kb
https://blockchain.info/blocks

average blocksizes
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?scale=1&timespan=60days

Could you please give a link to a chart at a normal scale, not logarithmic? As I can judge, the blocks are filled only at around 80% of their capacity on average, though the logarithmic scale makes them all appear filled up to the hilt, which is no more than a false impression. Let's look at what a normal scale chart would reveal...

I bet we still have enough empty space on average

no

on AVERAGE??
you can check the last 100+ blocks here and count how many are empty
blocksize on the right.. most 999kb
https://blockchain.info/blocks

atleast learn the CONTEXT of the stats you try to use.

especially if your ignoring avoiding other stats simply because out of the mountain of stats available you have chosen one. but not gone as far as explain the limitations of the one stat you chose.

by the way the stat you prefer is something YOU chose, so the onus is on you to explain it. i have just tried to be helpful to show how to atleast back up your one stat by saying you can use other stats, and if a pattern emerges then good for you. but if other stats dont measure up then its best to find MANY stats that can combine to show some correlation..

or just face up that while there are still transactions in the mempool even with the occassional empty block. you need to explain the empty block concept.

atleast try.

and dont assume something because you formed an opinion. back it up with data, stats, information, rational logic, etc

[deisik]

blocksize on the right.. most 999kb
https://blockchain.info/blocks

average blocksizes
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?scale=1&timespan=60days

Could you please give a link to a chart at a normal scale, not logarithmic? As I can judge, the blocks are filled only at around 80% of their capacity on average, though the logarithmic scale makes them all appear filled up to the hilt, which is no more than a false impression. Let's look at what a normal scale chart would reveal...

I bet we still have enough empty space on average

no

So you are not going to show a linear chart? Okay, I will do that for you:



This is the average block size chart for the last 180 days. As you can clearly see yourself, the blocks are filled only at around 75% of their capacity on average (maybe, somewhat higher than that). You started by claiming that the block size limits the amount of transactions. Since this is obviously not the case, you further tried to confuse the issue by pointing to a chart which looked as if the blocks had been almost filled due to a logarithmic scale of the chart. When you were told about that as well as asked to show a linear chart, you went totally off-topic...

So what's your point here?

[gentlemand]

The data you would get from such an exchange could mean anything for the reasons I gave in this post

All the information is unreliable but at least that measure lists individual and verified humans interacting with Bitcoin. Not much else does.

[deisik]

The data you would get from such an exchange could mean anything for the reasons I gave in this post

All the information is unreliable but at least that measure lists individual and verified humans interacting with Bitcoin. Not much else does.

How can the data you get from the blockchain itself be unreliable? If we see that on November, 21, 2016, there were exactly 242,746 transactions processed (let's discard the possibility of a counting error), then it means just that. At least, you can always check it yourself. On the other hand, I don't share the obsession that many folks feel toward finding out how many people are using Bitcoin, for the reasons I mentioned before. I agree that if we could say exactly how many people have been using Bitcoin today and for what purposes specifically, and compare the results from yesterday and the day before yesterday, we could in fact estimate the Bitcoin adoption rates accurately. But it seems that direct measurements are not possible nowadays...

Therefore we should try to use circumstantial evidence, like number of transactions processed daily

[sportis]

     I definitely agree with OP. This time series chart is a very good visual way to evaluate the behavior and the pattern of the data over the time instances. I don't know if these are real or fake TX  but till now I haven't seen any other tool to estimate the adoption rate over the time.

[yayayo]

While I can agree that the number of Bitcoin transactions is one of the better metrics to measure bitcoin adoption over time, I must point out several shortcomings:

1. A lot of Bitcoin activity is happening off-chain. Sadly, I would estimate that the number of users of wallet services increases faster than the number of real Bitcoin standalone wallet users.

2. Relatively few actors are sending around a lot of transactions.

3. With increasing transaction fees, low value transactions are discouraged. On-chain transaction handling by exchanges and mining pools is being optimized, resulting in a smaller number of total transactions.

Therefore, overall I would think that the growth in the number of Bitcoin transactions is an underestimation of the real Bitcoin adoption rate. However in my view it's better to be conservative in terms of positive estimations than to get euphoric about something that might not materialize as imagined.

ya.ya.yo!

[MingLee]

I guess that transaction volume is a pretty good metric for measuring how much Bitcoin is growing, and by the looks of the graph you posted it is growing at a pretty linear rate without a ton of variation, so I would think that's a fairly good sign.

Interesting to see there wasn't much of a dip from back in 2015 when the value was low. Sure it slowed, but it was far from shrinking.

[arcanaaerobics]

For me the best metric is finding some place near you that accept bitcoin, or some service that you want to spend and this service accept the coin..

The rest is just guessing...

[pooya87]

~ I think that the stats of Bitcoin transactions processed daily and their change over time is a by far more informative and objective metric,~

i have been saying this for a year that if you want to see the adoption one of the closest things you can look at is the number of transactions made daily.

1. A lot of Bitcoin activity is happening off-chain. Sadly, I would estimate that the number of users of wallet services increases faster than the number of real Bitcoin standalone wallet users.

2. Relatively few actors are sending around a lot of transactions.

3. With increasing transaction fees, low value transactions are discouraged. On-chain transaction handling by exchanges and mining pools is being optimized, resulting in a smaller number of total transactions.

1) where? those wallets you say are also sending transactions on-chain since users usually just use those wallets to send and receive bitcoin from other places not inside that wallet only!

2) who is an actor? but i agree and that is why i always say this factor is the closest thing not the real deal.

3) the fees are around 10-15 cents still and transactions lower than that should not even be happening even if fees were zero.

[davis196]

Many folks would claim that the best metric for evaluating Bitcoin adoption by general public would be a number of users using Bitcoin. I beg to differ for the reason that, first, it is not possible to objectively and accurately estimate the number of users actually using Bitcoin, and, second, users that had used Bitcoin in the past or just keep their funds "under the mattress" are not very relevant for the said purpose since their coins can be considered as left for dead, so to speak, until and unless they start circulating again (though the case of hoarders is more intricate, of course). I think that the stats of Bitcoin transactions processed daily and their change over time is a by far more informative and objective metric, which is also readily available for analysis...



So what is your opinion on using this metric for the purposes of evaluating Bitcoin adoption rate?

But what if one user made 120 transactions last year and 550 transactions this year?

This is a growth of the number of transactions but i don`t think it`s growth of bitcoin adoption.

[DimensionZ]

I am not sure if this is such a good idea to be honest. Using the amount of Bitcoin transactions processed daily to gauge the adoption rate might be misleading because it's very easy to spam the Blockchain with fake TX. How can we distinguish between the real TX and the bot spammed fake TX? Increasing the amount of daily TX doesn't always translate to more unique users

Fake transactions usually don't have fees set, right? If so, they can be easily found and discarded. On the other hand, if they have fees, then are they really fake?

Wouldn't that plateau as we reach the blocksize limit? Bitcoin adoption could be increasing, with more transactions moving off-chain.
But we wouldn't able to figure that out, by justing looking at the number of transactions being processed.

There are still many half empty (or half full) blocks on the blockchain, or blocks with only the block generating transaction (don't know how it is properly called). When we get to the point at which there would be no more room for transactions in all blocks at the current block size during, say, a day, the block should be already expanded to accommodate all these new transactions...

It would be interesting to know the average percentage at which blocks are filled right now

I didn't word my sentence right, sorry. What I meant to say is that people have tried to flood the Blockchain with dust transactions before and these had fees attached to them although sub-optimal in order to slow down the network. So the mem pool would appear to be filled and it would seem that there is an influx of so many new Bitcoin users but in reality the amount of TX doesn't show the accurate amount of Bitcoin users. This can be really misleading.

[deisik]

While I can agree that the number of Bitcoin transactions is one of the better metrics to measure bitcoin adoption over time, I must point out several shortcomings:

1. A lot of Bitcoin activity is happening off-chain. Sadly, I would estimate that the number of users of wallet services increases faster than the number of real Bitcoin standalone wallet users

But this is sort of inevitable. First adopters, and those who came right after them, were quite tech-savvy, to say the least, so they had not problem to set up desktop wallets. And some of them started those wallet services (web wallets if I got you right). Right now, more and more people get attracted to Bitcoin who simply can't properly set up their computers (I mean make them safe from viruses, trojans, and similar things), let alone setting up a standalone wallet...

And web wallets come in very handy here

2. Relatively few actors are sending around a lot of transactions

As I got it, the transactions from the top 100 addresses have been excluded from consideration, and I agree in advance that it cuts both ways

3. With increasing transaction fees, low value transactions are discouraged. On-chain transaction handling by exchanges and mining pools is being optimized, resulting in a smaller number of total transactions

As I already said, it is hard to find a good metric to gauge Bitcoin adoption since Bitcoin adoption itself is not clearly understood and defined in the first place. Ask two people about what they think Bitcoin adoption means exactly, and you may get very different answers. Obviously, Bitcoin adoption by merchants and vendors means one thing, while by gamblers and traders quite another

This doesn't mean, though, that we should not at least try to come to a common denominator here