how many bitcoin users are there?

[nkspace]

how many bitcoin users do you think there are?

[Xendrios]

we could make a counter:
2

[ChanceCoats123]

3!

[FFMG]

4! at least.

[naphto]

Fair enough

[ex-trader]

Users or owners?

I'd bet there are a lot more owners than real users.

[Jackin Jill]

Users are owners. You cannot use something unless you possess it in some form.

7

[ex-trader]

Users are owners. You cannot use something unless you possess it in some form.

7

But many owners are not users.

Almost all of the recent MtGox registered purchaser of Bitcoins will be because they want to buy something that they think will make them money. They are not buying them because they intend to use them to purchase stuff.

[leemar]

LMAO! 8.

[WilderedB]

9

I have a bunch of websites and use Namecheap for the domains.

Namecheap takes bitcoin, so yeah, I'm happy to use BTC.

[rhinospray]

I have calculated less than 1,200,000 (if you count speculators as users)

[flix]

I estimate 1.5-2 Million at present.

Just blockchain has 240k
https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

The satoshi client's latest version 0.8.1 has over 640k downloads

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/

There are 100k forum members
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=mlist


Add in other clients, web wallets, coinbase, mtgox, strogncoin, easywallet, etc...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Ladder#Top_clients

Then substract redundancies... people with multiple wallets, etc..

We are probably somewhere between 1 and 2 million users.

[rhinospray]

Those three figures mostly overlap.

[flix]

Those three figures mostly overlap.

Probably, not certainly. At most we can get a range...

[Mcoroklo]

It would be useful to define what a Bitcoin user is first. Is it someone using them for buying stuff, someone who have any or just someone who've shown interest?

I think 100k-250k is a way more realistic figure than 1mio+.

[Jackin Jill]

It would be useful to define what a Bitcoin user is first. Is it someone using them for buying stuff, someone who have any or just someone who've shown interest?

I think 100k-250k is a way more realistic figure than 1mio+.

Once again, you can't use something you cannot possess. And in this case, if you don't possess the intelligence, then you can't use it 

A person with 0.00000001btc is a user just by possessing it in a wallet. Owning it gives the person experience and the experience can be parlayed.
Also, if you receive an Apple computer, yet hate them, and never remove it from it's packaging, you are still an Apple user. But it's more like a non-user. But a user none the less.
Your experience is still relative. I wouldn't say you are sudo, but even the smallest fraction of experience in ownership is still to be considered usership.

[nwbitcoin]

I would guess that 2 Million users worldwide is a close guess to the number of people who have and / or use bitcoins.

Now that we have established that - and if you think that just between the US and the EU we have half a billion adults able to buy and sell in bitcoins if they wished.

If only 200 million decided to have a go - that would still mean the market would have to grow by another 200% - if we started talking 10 transactions each per day - wow!  Huge, huge numbers.

Bitcoins isn't even out of bed yet but you need to give it at least 3 years before we see 200 million users! It will be another few years on top before we start seeing the multiple transactions

[Impaler]

Their is no way their are 2 million active-transactors of BTC.  Maybe by some perverse hoarder=user logic like Jill keeps repeating (yet without ever admitting that you might hold WITHOUT using, otherwise the two terms would be synonymous) is using can you come up with number that high but it won't reflect any kind of reflection of actual people engaged in commerce to buy and sell in BTC which might literally be down in the thousands for all we know.

For that matter we don't even have a good characterization of how much of the daily transaction volume is in real commerce and how much is just zero-sum arbitrage and gaming like Satoshi-dice and Mt.Gox other then that were very sure they are the vast majority.

Of flix number the 640K downloads of the client seems most relevant and I'd say that's the upper bound.

[rhinospray]

For that matter we don't even have a good characterization of how much of the daily transaction volume is in real commerce and how much is just zero-sum arbitrage and gaming like Satoshi-dice and Mt.Gox other then that were very sure they are the vast majority.

There is fragmentary accurate data, like an analysis of SR transactions that estimated its commercial volume during 4 months last year, the total sales of bitcoisnstore in 6 months, or the published earnings of Satoshi-Dice. If you combine all that kind of data, and apply the growth rates shown by other indicators correcting them by maturity of each market, you can get at least maximum values with a high degree of confidence.

Using that techniques I obtain that during March the maximum commercial volume was $31m, split in 7,6% drugs, 84,4% casinos and a very optimistic 9% for retail. Gaming is an internal industry and should be counted even if its a zero-sum and does not create value. Exchanges are excluded because they are just connections to other currencies, and we would be counting twice the commercial transactions (entry/exit).