Noob here - I heard they found a sunken ship in the middle of the Pacific by averaging a bunch of answers, so here are some tough questions I wonder about:
1) How many people worldwide have at least one Bitcoin wallet?
2) What will 1 BTC cost in USD on Dec 31, 2013?
thanks!
Fred
Question 1) is particularly interesting whereas 2) is just speculation. A few months ago, I found a site somewhere that suggested there were only about 1,6 million funded Bitcoin addresses, which might equate to somewhere between 50.000 and 200.000 unique users. If we're considering a genuine Bitcoiner as someone who has handled
at least one millibitcoin in a wallet or account they control some time in their life then there might be anywhere between 100.000 and 2 million Bitcoiners worldwide right now - in truth, nobody knows exactly. There is increasing interest in the Far East, especially China, in terms of Bitcoin-Qt downloads, but this does not necessarily mean all those downloaders deposited 1 mBTC or more in their newfangled wallets.
As for guessing the
BTC/fiat ratio at the end of this year, I'll just pull a random figure out of my backside because it's as good as anybody else's guess: $172 on Coinbase/Bitstamp.