Bounty: Study on retail or business use of bitcoin

[reubgr]

Hi Folks,

I'm offering 3.5 bitcoins (close to $50 at today's rates) for a paper or otherwise easy to understand and use data regarding how much retail and business-to-business trade is being done in bitcoins. The ilst of things on the trade page on the bitcoin wiki keeps getting longer, which is great, but there has been no reliable information about how much trade is being done in bitcoin. Every single article (including my interview in the German online newsaper, Zeit Online) mentions the alpaca socks, for example, but no one knows how many they've sold in bitcoins vs. dollars, etc... I want to be able to cite something in my legal paper, when it is published in a few months in the UC Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal, that will give an idea of how big the bitcoin economy really is. The person creating this study can retain copyrights and authorship rights, but agree to allow free academic and fair use of the study.

To do this well, you'll likely have to send out surveys or in some other way get sales data from some bitcoin merchants. The document you provide needs to be trustworthy, so you should explain your methods, use citations where possible, and try to edit carefully. Something that looks flashy but has data that seems made up -- or where I can't confirm the methodology won't fit the bill. Similarly, something with the world's best data in the form of an excel spreadsheet without an accompanying explanation won't work either.

I will award the bounty in my sole discretion. I reserve the right not to award it if nothing meeting my standards is created within a reasonable amount of time, which I will also determine in my sole discretion. I also reserve the right to award part of the bounty or split the bounty between two or more papers or studies. However, if there is a standout, I will likely award the whole bounty to one paper/person.

A source like this would be very good for the bitcoin community because it would put in context what is going on in the bitcoin economy, and might act as a counterweight to those who think that bitcoin is only used for purchasing drugs on silk road. (To that end, a comparison between the amount of money spent on silk road vs. other things would be helpful, but certainly not necessary).

If you think such a paper/source would be good, please contribute to the bounty by sending donations to 1HSSicqMoMm4FXpH6UgQya7xaQbN9EJXit

[reubgr]

I've already sent my 3.5 bitcoins to that address. I will distribute this bounty for the purposes above, in my sole discretion. Note that if I do not distribute the bounty because nothing meeting my standards appears, I will donate the bitcoins in that account to the bitcoin faucet, or if that isn't available or isn't prudent, to another bitcoin-community focused venture.

Feel free to ask questions. I am taking the bar in a few days, so I might answer questions sporadically, if at all, before July 28th.

To enter your paper/study, you can post a link here to it or you can send it to me at reuben.grinberg+bitcoin at gmail. Questions that you want to ask offline can be sent there too.

Best,
Reuben

[reubgr]

Apparently there is a bug in the forums that cuts off messages right after a bitcoin address, which is why I had to split my message into two. WTH?

[evoorhees]

Your project is noble and needed, but 3.5 btc is a pretty paltry sum for quality work. At $10/hr that's only about 5 hours of work, and I don't know many people who put out quality material at $10/hr.

If you want a real market report that is accurate, informative, and well-presented, then I'd think 10x the price would be more appropriate, and still that'd be on the cheap side.

This would be a great project for one of the wealthy early-adopters to fund - could be a good indirect investment for them if figures are widely cited and it shows the btc economy as more mature.

[Gabriel Beal]

If you can get the bounty higher, I'd be willing to spend some time collecting the data.  At this point I have lots of connections with bitcoin businesses because of MetaCo.in and SquareWear.biz.  I probably would not have time to write it up in paper form, but I could split the bounty with someone who was willing to take my data and do the other work.

[reubgr]

@evoorhees: I agree that 3.5BTC isn't nearly enough for work of this sort.

First, I'm hoping that it will motivate, as an additional bonus, someone who was already planning to do something like this or has the skills to do it. For example, I got some donations for the draft of my paper (and block explorer will tell you that I re-sent part of those donations into this bounty). If you count the actual number of hours I spent on that paper and the hourly rate that my employer will be charging for my work, the paper is worth somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000. But I didn't do it for the money and I hope the bounty here will be a partial motivation rather than full payment.

Second, I hope that others will add to the bounty.

@Gabriel Beal: thanks for your offer -- I hope others add more to the bounty! Please send any amount to: 1HSSicqMoMm4FXpH6UgQya7xaQbN9EJXit

[ampkZjWDQcqT]

This could be the new form of scam as well.

[reubgr]

@ampkZjWDQcqT: I can assure you this isn't a scam. I am a well-known member of the bitcoin community. I published a paper on SSRN regarding some legal issues related to bitcoin. I have posted my full name. I am a graduate of Yale Law School. Although I appreciate that someone might start a scam using this kind of bounty, this isn't that.

Also, you have fairly good circumstantial evidence that it is really me who started this thread and not a scammer who is co-opting my identity. I sent bitcoins from the address I put up for donations for my paper to the address I posted here. Thus, a scammer would have to get the password on my account here on the forums and also somehow compromise my wallet.

[reubgr]

@bitcoin_for_fun: thanks for publishing your data. I had to ask for access. Could you make it public somehow so that people don't have to request access to see the data?