How many BitCoin Users are there?

[Fractality]

Hi,

just wondering if that can be inferred from the network? My client shows 106025 blocks, I suppose that is an upper limit (at least of the number of who people who actually own BitCoins?)? My oldest transaction shows 8444 confirmations - so there are that many nodes? But not every user is a node?

Was trying to convince a friend to do a BitCoin based project, and he asked for this...

Thanks


Björn

[kiba]

just wondering if that can be inferred from the network? My client shows 106025 blocks, I suppose that is an upper limit (at least of the number of who people who actually own BitCoins?)? My oldest transaction shows 8444 confirmations - so there are that many nodes? But not every user is a node?

106025 is just how many blocks there are in the blockchain.

Confirmations is merely how many blocks your transaction had been confirmed by the network.

[bitcool]

Confirmations is merely how many blocks your transaction had been confirmed by the network.

I thought each client only confirms a transaction once, if it decides to confirm at all. so there are at minimal  8444 clients out there (one user may install multiple clients on different machine though). Am I wrong on this?

[Mahkul]

Confirmations is merely how many blocks your transaction had been confirmed by the network.

I thought each client only confirms a transaction once, if it decides to confirm at all. so there are at minimal  8444 clients out there (one user may install multiple clients on different machine though). Am I wrong on this?

The 8444 just means how many blocks have been generated since that transaction - it has nothing to do with the amount of users on the network.

[grondilu]

I doubt there is any way to know exactly how many bitcoin users there are.

However, using some statistics both about bitcoin users and the block chain, it should be possible to make an evaluation.


For instance, we could make a poll about the number of bitcoin addresses people have in their wallet (with a non-zero balance).  Then, by comparing the number of such addresses in the block chain, I guess we could make an extrapolation.

[Hal]

How about counting the number of people in #bitcoin? That should include almost everyone who's running the client at that moment. I'd like to see stats on how this number is changing.

[grondilu]

How about counting the number of people in #bitcoin? That should include almost everyone who's running the client at that moment. I'd like to see stats on how this number is changing.

I don't use bitcoin everyday and thus my client is not always running.  I don't even have a permanent internet access.

I doubt I'm the only one in that case.  Thus I don't think the number of running clients is relevant.

[bencoder]

Probably the closest you'll get:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=https://smsz.net/btcStats/bitcoin.kml

Of course, there's no way to know how many nodes belong to one person, nor how many aren't listed on the map.

(from http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2346.0)

[Hal]

How many dots on that map? I lost count.

[theymos]

Bitcointools has the ability to analyze your addr.dat, which should contain nearly every node in the network if your client has been running for a while.

[Stephen Gornick]

[mtgox]

sgornick: is that number of nodes online at that time? That is way more than I expected.

[Cdecker]

According to my own measurement there are 321 clients accepting incoming connections online over the last 24 hours. No idea on how many NATed nodes are online.

[The Madhatter]

*cough* *cough* The windows client needs UPnP. *cough* *cough*

[Stephen Gornick]

is that number of nodes online at that time?

I believe it might be the nodes seen over the previous 3 hours, per "update 2" here:
  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2346.0