Animation: Bitcoins moving over the blockchain

[ThomasV]

This animation shows from which point in time coins have moved and stayed unused.

The green curve shows generated coins, the blue curve shows when they were used for the last time.
This is an updated version of an older video

[finway]

dont' know what it means

[ThePok]

+1

 

[finway]

green curve is simple.

does blue curve means the "unused coins" ?

[db]

Wow! Interesting to see how the early coins have not moved at all, with one small exception: the June 2011 exchange rate peak. Wonder if that was mainly selling off or securing of wallets?

Unless I'm interpreting it completely wrong. I'm very confused about the unit and scale of the Y axis. I'd think the green line would be the absolute number of coins generated in some unit of time and the blue the absolute number of coins that remain where they landed at any point in time. But the label says "coins/block" and the numbers are very small. How can the generated coins/block vary? Are the cut off blue spikes actually hugely tall?

[Litt]

I like the fact that more and more bitcoin is being spent. That is a great sign. Nevermind for what.

[ThomasV]

Wow! Interesting to see how the early coins have not moved at all, with one small exception: the June 2011 exchange rate peak. Wonder if that was mainly selling off or securing of wallets?

Unless I'm interpreting it completely wrong. I'm very confused about the unit and scale of the Y axis. I'd think the green line would be the absolute number of coins generated in some unit of time and the blue the absolute number of coins that remain where they landed at any point in time. But the label says "coins/block" and the numbers are very small. How can the generated coins/block vary? Are the cut off blue spikes actually hugely tall?

oh you are right, it's not coins/block but coins/(intervals of 10 minutes), so it fluctuates around 50
I will fix that

yes the blue lines are very tall, this is why they are cut.
if it was not cut, the area under the green curve would be equal to the total area in blue

[db]

yes the blue lines are very tall, this is why they are cut.
if it was not cut, the area under the green curve would be equal to the total area in blue

I see. Is it static or is new data incorporated as time goes by? That is, is it possible to revisit the animation from time to time to see if anything interesting has happened lately?

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Nice graphs. Some smoothing will make them more informative. A Gaussian kernel would be best, or you could just change the bin size to 60 minutes 3 days or something (I assume it's now 1 day?).

[finway]

Nice job.

[fivebells]

Having trouble following this.  Could you explain exactly what the blue and green lines represent, please?

A legend on the animation page itself might go a long way towards clarifying this.

[BurtW]

This is totally fascinating.  Here are some of the things I gather from it, assuming I am interpreting it correctly:

1) The dark green line represents production.  It should average out to a line at 50, representing the 50 BTC that are produced every 10 minutes.  You can see that from the start through the beginning of 2010 there was a general underproduction of coins.  After that we see a general overproduction of coins with a fascinating peak in production after the July 2010 time marker.

2) If you run the cursor up to about January 2010 the light blue basically fills out the area under the dark green line.  This shows coins being produce and then held by the early adopters.

3) As you move forward from March 2010 to November 2010 you notice that some white area appears below the green line, especially for the coins produced in this middle time period.  This shows that coins minted during this middle time period were mined and then moved.  Notice that the coins minted in earlier times are still being held.

4) It is not until about June 2011 that the coins minted in the early days start to move.  And if you run the cursor all the way to the end you will see that there is still a majority of the early minted coins that have not moved.

I have two suggestions:

Change the y axis to a logarithmic scale so we can see the tops of all the lines.  This will also smooth out the dark green line.

Overlay BTC price, also on a logarithmic scale.  That would be totally cool.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Having trouble following this.  Could you explain exactly what the blue and green lines represent, please?

A legend on the animation page itself might go a long way towards clarifying this.

The green line is how many coins were generated every day.

The blue line is how many coins were sent to some address in a given day and hasn't moved up to the time your cursor is over.

Both quantities are divided by 144, the average number of blocks per day.

For example, if your cursor is over July 15, 2011 and the blue line over March 15, 2011 is 100, it means there are 14400 bitcoins that were transferred on March 15, 2011 and either did not move since or moved only after July 15, 2011.

[deepceleron]

If you look at the current view, you see that lots of coins acquired at the June highs are being held - in hopes that it will be $20 again...  

This graph needs another color - for generated coins. It gets really busy near the end with all the trading, so you can't see how many or how long coins are held after they are mined.

I see these trends:

• most early adopter coins Jan-Dec 2009 are either still held (or lost).
• Jan-Oct 2010 coins were held for up to a year, about 3/4 are sold now
• Nov 2010 - Jun 2010 - coins sold off quite quickly after being mined

[ThomasV]

thanks for the comments. I have added a short explanation at the top of the page.

For the moment, this page is updated manually; I might try to automate it later if there is some interest.

A Gaussian kernel would certainly erase some information. Due to the random nature of bitcoin exchange between individuals, I expect the blue distribution to become smoother in the future; (as a consequence of the central limit theorem).

[the founder]

coins appear to be moving faster now than before...   selling or maybe used for commerce?

[fivebells]

Having trouble following this.  Could you explain exactly what the blue and green lines represent, please?

The green line is...

Thanks, Meni.  I get it now.