How many BTC users are there around the world and how to increase their numbers?

[WWC-DEV]

With regard to this Old Topic, the last post dates back to November 2013 and wild guesstimates ranged from 400K to 1 Million.
Anyone wants to take a stab at this?
More importantly, what would it take to put BTC (or another digital currency) in the hands of hundreds of millions of people around the world to use daily?

[Snail2]

Make a lot more useful services for bitcoin and that will increase the numbers spontaneously .

[klmist]

With regard to this Old Topic, the last post dates back to November 2013 and wild guesstimates ranged from 400K to 1 Million.
Anyone wants to take a stab at this?
More importantly, what would it take to put BTC (or another digital currency) in the hands of hundreds of millions of people around the world to use daily?

The number of 0.01BTC, 0.1BTC and 1BTC keys have all grown roughly 1.5x since Nov 1st. I expect that is roughly proportional to a 1.5x increase in the number of users.. however even 400k may still be a high estimate for the number of users who currently control as much as 0.01BTC.

[Divinespark]

Can't help thinking 250k-500k is the number of core btc users
Saw an article that explored this some weeks ago, but am unable to find it
Total # massively overstated in the media

[qwerty555]

from last July there were 11.4m wallets



1) there were 11.4 M addresses
2) 94 %  had a TOTAL of 37 coins. These are effectively dead
3) We only probably need to count the top 7 catagories of ownership in the table or 3.2% of wallets that own 99% of bitcoins
The number of these wallets which is roughly the same as individuals who own 1 coin or more is ONLY 250,000

Now there are 35.5 million wallets a 3 fold increase.

http://bitcoinrichlist.com/charts/bitcoin-distribution-by-address?atblock=300000

Once again a VERY rough estimate

1) 96% of wallets or 34.07 million have between 0 and .001 of a coin. These are effectively dead and not used or useable to any significant degree. (These wallets own a TOTAL of 227 coins)

2) Of the approx 4% that remain or 1.48Million  3.2% or approx 1.140 million wallets have less than 1 coin and are either inactive or insignificantly active. ( and represent ownership of a total of 113,000 coins)

3) the remaining 0.8% (owning 12 .6 million coins = 99% of ALL coins lol)  or 340,000 wallets owning 1 coin or more could be considered as the active users ( of significance). This figure should at LEAST be cut by 50% to 170 thousand users as most if not all of these individuals have more than 1 wallet ( I have 4)

Active users that are significant  Est  170,000 

Additional persons who can claim to be users but whose transactions are of no great significance in terms of volume or value, but can add to the number of transaction figures  1.48 M divided by 2  740,000  or divided by 3 ( lots of dead wallets in that group) 500,000.

[DolanDuck]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
block#  302155  22/05/2014               num  %noOut   %dead   %of tot %of act  diff prev           value  %noOut  %vdead   %TotVal       diff prev
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
= 0                                 33637561   0.00%   0.00%  92.0432%              81981         0.00000   0.00%   0.00%   0.0000%         0.00000
= 1 satoshi (0.00000001 BTC)          403384  38.64%   8.88%   1.1038%  13.87%         -3         0.00403  38.64%   8.88%   0.0000%        -0.00000
> 1 satoshi <= 0.001 BTC  ( ~1$ )    1044595  81.80%  25.90%   2.8583%  35.92%        738       224.22368  75.86%   8.53%   0.0018%         0.34759
> 0.001 BTC <= 0.1 BTC                889843  71.66%   7.80%   2.4349%  30.60%       3470     18598.17536  72.50%  11.66%   0.1453%        61.42890
> 0.1 BTC <= 1 BTC                    300736  70.30%   7.30%   0.8229%  10.34%       -351    138071.40801  75.56%   9.28%   1.0786%      -117.71700
> 1 BTC <= 5 BTC                      127284  68.63%   7.05%   0.3483%   4.38%        -15    309882.40453  70.39%   7.45%   2.4207%        29.96225
> 5 BTC <= 10 BTC                      37791  71.91%   6.73%   0.1034%   1.30%        -82    292107.79210  73.89%   6.77%   2.2819%      -507.35484
> 10 BTC <= 25 BTC                     29299  69.90%   7.23%   0.0802%   1.01%         53    485476.49528  71.23%   7.43%   3.7924%      1077.85979
> 25 BTC <= 50 BTC                     52425  92.19%  70.45%   0.1435%   1.80%         57   2393407.49718  93.90%  76.65%  18.6967%      2016.09812
> 50 BTC <= 75 BTC                      4923  69.57%  14.95%   0.0135%   0.17%         10    294134.96780  68.98%  13.56%   2.2977%       762.32306
> 75 BTC <= 100 BTC                     6989  85.65%   6.10%   0.0191%   0.24%          8    664870.69471  86.61%   6.11%   5.1938%       772.28907
> 100 BTC <= 500 BTC                    7855  68.40%   6.65%   0.0215%   0.27%         -8   1744214.87135  70.14%   7.56%  13.6254%     -1837.54032
> 500 btc <= 1000 BTC                   1485  75.22%   6.26%   0.0041%   0.05%          0   1146862.15607  77.36%   6.56%   8.9590%      -628.84321
> 1000 BTC                              1219  69.65%   7.05%   0.0033%   0.04%          1   5313371.71440  69.83%   4.09%  41.5068%      2671.10510
                  Total Actives      2907828  70.83%  15.48%   7.9568% 100.00%       3878  12801222.40421  76.13%  19.01% 100.0000%      4299.95851
                  Total             36545389   5.64%   1.23% 100.0000%              85859  12801222.40421  76.13%  19.01% 100.0000%      4299.95851

num      : number of addresses in this range of balance
%noOut   : percentage of active addresses WITHOUT out operations
%dead    : percentage of active addresses with input and output operations prior to 2012
%of tot  : percentage of the TOTAL number addresses
%of act  : percentage of the number of addresses with zero balance (active)
diff prev: number variation compared to the previous table
%noOut   : % value transactions WITHOUT output ( % value of range)
%vdead   : % operations value prev 2012 ( % value of range))
%TotVal  : % value of this range compared to the total value
diff prev: change in value compared to the previous table

credits to gbianchi bitcointalk.org

[qwerty555]

Dolan..that is more up to date and has greater info..but its a bu##er to read..is there a link

[Predatorian]

Nowadays many ppl starting to use btc as currency and i know will be much more than now.

[exocytosis]

More importantly, what would it take to put BTC (or another digital currency) in the hands of hundreds of millions of people around the world to use daily?

For Bitcoin to reach the point where as much as 0.1 % of the world's population are using it, we'd need a reliable, user-friendly infrastructure. We'd need trustworthy exchanges and "Bitcoin banks".

All of this is clearly impossible without some type of regulations, since exchange owners and other BTC service providers currently have every incentive to steal from their customers, as proven by Bitcoin's history.

[turvarya]

More importantly, what would it take to put BTC (or another digital currency) in the hands of hundreds of millions of people around the world to use daily?

For Bitcoin to reach the point where as much as 0.1 % of the world's population are using it, we'd need a reliable, user-friendly infrastructure. We'd need trustworthy exchanges and "Bitcoin banks".

All of this is clearly impossible without some type of regulations, since exchange owners and other BTC service providers currently have every incentive to steal from their customers, as proven by Bitcoin's history.

What do you mean by "Bitcoin Banks"? The whole idea of Bitcoins is, that you don't need a bank.

[qwerty555]

The recent quickcoin app        http://www.quickcoin.co/   that allows you to send fb to fb has the potential to add a few million users sending birthday and xmas gifts to friends and family..it seems to be really easy to use once you have loaded ur (quickcoin/"fb") wallet.

It will depend on how they promote, what is the total cost of use including exchange rate spreads, and how easy is it to use it or cash it at the receivers end.

[bananaControl]

from last July there were 11.4m wallets



1) there were 11.4 M addresses
2) 94 %  had a TOTAL of 37 coins. These are effectively dead
3) We only probably need to count the top 7 catagories of ownership in the table or 3.2% of wallets that own 99% of bitcoins
The number of these wallets which is roughly the same as individuals who own 1 coin or more is ONLY 250,000

Now there are 35.5 million wallets a 3 fold increase.

http://bitcoinrichlist.com/charts/bitcoin-distribution-by-address?atblock=300000

Once again a VERY rough estimate

1) 96% of wallets or 34.07 million have between 0 and .001 of a coin. These are effectively dead and not used or useable to any significant degree. (These wallets own a TOTAL of 227 coins)

2) Of the approx 4% that remain or 1.48Million  3.2% or approx 1.140 million wallets have less than 1 coin and are either inactive or insignificantly active. ( and represent ownership of a total of 113,000 coins)

3) the remaining 0.8% (owning 12 .6 million coins = 99% of ALL coins lol)  or 340,000 wallets owning 1 coin or more could be considered as the active users ( of significance). This figure should at LEAST be cut by 50% to 170 thousand users as most if not all of these individuals have more than 1 wallet ( I have 4)

Active users that are significant  Est  170,000 

Additional persons who can claim to be users but whose transactions are of no great significance in terms of volume or value, but can add to the number of transaction figures  1.48 M divided by 2  740,000  or divided by 3 ( lots of dead wallets in that group) 500,000.

You are confusing addresses with wallets. We don't know how many wallets there are, and most people (hopefully) use a new address for each new transaction. So all in all, no one knows really.

[WWC-DEV]

Dolan..that is more up to date and has greater info..but its a bu##er to read..is there a link

Yeah hard to read/interpret.
But I can see from the first 7 lines of data that between 98 and 99% of ALL BTC addresses (not wallets) hold less than 10 BTC each., with about 92% (first line) having zero BTC in them.
Am I reading this correctly?
The table has the key to interesting answers, I will take another more detailed look, when I have some more free time, and try to interpret it.

[qwerty555]

. Most of the 12.8 M coins are accounted for in the link which does show addresses not wallets.... .and that some wallets may have multiple addresses.  

If that is the case then the active users would be even lower  if they use multiple addresses..does that sound logical? and yes we cannot know for sure but this is an attempt at a guestimate.


I should have written

3) the remaining 0.8% (owning 12 .6 million coins = 99% of ALL coins lol)  or 340,000 addresses owning 1 coin or more could be considered as the active users ( of significance). This figure should at LEAST be cut by 50% to 170 thousand users as most if not all of these individuals have more than 1 address

[master-P]

I think most people who own BTC have them spread over multiple addresses, so the number of total BTC users is probably much lower than the addresses with at least 0.01 BTC. I have over half a dozen funded addresses myself and I'm sure there are people who control tens or even hundreds of funded addresses.

[WWC-DEV]

What do you mean by "Bitcoin Banks"? The whole idea of Bitcoins is, that you don't need a bank.

So... how about we changed "Bitcoin Banks" to "Bitcoin-accepting banks", or "Bitcoin-Friendly Banks"?
Assuming "banks" will never go away.
How about I arrive at a foreign city's airport and I head straight to one of those currency exchange kiosks right there inside the terminal and I exchange some Bitcoins for some local currency?
I then take a taxi from the airport to my hotel, in my pocket, I have:
- my smartphone with the Android Bitcoin wallet, loaded with 15 BTCs
- Some local currency I just got at the exchange kiosk
- A Paypal Mastercard debit card with $1000 in my Paypal account
Which payment do you think the taxi driver will take?
When I get to my hotel, I go to the Reception desk and I have to either pre-pay for my stay or show a debit/credit card.
Unless I have done some research online BEFORE traveling, and found a hotel that accepts Bitcoin (yeah they are out there!!), my payment choices are limited.

[QuestionAuthority]

There is an easy way to determine the core number of Bitcoin users. Total the number of small time con artists world wide and add the total amount of young idealistic computer literate suckers worldwide. That number will be your core users.

[WWC-DEV]

There is an easy way to determine the core number of Bitcoin users. Total the number of small time con artists world wide and add the total amount of young idealistic computer literate suckers worldwide. That number will be your core users.

LOL
"Small time con artists"?
The hackers - who allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins from MtGox - were not "small time" by any means!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

There is an easy way to determine the core number of Bitcoin users. Total the number of small time con artists world wide and add the total amount of young idealistic computer literate suckers worldwide. That number will be your core users.

Not sure if the following is the correct equation, but...

cumulative normal distribution at the extremes, x one or two standard deviations above the mean

[Bibop]

There is an easy way to determine the core number of Bitcoin users. Total the number of small time con artists world wide and add the total amount of young idealistic computer literate suckers worldwide. That number will be your core users.

Not sure if the following is the correct equation, but...

cumulative normal distribution at the extremes, x one or two standard deviations above the mean

LOL..
can not be that.