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Regarding number of people actually using the system, do you have any good estimates in mind by chance? I'm seeing claims of 7% of Indians for example, which wo

Regarding number of people actually using the system, do you have any good estimates in mind by chance? I'm seeing claims of 7% of Indians for example, which would be in the millions by itself. https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-data/ https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-data/

mjburgess 3y ago
Keep in mind that all the major source on crypto, including the top dozen popular textbooks I could find on amazon -- and many "academic" looking papers -- are written by people profoundly invested in selling crypto. All crypto news is press releases from crypto companies. All crypto ideas are rehearsed sales pitches with no arguments or evidence. You should assume anything written on crypto which hypes it is a lie. You should investigate the site/author, and -- I'd predict -- you'll find that every single time it links back to people with profound economic incentives to lie to you. For BTC, you have 400,000 addresses used daily transacting about 300,000 transactions. This is trivial to obtain as a public record. How many of those addresses are associated with only one individual? If i wanted to simulate millions of users I could do so only with a trivial amount of money. What is a "user"? It's just an address. There are no "users" on the chain. There are 70mil addresses on BTC, I believe. How fast could an interested party double that? Pretty quick. These numbers, absent hard-hitting empirical data, should be regarded as fraud. They're made up, either at the level of the press release, or by technical manipulation. Eg., by moving lots of money around a few accounts to manipulate figures. This is a system which maps, at least provably and publicly, to the entire daily economy of a small town. And it's energy usage is measured in 10^12
- kipchak 3y ago
  Even in a steel man argument I think someone would have to concede that BTC itself can not be the base layer most people, with a layer 2 like Lightning being necessary for scale which has it's own problems. Unfortunately as you say it is hard to tell how much genuine usage there is. The only thing I would add is that while crypto is worse, I feel the same concern regarding misaligned incentives in regular finance. In terms of address count, they're also as I understand intended to be use once[1]. On the other hand there's many people using the same wallet and transacting without ever leaving a exchange and causing a real transaction, though I probably wouldn't consider that as "counting" personally. [1]https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse
- pazimzadeh 3y ago
  > Keep in mind that all the major source on crypto, including the top dozen popular textbooks I could find on amazon -- and many "academic" looking papers -- are written by people profoundly invested in selling crypto > All crypto news is press releases from crypto companies Again, you could say the same thing about people trying to prop up the capitalist system as they are heavily invested in it and own property, etc.. I could argue that people arguing against crypto are mainly people who are upset that they missed the boat on the biggest price gains. But you could also make that argument about the stock market/capitalism. So it's not a valid point.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    > So it's not a valid point. Economics textbooks are not written by people trying to hype an asset. > you could say the same thing about people trying to prop up the capitalist system Sure, and the heavily manipulated housing market, propped up by QE which dramatically inflated asset prices, is a major issue facing several large economies (eg., AU, UK esp.). However homes, at the end of the day, are homes. If you're conned into overpaying 100,000 on a home whose value will drop 150k at some point because of obvious on-coming market corrections -- well, you still have a home. Crypto's market correction is "to about zero". And there's no home left. Crypto is a scam. These ideas are part of the scam. These whatabouts and fasle equivocations. It's as much a homeopath saying, "what about big pharma?"
    - pazimzadeh 3y ago
      > Economics textbooks are not written by people trying to hype an asset Even if economics textbooks are not written by the doomsayers for whatever reason, do you think banks and private companies are not doing PR blitzes for assets right before dumping them on us? > If you're conned into overpaying 100,000 on a home whose value will drop 150k at some point because of obvious on-coming market corrections -- well, you still have a home Well, at the end of the day you still have your ETH whether the price is $2k, 30 cents or $24k and you can use it to do public decentralized work across the L1 network. On which things like You can also trade it or buy the VitaDAO token and vote on funding for translational research proposals https://www.researchhub.com/paper/1266843/vitadao-whitepaper https://www.researchhub.com/paper/1266843/vitadao-whitepaper
patmcc 3y ago
Owners are very distinct from users. What percent of that 7% have ever bought or sold anything using crypto (other than when they obtained it)?
captn3m0 3y ago
I tried to dig a little into how these numbers are being calculated. Most are based on surveys of Indian Internet users, which caters to selection bias of "internet users in India who want to earn money using surveys". Additionally, India has a 47% internet penetration, which most reports (citing the surveys) don't seem to be accounting for. The-Ken[c] did a report about how the number of Crypto users in India seems to be over-reported, on two counts - Users have accounts at multiple exchanges (Double Counting) and Users who are in it for the Free Crypto: > Estimates peak at an overly enthusiastic 100 million crypto owners, as claimed by broker discovery and comparison platform BrokerChooser, but the true number is likely a more conservative 10 to 15 million, according to three industry executives The Ken spoke with. > “We work with an internal estimate of about 4 to 5 million regular users in India,” said an executive at crypto exchange ZebPay. [...] Notably, the exchange takes into account not just individuals who made trades in the last 30 days, but also app opens while calculating the number of regular users. > The situation is further exacerbated by exchanges offering joining bonuses and crypto rewards for signing up, like the Rs 100 worth of free bitcoin offered by crypto exchange CoinDCX. > This lures users into creating an account—irrespective of whether they engage with it in the future or not—and helps the exchange pad up its user numbers. A better source to consider is the Reserve Bank of India, which has made 2 interesting statements about the number of crypto investors in India. 1. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, Nov 2021: "With a reasonable amount of confidence, I can say the number of investors in the crypto market seems to be exaggerated. Adding that most of the buyers of cryptos in those platforms have anyway invested just between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000. (12-36USD). [a] 2. RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar, Feb 2022: "there is no data to justify how many investors have invested in these instruments and what is the amount of investment. Data informally gathered in November seems to indicate that crypto investments by Indians is nowhere near to being significant (although the pace of growth could make it a concern in future). This data showed that four out of five investor accounts held investments of less than ₹10,000 (122USD), with an average holding size of ₹1,566 (20USD). Wealth loss, if at all it is a possibility, is likely to affect only a small fraction of these investors." [b] I also tried to dig into the original number from Triple-A (Which seems to have gotten a lot of traction because it was quoted in a policy-brief from UN-CTAD[5]) Here's where the number is coming from: 1. Triple-A, Crypto Firm, 2023 Figure[1] is 97.5M / 7.1% of India. The citation for this is their 2022 Report[4] (now deleted). 2. Finder.com, Stats Firm, latest figure is 29% based on a survey of 31k Indians[2]. 29% figure is based on self-selected participants, which are "internet, smartphone and Google AdMob users or Qualtrics research panel participants.". 3. Triple-A, Crypto Firm, 2022 Report[4], claims "over 100 million people, 7.30% of India" and cites HootSuite's Digital 2020 report along with Statista. 4. HootSuite numbers (survey backed), % of Internet Users aged 16 to 64 who own any form of cryptocurrency: 4.1 Digital 2023 - 16.8% [6]. Cites GWI-Q3-2022 4.2 Digital 2022 - 12.6% [7]. Cites GWI-Q3-2021 4.3 Digital 2023 - 7.1% [8] - *this seems to be the figure being used by Triple-A*, which ought to have an upper bound of 2.1% or so (63% of India is aged 15-64, with a 47% internet penetration). Cites GWI=Q3-2019. HootSuite in turn cites GlobalWebIndex, which is again survey backed, and I couldn't find any clarity about the methodology. 5. Statista, Stats Firm, Paywalled[9]. This is again survey backed: "Which of these financial products and investments do you currently use/own? (multi-pick)". The figures shown here concern respondents who selected the option "Cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin)". I found a citation for their 2020 Figure[10], which puts an upper bound on this at 12% or so. [a]: https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/fintech/numbers-exaggerated-most-indian-crypto-buyers-invested-rs-1000-rs-3000-das/87642507 https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/fintech/numbe... [b]: https://m.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewBulletin.aspx?Id=20870 https://m.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewBulletin.aspx?Id=20870. Highly recommend reading this, as it tackles exactly the argument here ("so many Indians have already invested in cryptocurrencies and banning cryptocurrencies would lead to a loss of wealth for them. There are three reasons such arguments do not appear justified...") [c]: https://the-ken.com/tokenised-edition/the-double-counting-fluff-in-indias-crypto-numbers/ https://the-ken.com/tokenised-edition/the-double-counting-fl... [1]: https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-india-2022/ https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-india-2022/ [2]: https://www.finder.com/in/finder-cryptocurrency-adoption-index https://www.finder.com/in/finder-cryptocurrency-adoption-ind... [3]: https://bitcoinke.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Geography-of-Cryptocurrency-2021.pdf https://bitcoinke.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Geography-of... [4]: https://archive.is/icGl5 https://archive.is/icGl5 [5]: https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/presspb2022d8_en.pdf https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/presspb202... [6]: https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2023-india-february-2023-v01 https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2023-india-f... Slide 48 [7]: https://www.slideshare.net/gangavidya/digital2022indiafebruary2022v01pdf https://www.slideshare.net/gangavidya/digital2022indiafebrua... Slide 47 [8]: https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2020-india-january-2020-v01 https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2020-india-j... Slide 35 [9]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202468/global-cryptocurrency-ownership/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202468/global-cryptocur... [10]: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/24/3263 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/24/3263

mjburgess 3y ago

Keep in mind that all the major source on crypto, including the top dozen popular textbooks I could find on amazon -- and many "academic" looking papers -- are written by people profoundly invested in selling crypto. All crypto news is press releases from crypto companies. All crypto ideas are rehearsed sales pitches with no arguments or evidence. You should assume anything written on crypto which hypes it is a lie. You should investigate the site/author, and -- I'd predict -- you'll find that every single time it links back to people with profound economic incentives to lie to you. For BTC, you have 400,000 addresses used daily transacting about 300,000 transactions. This is trivial to obtain as a public record. How many of those addresses are associated with only one individual? If i wanted to simulate millions of users I could do so only with a trivial amount of money. What is a "user"? It's just an address. There are no "users" on the chain. There are 70mil addresses on BTC, I believe. How fast could an interested party double that? Pretty quick. These numbers, absent hard-hitting empirical data, should be regarded as fraud. They're made up, either at the level of the press release, or by technical manipulation. Eg., by moving lots of money around a few accounts to manipulate figures. This is a system which maps, at least provably and publicly, to the entire daily economy of a small town. And it's energy usage is measured in 10^12

kipchak 3y ago
Even in a steel man argument I think someone would have to concede that BTC itself can not be the base layer most people, with a layer 2 like Lightning being necessary for scale which has it's own problems. Unfortunately as you say it is hard to tell how much genuine usage there is. The only thing I would add is that while crypto is worse, I feel the same concern regarding misaligned incentives in regular finance. In terms of address count, they're also as I understand intended to be use once[1]. On the other hand there's many people using the same wallet and transacting without ever leaving a exchange and causing a real transaction, though I probably wouldn't consider that as "counting" personally. [1]https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse
pazimzadeh 3y ago
> Keep in mind that all the major source on crypto, including the top dozen popular textbooks I could find on amazon -- and many "academic" looking papers -- are written by people profoundly invested in selling crypto > All crypto news is press releases from crypto companies Again, you could say the same thing about people trying to prop up the capitalist system as they are heavily invested in it and own property, etc.. I could argue that people arguing against crypto are mainly people who are upset that they missed the boat on the biggest price gains. But you could also make that argument about the stock market/capitalism. So it's not a valid point.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  > So it's not a valid point. Economics textbooks are not written by people trying to hype an asset. > you could say the same thing about people trying to prop up the capitalist system Sure, and the heavily manipulated housing market, propped up by QE which dramatically inflated asset prices, is a major issue facing several large economies (eg., AU, UK esp.). However homes, at the end of the day, are homes. If you're conned into overpaying 100,000 on a home whose value will drop 150k at some point because of obvious on-coming market corrections -- well, you still have a home. Crypto's market correction is "to about zero". And there's no home left. Crypto is a scam. These ideas are part of the scam. These whatabouts and fasle equivocations. It's as much a homeopath saying, "what about big pharma?"
  - pazimzadeh 3y ago
    > Economics textbooks are not written by people trying to hype an asset Even if economics textbooks are not written by the doomsayers for whatever reason, do you think banks and private companies are not doing PR blitzes for assets right before dumping them on us? > If you're conned into overpaying 100,000 on a home whose value will drop 150k at some point because of obvious on-coming market corrections -- well, you still have a home Well, at the end of the day you still have your ETH whether the price is $2k, 30 cents or $24k and you can use it to do public decentralized work across the L1 network. On which things like You can also trade it or buy the VitaDAO token and vote on funding for translational research proposals https://www.researchhub.com/paper/1266843/vitadao-whitepaper https://www.researchhub.com/paper/1266843/vitadao-whitepaper

patmcc 3y ago

Owners are very distinct from users. What percent of that 7% have ever bought or sold anything using crypto (other than when they obtained it)?

captn3m0 3y ago

I tried to dig a little into how these numbers are being calculated. Most are based on surveys of Indian Internet users, which caters to selection bias of "internet users in India who want to earn money using surveys". Additionally, India has a 47% internet penetration, which most reports (citing the surveys) don't seem to be accounting for. The-Ken[c] did a report about how the number of Crypto users in India seems to be over-reported, on two counts - Users have accounts at multiple exchanges (Double Counting) and Users who are in it for the Free Crypto: > Estimates peak at an overly enthusiastic 100 million crypto owners, as claimed by broker discovery and comparison platform BrokerChooser, but the true number is likely a more conservative 10 to 15 million, according to three industry executives The Ken spoke with. > “We work with an internal estimate of about 4 to 5 million regular users in India,” said an executive at crypto exchange ZebPay. [...] Notably, the exchange takes into account not just individuals who made trades in the last 30 days, but also app opens while calculating the number of regular users. > The situation is further exacerbated by exchanges offering joining bonuses and crypto rewards for signing up, like the Rs 100 worth of free bitcoin offered by crypto exchange CoinDCX. > This lures users into creating an account—irrespective of whether they engage with it in the future or not—and helps the exchange pad up its user numbers. A better source to consider is the Reserve Bank of India, which has made 2 interesting statements about the number of crypto investors in India. 1. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, Nov 2021: "With a reasonable amount of confidence, I can say the number of investors in the crypto market seems to be exaggerated. Adding that most of the buyers of cryptos in those platforms have anyway invested just between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000. (12-36USD). [a] 2. RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar, Feb 2022: "there is no data to justify how many investors have invested in these instruments and what is the amount of investment. Data informally gathered in November seems to indicate that crypto investments by Indians is nowhere near to being significant (although the pace of growth could make it a concern in future). This data showed that four out of five investor accounts held investments of less than ₹10,000 (122USD), with an average holding size of ₹1,566 (20USD). Wealth loss, if at all it is a possibility, is likely to affect only a small fraction of these investors." [b] I also tried to dig into the original number from Triple-A (Which seems to have gotten a lot of traction because it was quoted in a policy-brief from UN-CTAD[5]) Here's where the number is coming from: 1. Triple-A, Crypto Firm, 2023 Figure[1] is 97.5M / 7.1% of India. The citation for this is their 2022 Report[4] (now deleted). 2. Finder.com, Stats Firm, latest figure is 29% based on a survey of 31k Indians[2]. 29% figure is based on self-selected participants, which are "internet, smartphone and Google AdMob users or Qualtrics research panel participants.". 3. Triple-A, Crypto Firm, 2022 Report[4], claims "over 100 million people, 7.30% of India" and cites HootSuite's Digital 2020 report along with Statista. 4. HootSuite numbers (survey backed), % of Internet Users aged 16 to 64 who own any form of cryptocurrency: 4.1 Digital 2023 - 16.8% [6]. Cites GWI-Q3-2022 4.2 Digital 2022 - 12.6% [7]. Cites GWI-Q3-2021 4.3 Digital 2023 - 7.1% [8] - *this seems to be the figure being used by Triple-A*, which ought to have an upper bound of 2.1% or so (63% of India is aged 15-64, with a 47% internet penetration). Cites GWI=Q3-2019. HootSuite in turn cites GlobalWebIndex, which is again survey backed, and I couldn't find any clarity about the methodology. 5. Statista, Stats Firm, Paywalled[9]. This is again survey backed: "Which of these financial products and investments do you currently use/own? (multi-pick)". The figures shown here concern respondents who selected the option "Cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin)". I found a citation for their 2020 Figure[10], which puts an upper bound on this at 12% or so. [a]: https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/fintech/numbers-exaggerated-most-indian-crypto-buyers-invested-rs-1000-rs-3000-das/87642507 https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/fintech/numbe... [b]: https://m.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewBulletin.aspx?Id=20870 https://m.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewBulletin.aspx?Id=20870. Highly recommend reading this, as it tackles exactly the argument here ("so many Indians have already invested in cryptocurrencies and banning cryptocurrencies would lead to a loss of wealth for them. There are three reasons such arguments do not appear justified...") [c]: https://the-ken.com/tokenised-edition/the-double-counting-fluff-in-indias-crypto-numbers/ https://the-ken.com/tokenised-edition/the-double-counting-fl... [1]: https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-india-2022/ https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-india-2022/ [2]: https://www.finder.com/in/finder-cryptocurrency-adoption-index https://www.finder.com/in/finder-cryptocurrency-adoption-ind... [3]: https://bitcoinke.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Geography-of-Cryptocurrency-2021.pdf https://bitcoinke.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Geography-of... [4]: https://archive.is/icGl5 https://archive.is/icGl5 [5]: https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/presspb2022d8_en.pdf https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/presspb202... [6]: https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2023-india-february-2023-v01 https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2023-india-f... Slide 48 [7]: https://www.slideshare.net/gangavidya/digital2022indiafebruary2022v01pdf https://www.slideshare.net/gangavidya/digital2022indiafebrua... Slide 47 [8]: https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2020-india-january-2020-v01 https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2020-india-j... Slide 35 [9]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202468/global-cryptocurrency-ownership/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202468/global-cryptocur... [10]: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/24/3263 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/24/3263