7 ms·

You are wrong, there is tremendous consumer growth happening. The two biggest US processors (BitPay and Coinbase) release numbers every once in a while. One exa

by mrb 12y ago

You are wrong, there is tremendous consumer growth happening. The two biggest US processors (BitPay and Coinbase) release numbers every once in a while. One example: "Since [...] October, along with the integration with Shopify in November, [...] the transaction volume has tripled." Source: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000-in-bitcoin-transactions-processed.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000...

sanswork 12y ago
Where are you seeing it? Overstock the most regularly promoted name as a retailer has only seen dropping numbers since they started. Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago? Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- user24 12y ago
  I'd like to see a source for your claim that "Overstock ... has only seen dropping numbers since they started." I think you're probably getting it from the FOX Business interview in May, but that's not really as cut-and-dried as you're making out. [1] http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit...
  - sanswork 12y ago
    http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-in-new-york-to-persuade-regulators-coinbase-circle-overstock/ http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-i... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-future-projections/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-futu... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit... Jan 1 - 170K Jan 2-29 - $15K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average
    - user24 12y ago
      Thanks! Hmm. It is only to be expected that the initial spike would drop off. It'll be interesting to see if that downwards trend continues or not.
- mrb 12y ago
  Overstock is just one merchant, one data point. Not enough to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, BitPay represents 30k merchants. And they did not stop releasing numbers. They recently announced processing $1 million every single day. This is 3.3x their daily average of 2013. Source: http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-overstock-com-gets-1-6-million-in-bitcoin-payments-773/ http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-ove...
  - sanswork 12y ago
    Your source is a link to a story which sources some random bitcoin news blog which sources...nothing but their own claim that they were told that. Every other news source references it or doesn't give a source for the claim. This is common in bitcoin reporting. One blog makes something up, misunderstands something, or makes a mistake and the rest report it as fact.
    - mrb 12y ago
      This milestone ($1M/day) was widely disseminated in a business wire 2 weeks before the newsbtc.com blog post: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpay-raises-100000393.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpa... Notice how it is burried in the announcement of the $30M funding round. This is probably why the fact was not picked up by more people.
      - sanswork 12y ago
        I'll believe it when I see numbers for multiple days over multiple months. Both bitpay and coinbase have been caught in the past using spikes and holiday volume to make their overall volume look much higher than it is.
        mrb 12y ago
        BitPay processed $5k/day in May 2012 [3], $18k/day in Sep 2012 [3], $160k/day in March 2013 [1], $300k/day average through 2013 [2], and now $1.0M/day [4]. BitPay had 1k merchants in Sep 2012 [3], 10k by Sep 2013 [5], 30k by May 2014 [6]. BitPay raised $2M in May 2013 [7], and $30M in May 2014 [4]. They had a single office in Atlanta in 2012, now they have 8000 sq ft in Atlanta [8], plus offices in Amsterdam, San Francisco, New York City. BitPay had 7 employees in April 2013 [9], and 40 by May 2014 [8], and plans to have 100 by end of 2014 [8]. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, but their growth is obvious... Have you been to any Bitcoin conference? The number of new startups, flury of projects, funding rounds, etc, is mind-boggling. You belong to the super-minority who believes that "Bitcoin is seeing no consumer growth" (!) [1] http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/04/bitpay-processes-5-million-in-march-eclipses-silk-road/ http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/04/bitpay-processes-5-million-... [2] http://www.paymentssource.com/news/the-companies-signing-up-big-merchants-to-accept-bitcoin-3018108-1.html http://www.paymentssource.com/news/the-companies-signing-up-... [3] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2298/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchants-accepting-bitcoin/ http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2298/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchant... [4] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpay-raises-100000393.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpa... [5] http://paymentweek.com/bitpay-reaches-10k-merchants-milestone/ http://paymentweek.com/bitpay-reaches-10k-merchants-mileston... [6] http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/04/merchant-spotlight-sendowl.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/04/merchant-spotlight-sendowl... [7] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/4626/bitpay-raises-2-million-led-by-founders-fund/ http://bitcoinmagazine.com/4626/bitpay-raises-2-million-led-... [8] http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/21/bitpay-s-office-grand-opening-celebration.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/21/bitpay-s-office-grand-open... [9] http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/04/22/bitpay-expands-staff-to-seven-full-time-employees.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/04/22/bitpay-expands-staff-to-se...
aquadrop 12y ago
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.
- pwim 12y ago
  Wow, that's amazingly low. Especially because I'm guessing most of these transactions are just mixing services. I wonder how much represent actual transfers of wealth between individuals? I would guess less than 1K per day, which would make it incredibly low compared to all the hype bitcoin has got.
  - macNchz 12y ago
    Indeed. In searching around to find something to compare these numbers with, I found that Walmart alone processed 10 million register transactions in 4 hours on Black Friday in 2012[1]. Even if all 70k bitcoin transactions every day were actual purchases (rather than shifting money around), it'd take 5 months to do what Walmart did in 4 hours. 1. http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-reports-best-ever-black-friday-events http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-r...
- moe 12y ago
  It has grown by a factor of 4 in the past two years (visible when you switch to the 2 year or 'all time' scale).
  - jdong 12y ago
    That hardly tells anything about consumer adoption though, but about trade volume.
    - moe 12y ago
      That's true. Still 100% growth per year is not exactly 'no growth'.
lomocotive 12y ago
https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... this looks like a typical exponential curve to me
- jdong 12y ago
  That looks like the price spiking and lots of trades happening, or alternatively a major individual player moving their coins around. It definitely says nothing about consumer adoption.
  - knocte 12y ago
    Moving coins is almost-free, but not 100% free. Why would a major player want to lose money?
    - jdong 12y ago
      https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47JistZqFmW8 https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47Jist... Transparency reasons, for example?
- comboy 12y ago
  It's hard to accurately measure adoption level mostly because of the decentralised nature of Bitcoin, but looking at the transaction volume is a really bad approach. One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume (similarly with exchange moving their funds between hot wallet and cold storage). Same goes for transactions count (if you are moving big enough funds you don't have to pay fee), plus there are things like satoshidice or reddit tip bot that tend to move towards off-blockchain transactions now.
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    > One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume Which is what the "days destroyed" measurement looks to compensate for https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed
kaonashi 12y ago
Transaction volume and consumer growth aren't even close to the same thing.
- mrb 12y ago
  Yes it is! The numbers I posted ($1M/day today, up from $300k/day in 2013) are transactions made on BitPay's platform for services and goods sold by BitPay's merchants, 99% of which are B2C companies (see https://bitpay.com/directory https://bitpay.com/directory). Real stuff sold to real customers, in bitcoins. I think you are confused and thought I was talking about transaction volume on the Bitcoin p2p network.

by mrb 12y ago

sanswork 12y ago

Where are you seeing it? Overstock the most regularly promoted name as a retailer has only seen dropping numbers since they started. Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago? Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
user24 12y ago
I'd like to see a source for your claim that "Overstock ... has only seen dropping numbers since they started." I think you're probably getting it from the FOX Business interview in May, but that's not really as cut-and-dried as you're making out. [1] http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit...
- sanswork 12y ago
  http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-in-new-york-to-persuade-regulators-coinbase-circle-overstock/ http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-i... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-future-projections/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-futu... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit... Jan 1 - 170K Jan 2-29 - $15K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average
  - user24 12y ago
    Thanks! Hmm. It is only to be expected that the initial spike would drop off. It'll be interesting to see if that downwards trend continues or not.
mrb 12y ago
Overstock is just one merchant, one data point. Not enough to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, BitPay represents 30k merchants. And they did not stop releasing numbers. They recently announced processing $1 million every single day. This is 3.3x their daily average of 2013. Source: http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-overstock-com-gets-1-6-million-in-bitcoin-payments-773/ http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-ove...
- sanswork 12y ago
  Your source is a link to a story which sources some random bitcoin news blog which sources...nothing but their own claim that they were told that. Every other news source references it or doesn't give a source for the claim. This is common in bitcoin reporting. One blog makes something up, misunderstands something, or makes a mistake and the rest report it as fact.
  - mrb 12y ago
    This milestone ($1M/day) was widely disseminated in a business wire 2 weeks before the newsbtc.com blog post: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpay-raises-100000393.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpa... Notice how it is burried in the announcement of the $30M funding round. This is probably why the fact was not picked up by more people.
    - sanswork 12y ago
      I'll believe it when I see numbers for multiple days over multiple months. Both bitpay and coinbase have been caught in the past using spikes and holiday volume to make their overall volume look much higher than it is.
      - mrb 12y ago
        BitPay processed $5k/day in May 2012 [3], $18k/day in Sep 2012 [3], $160k/day in March 2013 [1], $300k/day average through 2013 [2], and now $1.0M/day [4]. BitPay had 1k merchants in Sep 2012 [3], 10k by Sep 2013 [5], 30k by May 2014 [6]. BitPay raised $2M in May 2013 [7], and $30M in May 2014 [4]. They had a single office in Atlanta in 2012, now they have 8000 sq ft in Atlanta [8], plus offices in Amsterdam, San Francisco, New York City. BitPay had 7 employees in April 2013 [9], and 40 by May 2014 [8], and plans to have 100 by end of 2014 [8]. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, but their growth is obvious... Have you been to any Bitcoin conference? The number of new startups, flury of projects, funding rounds, etc, is mind-boggling. You belong to the super-minority who believes that "Bitcoin is seeing no consumer growth" (!) [1] http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/04/bitpay-processes-5-million-in-march-eclipses-silk-road/ http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/04/bitpay-processes-5-million-... [2] http://www.paymentssource.com/news/the-companies-signing-up-big-merchants-to-accept-bitcoin-3018108-1.html http://www.paymentssource.com/news/the-companies-signing-up-... [3] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2298/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchants-accepting-bitcoin/ http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2298/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchant... [4] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpay-raises-100000393.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpa... [5] http://paymentweek.com/bitpay-reaches-10k-merchants-milestone/ http://paymentweek.com/bitpay-reaches-10k-merchants-mileston... [6] http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/04/merchant-spotlight-sendowl.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/04/merchant-spotlight-sendowl... [7] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/4626/bitpay-raises-2-million-led-by-founders-fund/ http://bitcoinmagazine.com/4626/bitpay-raises-2-million-led-... [8] http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/21/bitpay-s-office-grand-opening-celebration.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/21/bitpay-s-office-grand-open... [9] http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/04/22/bitpay-expands-staff-to-seven-full-time-employees.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/04/22/bitpay-expands-staff-to-se...

aquadrop 12y ago

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.

pwim 12y ago
Wow, that's amazingly low. Especially because I'm guessing most of these transactions are just mixing services. I wonder how much represent actual transfers of wealth between individuals? I would guess less than 1K per day, which would make it incredibly low compared to all the hype bitcoin has got.
- macNchz 12y ago
  Indeed. In searching around to find something to compare these numbers with, I found that Walmart alone processed 10 million register transactions in 4 hours on Black Friday in 2012[1]. Even if all 70k bitcoin transactions every day were actual purchases (rather than shifting money around), it'd take 5 months to do what Walmart did in 4 hours. 1. http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-reports-best-ever-black-friday-events http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-r...
moe 12y ago
It has grown by a factor of 4 in the past two years (visible when you switch to the 2 year or 'all time' scale).
- jdong 12y ago
  That hardly tells anything about consumer adoption though, but about trade volume.
  - moe 12y ago
    That's true. Still 100% growth per year is not exactly 'no growth'.

lomocotive 12y ago

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... this looks like a typical exponential curve to me

jdong 12y ago
That looks like the price spiking and lots of trades happening, or alternatively a major individual player moving their coins around. It definitely says nothing about consumer adoption.
- knocte 12y ago
  Moving coins is almost-free, but not 100% free. Why would a major player want to lose money?
  - jdong 12y ago
    https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47JistZqFmW8 https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47Jist... Transparency reasons, for example?
comboy 12y ago
It's hard to accurately measure adoption level mostly because of the decentralised nature of Bitcoin, but looking at the transaction volume is a really bad approach. One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume (similarly with exchange moving their funds between hot wallet and cold storage). Same goes for transactions count (if you are moving big enough funds you don't have to pay fee), plus there are things like satoshidice or reddit tip bot that tend to move towards off-blockchain transactions now.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  > One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume Which is what the "days destroyed" measurement looks to compensate for https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed

kaonashi 12y ago

Transaction volume and consumer growth aren't even close to the same thing.

mrb 12y ago
Yes it is! The numbers I posted ($1M/day today, up from $300k/day in 2013) are transactions made on BitPay's platform for services and goods sold by BitPay's merchants, 99% of which are B2C companies (see https://bitpay.com/directory https://bitpay.com/directory). Real stuff sold to real customers, in bitcoins. I think you are confused and thought I was talking about transaction volume on the Bitcoin p2p network.