Anthropologist Lui Smyth (@yablochko) has collected survey results from about 100 participants of the Bitcoin community and provided a report on the demographics.
Some highlights…
- The average user is a 31.7 year old libertarian male.
- Top motivators for new users are curiosity, profit, and politics.
- Bitcointalk.org is the dominant community platform.
- Far more people have used Bitcoin to make donations than to buy narcotics.
- 39% of users do not drink, smoke, gamble, or take drugs.
Others:
- What is your gender? Male 95%, Female 3%
- http://bit.ly/13RbIMz
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Bitcoin’s progress is occurring in geographic areas where clusters of Bitcoin enthusiasts exist. A post on the Bitcoin Money blog (@BitcoinMoney) highlights some of these clustersand describes Bitcoin’s potential. Excerpts:
“While Bitcoin’s traction has primarily occurred online through exchanges and with merchants who sell online, its use as a payment method for purchases at bricks-and-mortar retailers and for in-person trade is not found that widely just yet.”
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“A growing cluster growing in Berlin is the latest (and potentially the largest) to form. Joerg Platzer, owner of bar and restaurant Room 77, announced Bitcoin Kiez. Bitcoin Kiez is a project to get a large number of businesses to accept BTC in Berlin’s Graefekiez district.”
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“Another cluster is found in New Hampshire, particularly in areas whose population includes many who have moved to the state to join the Free State Project.”
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“Finland, and in particular, Helsinki, is where another cluster exists. Staff at Vegemesta know all about Bitcoin and payments are handled in seconds.”
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“Bitcoin hotspots are also expected to form where there are many travelers though the use of bitcoins during travel is still a relatively nascent practice.”
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“Paying using a mobile and QR code is something Square, currently processing nearly a billion dollars worth of transactions each month, is driving forward.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/35733263353
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A man who recently claimed to have invested all of of his savings and all that he could borrow into bitcoins does what is in his self-interest, he works to make that investment more valuable. He has become a participant in the mass collaborative project called Bitcoin.
Today he starts with part one of a series addressing the hurdles that he sees that Bitcoin must overcome. The first: Usability. He writes:
“A person who is great at making complex logic work flawlessly is never great at making that logic easy to use and understand. This is how you send money. I mean, come on.”
“Why can’t I pay with my phone without risking loss of my money through theft or loss of my phone?” [It’s coming, Webcoin. - Editor]
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/04/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-one-usability
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Bitcoin News - Sunday, May 22, 2011
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011
- Press:
Make.Money.Slow : The Bitcoin Experiment by Jon Evans on TechCrunch
“At best it might eke out an existence as a distributed local currency for hardcore libertarians”.
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/21/the-bitcoin-experiment
- http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/20110521the-bitcoin-experiment (Japanese)
Bitcoin, Ven and the End of Currency by Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture
“How we create and measure value is going through a change that has not been seen in over 600 years”.
“It is a snowball today, but tomorrow it is an avalanche. Just watch”.
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/20/bitcoin-ven-and-the-end-of-currency
- s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (special update)
Mid term: “DOWN as long as the high of $8.90 remains intact”.
Short term: “RALLY from the low of $5.57. $6.50 must hold for the rally to continue”.
- http://bit.ly/iKxync
- Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin by Justin of Nine Zero Nine blog
Justin describes his foray into mining. He learns about variance (“some days I would go without mining a single BTC and others I would get 3”) and ups the ante (“I impulse bought two more 5830s just yesterday”).
- http://ninezeronine.net/2011/05/22/bitcoin
- Article / Blog post:
Why Bitcoin is Smart, and Not a Scam by Brock Tice (@BrockTice)
Rebuttal by this long-time community member to the many recent criticisms of bitcoin.
“At one time there was a risk that someone with a botnet could easily overtake the network. That risk is now minimal and getting (exponentially) smaller every day”.
“What makes bitcoin so cool is the combination of [fixed rate of inflation, blockchain, hashing targets, cryptography, anonymity] in one system”.
- http://virtuallyshocking.com/2011/05/22/why-bitcoin-is-smart-and-not-a-scam
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Bitcoin News - Sunday, Apr 24, 2011
Sunday, Apr 24th, 2011
- Article / Blog post:
Is the bitconomy the frontier of economic innovation? by Duane Jonson, @CanadaDuane
“One could say that while we live in a political democracy, we live in an economic aristocracy.”
“One of the central questions of the French Revolution and earlier the American Revolution was, “Can a society exist, or even thrive without a king?”
- http://bit.ly/eKHNk3
- New software: Moneychanger, a reference implementation (experimental only) of a currency accounting application that accesses the Open Transactions API. Plans for the app include Bitcoin integration to support Bitcoin as one of the currencies used as backing in a currency trading system or payment network.
- http://github.com/FellowTraveler/Moneychanger
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Moneychanger
- New Bitcoin-specific Job board and Freelancer listings: Bitcoiners
Listings include jobs that pay using Bitcoins and a directory of freelancers showing their availability and qualifications.
- http://www.bitcoiners.org
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoiners
- Bay area finally warms up to Bitcoin?
Silicon Valley Bitcoin Users meetup group in Sunnyvale schedules first meeting, and the San Francisco group is forming. Meetup.com shows six groups now, including NYC, D.C., Chicago, L.A., Tokyo
- http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=6389.0
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin:Community_portal#Events
- s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (updates)
“Both [linear and log scale] charts show how bitcoin perfectly follows textbook like chart patterns.”
“The likelihood is high that we see continued rises (after pausing a couple of days [sideways]).”
- http://bit.ly/gc0YvF
Short term: “Another bullish triangle has formed over the last 2 days. Another test [of the $1.95 record level] or breakout above 2 $ possible.”
- http://bit.ly/fd8o7M
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