Bitcoin Prediction Review - Day 27

Let's take another look back at "The Next 365 Days of Bitcoin" to see how we're doing.

Prediction: Day 11: A member of the Bitcointalk Forums reports that his Bitcoins have been stolen from Mt.Gox. No one cares.

Result: Mt.Gox stole their own Bitcoins, but that was on Day 24.

Status: Wrong.

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Prediction: Day 17: A Bitcoin is still worth $5. Conspiracy theories begin to propagate through the Bitcointalk Forums. The CIA is the primary suspect.

Result: Bitcoin did not hold $5. In fact, it dropped down to $2.05.

Status: Wrong.

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Prediction: Day 18: Bitcoin hits $5.50. The CIA is the primary suspect.

Result: See above.

Status: Very wrong.

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Prediction: Day 25: All-time Bitcoin client downloads hit 1,000,000.

Result: There were 978,131 downloads as of October 29th.

Status: Wrong.

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Prediction: Day 27 [Halloween]: At least three people in the United States go out to Halloween parties dressed as Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto dresses up as Lady Gaga.

Result:

Status: Mostly wrong (in more ways than one).

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Random Bitcoin Apps (that don't exist)

- BitGallery: A flash-based art gallery where you are shown two or three examples of the artist's portfolio at low resolution. Enter the gallery for a Bitcoin donation and see all of the artist's work at high resolution.

- BitPet: A webcam of a hamster with a food dispenser connected to a computer. Every time you send a Bitcoin, the hamster gets fed. Who would let a hamster die? You'd make milllllllllions!

- BitVids: A NetFlix-type service where you pay a Bitcoin to watch a full-HD movie. No accounts or subscriptions required (thanks to osmosis for this one).

- BitVote: Associate your voter registration (for a club/town/city/country) with a Bitcoin public key. A tiny amount of BTC sent from your wallet is your vote. Vote from home.

- BitShot: A webcam of a guy standing against a wall. Send a Bitcoin and he gets shot with a paintball. Excellent for de-stressing after a long day at work.

- BitTourist: Find someone in a city you're traveling to who wants to buy Bitcoins. Meet them at your destination and sell them your Bitcoins for the local currency. Save a ton of money on currency exchange.

- BitServant: List of people in your area who are willing to run errands or do chores. If their status indicates "available," send them Bitcoins to complete your task (groceries, shopping, lawn mowing, snow shoveling, etc).

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Bitcoin: A Harbor in a Currency Storm for Belarus and Ukraine

Two countries that have recently faced massive currency devaluation, of a magnitude that would have significantly impacted the standard of living of their populations, are Belarus and Ukraine.

Over a period of three months in late 2008, in the wake of the global financial crisis, Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia, was devalued by 38.4%. This wasn't the first time Ukraine had seen its currency crumble, with an even more significant devaluation happening in 1998, on the order of 69%.

More recently, on May 23rd of this year, the Belarus ruble was devalued by 56% in an effort by the country to address its overwhelming sovereign debt.

Is it any wonder then, when we look at the list of the top 15 Bitcoin-using countries, and divide the number of connected clients over the last 24 hours by the number of Internet users in each country, we get this?

It is very clear from this chart that a disproportionate number of Internet users in Belarus and Ukraine, when compared to other countries, are turning to Bitcoin as an alternative investment to protect themselves from their own currencies.

I believe this chart would remain true using data taken over a prolonged period of time, as relative Bitcoin usage in the top 15 countries has been consistent over the past six weeks.

If there is any proof that Bitcoin is being considered as a viable alternative to fiat currencies, this is it. As the European Union continues to collapse economically, it will be interesting to see how many more people begin to turn to Bitcoin to preserve their wealth.

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Is it Time to Occupy Bitcoin Street?

The Bitcoin Report produces a daily Top 100 Rich List, a list of the 100 fattest wallets in Bitcoin. I decided to compare two lists, one from the 1st of May of this year, and one from yesterday, October 29th. Here's what I discovered:

The distribution of coins among the top 100 has evened out, as can be seen in the chart below:

However, the top 100 have gone from holding 1,776,434 coins to holding 2,254,634 Bitcoins, a whopping 27% increase!

On May 1st, there were 6,249,700 Bitcoins, which means 28.4% were held by the top 100 at that time.

Even though 1,310,000 Bitcoins have been mined since May 1st, the top 100 have still managed to increase their relative wealth, and now hold 29.8% of all the Bitcoins ever created!

Is it time to Occupy Bitcoin Street before this gets out of hand?

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Bitcoin: Global Economic Freedom

Here's a Google Analytics snapshot of the visitors to my blog over the past two weeks:

What's very interesting is that there is a definite correlation between the dead spots on the map and countries identified as "repressed" by the index of economic freedom, as seen on this map, in red:

This might mean that Bitcoin is being hidden from people in economically repressed countries because of what it represents. At first I thought that the dead spots on my blog traffic map were countries with poor Internet access, but that is not always the case. Iran is a good example, where 47% of the population has access to the Internet. Ecuador is another; a country with 3.3 million Facebook subscribers that is also rated as "repressed."

See the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, here.

Impressively, 144 of the 196 countries in the world have had a client connected to the Bitcoin network in the past 24 hours:

Country	Number of Hosts
United States	13107
Russian Federation	3452
Germany	2731
Ukraine	2461
United Kingdom	1855
Poland	1812
Canada	1788
Australia	1070
Netherlands	838
Belarus (currently experiencing hyper-inflation)	671
Sweden	651
China	641
Romania	627
Finland	533
European Union	505
France	485
Czech Republic	484
Brazil	453
Malaysia	377
Bulgaria	352
Spain	337
Serbia	274
Italy	268
Switzerland	265
Argentina	264
Denmark	257
Thailand	256
Hungary	235
Austria	225
New Zealand	221
Ireland	216
Norway	216
Bosnia and Herzegowina	200
Macedonia	190
Portugal	181
India	180
Croatia (LOCAL Name: Hrvatska)	177
Belgium	175
Israel	174
Singapore	171
South Africa	168
Lithuania	133
Mexico	132
Slovakia (SLOVAK Republic)	114
Greece	105
Colombia	95
Japan	95
Estonia	92
Philippines	91
Slovenia	89
Georgia	86
Taiwan; Republic of China (ROC)	84
Hong Kong	79
Kazakhstan	58
Chile	57
Latvia	57
Moldova Republic of	56
Viet Nam	52
Montenegro	49
Korea Republic of	46
Venezuela	43
Turkey	37
Trinidad and Tobago	36
Saudi Arabia	33
Indonesia	30
United Arab Emirates	30
Iceland	25
Jordan	25
Dominican Republic	24
Cyprus	22
Mongolia	21
Morocco	20
Luxembourg	20
Armenia	20
Egypt	19
Jamaica	19
Nigeria	17
Saint Vincent and The Grenadines	16
Sri Lanka	16
Puerto Rico	14
Uruguay	14
Azerbaijan	12
Bahamas	10
Bangladesh	9
Panama	9
Guatemala	9
Kuwait	9
Peru	9
Algeria	8
Paraguay	8
Qatar	8
Kenya	8
Ecuador	7
El Salvador	7
Costa Rica	7
Pakistan	7
Iran (ISLAMIC Republic Of)	6
Mauritius	6
Ghana	6
Nepal	6
Nicaragua	5
Oman	5
Barbados	5
Lebanon	5
Senegal	5
Malta	5
Madagascar	4
Albania	4
Guernsey	4
Brunei Darussalam	4
Tunisia	4
Kyrgyzstan	3
Bahrain	3
Honduras	3
Isle of Man	3
Cambodia	3
Syrian Arab Republic	2
Guyana	2
Netherlands Antilles	2
Belize	2
Liechtenstein	2
Macau	2
Greenland	2
Faroe Islands	2
Bolivia	2
New Caledonia	2
Antigua and Barbuda	2
Afghanistan	1
Fiji	1
Cape Verde	1
Cayman Islands	1
Guam	1
Aruba	1
Iraq	1
Namibia	1
Andorra	1
Jersey	1
Cameroon	1
Cote D'ivoire	1
Malawi	1
Gibraltar	1
Uganda	1
Grenada	1
Zambia	1

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"Bitcoins for Christmas" Aims to Bring New Users to Bitcoin

"Bitcoins for Christmas" was launched today with the goal of introducing new users to Bitcoin.

Potential new Bitcoin users have been burdened with extensive research, poring through endless articles about hacking and malware, figuring out how to download a client and then, how to secure it. If they got that far, they then freaked out because their coins hadn't shown up until three hours later when the blockchain finally finished downloading!

Bitcoins for Christmas removes that burden.

With Bitcoins for Christmas, you can give Bitcoins to anyone that has an email address. The site will send out an email to the intended recipient, informing them that they've been sent a Bitcoin gift. A unique link will then take them to the site, where they will be given a three-step walkthrough on how to install the lightweight MultiBit client (no blockchain), copy their Bitcoin address, and paste it into a form. The site will then send them their gift, and it's done. The new Bitcoin user will then be provided with some links to where they could potentially spend their coins.

If you want to send someone a large gift and you're worried about MultiBit's lack of security, that's not a problem either. Bitcoins for Christmas will inform you when the recipient has been sent their coins. At that point, you can contact the recipient and talk them through the installation of the Satoshi client; not a burdensome task when you, the experienced Bitcoiner, are supporting the process.

The main principle behind the site is that when you send someone free Bitcoins, they're going to be far more interested in Bitcoin than if you had simply tried to educate them. The site's FAQ explains things a little more thoroughly.

Bitcoin users could also potentially use it as a platform to send Bitcoins to someone where they know the intended recipient's email address but do not have their Bitcoin address handy.

From the site itself:

"Bitcoins for Christmas charges no fees. We're sponsored and protected by the leading and most trusted merchants in Bitcoin, and created as a Christmas present to the whole Bitcoin community."

By launching a Christmas site on the day before Halloween, Bitcoin is officially 24 hours ahead of Wal-Mart!

I know where my first Bitcoins are going - to Tim Worstall. Anyone have his email address?

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For those of you who might be concerned about this being a potential scam, the site is a joint venture between myself (GoWest) and Josh Strike (StrikeSapphire Casino): two guys with a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin grow and succeed.

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Bitcoin & Constellation's Connected Enterprise 2011

Twitter is abuzz as the Connected Enterprise 2011 (#cce2011) speakers take to the stage and discuss the future of currency, among other topics. Various "connector" types are mentioning #bitcoin in their tweets. Could we be on the verge of a tipping point?

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