Topic: Bitcoin Survey Initial Results - page 2. (Read 7100 times)

That wouldn't be too hard to set up, but I'm not sure the community would donate enough to make enough calls for it to have an impact.  However, I suppose the callers would at least be brought in.

I didn't really select the participants. I simply posted on the forums here and on the Bitcoin subreddit. To deter spam, I used Google authentication (like the Bitcoin Faucet).

I didn't expect it to be a perfect representation of Bitcoin users. At best, it was just going to be a glimpse into a few of the more active English speaking forum members and Redditors.

Seems like I formulated that a bit harshly. That was unintentional, I was just explaining to the previous user why the number of Chinese Bitcoin users could be under-represented in the survey.

Practically every survey that can be done suffers from direct or indirect selection bias unfortunately, it is merely the degree which is manageable. Out of curiosity: How did you select the participants?

Oh, it definitely does. There's not an easy way to get around it, unfortunately...


That's true. I guess I hadn't considered that. However, that's still only going to be useful for a relatively small percentage of people. Not to say it wouldn't be significant, but Bitcoin would still a long way from being adopted as a true currency.


That's for sure. Bizzarely, I think that the more they clamp down on it, the more it will grow. Kind of like the Streisand effect.

Could be, but this survey likely suffers from selection bias.

why you list no china?
Question 1:      
What country do you live in?

I think china is a big market of bitcoin!

Actually, currency exchange is something that Bitcoin is (or, rather, will be once it is more widely accepted) really useful for. No need to take credit cards or foreign cash when travelling: just take bitcoins and exchange it for the local currency at your destination. No need to worry about theft or identity fraud or exorbitant fees or capital controls; just use Bitcoin and all the problems currently associated with currency exchange disappear. Remittance is also a prime candidate for Bitcoin use. In fact, if all Bitcoin was good for was currency exchange, that would still make it pretty darn useful in my book.

Of course, if you're worried that it'll be too easy, then fear not. I'm sure governments are going to do everything in their power to make it as difficult as possible.

I hate to both double-post and revive a slow thread, but I've been thinking about the implications and wanted to see what you all think.

I once thought that the technical aspect, both of using Bitcoin and of understanding it, was the biggest obstacle for Bitcoin. But perhaps it is actually the fact that Bitcoin just might not be all that useful to the everyday person, and the ideological appeal that Bitcoin has for many of us (myself included) can only go so far.

I don't know whether this will make any sense, but perhaps what Bitcoin needs is actually more difficulty exchanging it with other currencies. Right now, it seems that a lot of people exchange the Bitcoins they get for their currency of choice (or hold onto them and then sell), rather than spend them directly, simply because other currencies are more useful to buy with. All the great things about Bitcoin might not make up for the fact that it's just not widely used. You can't go to the grocery store or pay your rent with Bitcoin. But, if it were really difficult to exchange, then perhaps it would start making more sense to spend directly, and consequentially more potential Bitcoin users could recieve their first coins by providing services rather than having to buy them for hard-earned cash.

On the other hand, I never took economics, so this might just be a bunch of baloney... I probably shouldn't post when I'm tired...

That, in particular, is why I'm liking more and more the idea of next looking outside the community to figure out just what we can do about the usability barrier.

 
I suppose that wouldn't be a bad idea, although the answers might not change much if we mostly get responses from Bitcoin veterans (1-2 years experience) again.

Also, I might not be able to afford the "two cents" pun if the price quadruples again...

Interesting (and good) to see that "Difficulty of use for non-technical users" is the biggest hurdle people see. Definitely lots to be done here.

Are you planning to repeat the survey in e.g. 6 months? Would be really good to know how things change.

So, I'm not exactly sure how to tabulate the raw responses in Excel in a useful way because of the "check all that apply" questions, but I'll keep thinking about that.

Anyway, in the meantime, I ran some code to see if there were any substantial correlations between choices, but for the most part the distributions were fairly uniform. The only pairings that stood out were "no duh" revelations, such as the fact that 18-24 year olds were more likely to be students, libertarians were more likely to cite "Political or ideological reasons", and people who used Bitcoins to buy goods and services were more likely to like Bitcoin's "Convenience".

As for the idea of a cold-call survey, one idea that was thrown around in my original Research thread was to make a focus group specifically to find out how people react to Bitcoin when they first hear about it and see if there's any way to improve it.

I'd say it means most people that frequent these forms are mostly died hard fans that have been here for 1 year +

would be really cool is if someone would do a cold call survey

438 - 257 - 1495
ring.. ring...
repeat! Endlessly  

Well, I only got requests for codes from about 10 people, 3 here and 7 on Reddit, so that's not much to extrapolate with...

Any chance you could tell the percent of responses that came from this forum vs. Reddit? I know that at some point you dropped google authentication, so at least based on PM codes you sent out...? 

Wow, 18.9% with graduate degrees!  That's significantly higher than the national average (around 10%).  I suppose it is to be expected, given the technical nature of Bitcoin and complexity of using it (for now), but still, it surprises me.

It's a bit disheartening to see the lack of people who have recently heard about Bitcoin.  The vast majority heard about it more than 1 year ago.  Does that mean that Bitcoin growth is slowing?

Very nice questions, responses, and survey size! I'm impressed! This will help me market Bitcoin a lot better!

According to the Pew Research Center, there are twice as many male libertarians than female.

http://www.people-press.org/2011/05/04/section-3-demographics-and-news-sources/

I also think the percentage of female libertarians is pretty low. Females like sharing a lot 

With the survey I did, it was mostly male as well. Also a lot of Americans again.