The estimated number of bitcoin wallets by year end to reach 12 million

[BitcoinXio]

According to the Q3-2015 Coindesk report, one of the slides forecasted that by the end of 2015 there will be 12 million bitcoin wallets. The data in the slide is from Blockchain, Multibit, Coinbase, and the Schildbach Wallet. Now, imagine if they took data from all of the bitcoin wallets on the market. By our count, we have tracked 75+ active bitcoin wallets currently. It's possible the 12 million number could be much higher. At the same time, the "number of wallets" may not be the best metric because each wallet provider may have more than one wallet per user.

[LiteCoinGuy]

a good summary, thanks for the charts.

there could be 12 mio wallets but i doubt that there are 12 mio users. i would estimate 3 - 8 mio users worldwide.

[BitcoinXio]

a good summary, thanks for the charts.

there could be 12 mio wallets but i doubt that there are 12 mio users. i would estimate 3 - 8 mio users worldwide.

Do you have any way to source your data or provide anything to support it? Not doubting you, it's just difficult to find hard data when it comes to wallets and total numbers. I guess I could pull all the numbers myself from my resources, but it would be such a huge time intensive task that I don't even know how fruitful it would be in the end.

[BitcoinXio]

a good summary, thanks for the charts.

there could be 12 mio wallets but i doubt that there are 12 mio users. i would estimate 3 - 8 mio users worldwide.

Hey check it out, I did it! lol

There are actually 12 million wallets now currently (not estimated by year end) and this is very conservatively speaking. My guess is there are way more than this actually. Check out some of the stats I did with some charts. Can you add them to your charts post?

http://bitcoinx.io/news/articles/a-brie ... tatistics/

[LiteCoinGuy]

based on your valuable research it could be true that there are more than 12 millions users. but keep in mind that alot of them maybe just downloaded a wallet and left the whole bitcoin thing.

it would be very interesting to know how many active users (not wallet downloads) for example Coinbase has. based on the VC money, they seem to have a good and rising amount

[CryptKeeper]

I doubt it. Please have a look here https://bitinfocharts.com/en/top-100-ri ... esses.html and tell me how can there be 12m wallets if there are only 6.3m btc addresses on the blockchain?

If the 12m figure is true, half of the users must have downloaded wallet clients without using it!

[LiteCoinGuy]

"If the 12m figure is true, half of the users must have downloaded wallet clients without using it!"

partly that could be the case...

another aspect could be, that you have a coinbase account but that account wont show up as an btc address because they use internal addresses?

in that case, we can estimate that there are between roughly 6-12 mio users. what is your thought on this?

[CryptKeeper]

"If the 12m figure is true, half of the users must have downloaded wallet clients without using it!"

partly that could be the case...

another aspect could be, that you have a coinbase account but that account wont show up as an btc address because they use internal addresses?

in that case, we can estimate that there are between roughly 6-12 mio users. what is your thought on this?

Are you sure that coinbase accounts don't have a wallet address associated with it? I'm not registered at coinbase so I can only look at their public available support pages:

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/e ... t-address-

According to that, every coinbase user gets a btc address after buying bitcoins:

Don't be alarmed if you see addresses that you don't remember creating - we automatically generate a new address for every transaction and whenever we move funds between your wallet and our cold storage system.

[BitcoinXio]

based on your valuable research it could be true that there are more than 12 millions users. but keep in mind that alot of them maybe just downloaded a wallet and left the whole bitcoin thing.

it would be very interesting to know how many active users (not wallet downloads) for example Coinbase has. based on the VC money, they seem to have a good and rising amount

Correct, the number of active users is like the holy grail but nobody publishes it. If anyone were to, I think Coinbase or Blockchain.info should, they have the most downloads so probably the most active users too.

[BitcoinXio]

If the 12m figure is true, half of the users must have downloaded wallet clients without using it!

I think this could be a very valid statement. If I download an iOS wallet and never use it, I still downloaded it. I'm sure it happens more often than you think. Downloads as a single metric point is not the best, but in conjunction with other metrics it helps realize the popularity of a wallet. The ultimate metric which LiteCoinGuy mentioned is Active Users, but no wallet provider publishes that stat.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Remember when email had 8 million users? welcome to bitcoin

[Windowly]

I'm sure most of us have quite a few wallets though -- perhaps one of each of the major kinds. . . . so I'm not sure how much info it gives us on the users. Blockchain.info has pretty much doubled the number of wallets in the last year -- from 2.5 million to 5 million. I don't think coinbase has done as well though.

[CryptAxe]

You also have people downloading wallets a few times and re using the same addresses by importing their wallet seeds so I bet the number is pretty close

[BitcoinXio]

Right, so we're back to square one

Downloads as a single metric alone isn't valuable. We have to consider other metrics when trying to measure success (without knowing Monthly Active Users). Such as number of downloads, unique website visitors, venture capital funding, media attention, development activity (are they innovating or just stale), and so on. I think if you look at the companies that excel in all of these areas, they are the most successful.

[Windowly]

You also have people downloading wallets a few times and re using the same addresses by importing their wallet seeds so I bet the number is pretty close

True true.