Show HN: Bitcoin Pulse - Tracking Bitcoin Adoption | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Bitcoin Pulse - Tracking Bitcoin Adoption

bitcoinpulse.com

79 pointspresty35 comments

Is there a particular reason "number of nodes on the bitcoin p2p network" was omitted? This has always struck me as the most important metric for adoption - the number of computers on the internet running the bitcoin software.

> the most important metric for adoption - the number of computers on the internet running the bitcoin software.

Mmm, not really - a lot of people are using webwallets or thin clients. This is because the full client requires a bit fat download of the entire blockchain, and also only benefits the network if you have hella bandwidth and uptime.

You don't think there's some approximately fixed ratio between thin client/webwallet adopters and those who run the binary?

but it's still an interesting metric that you can roughly infer network security from (eg 51% attack difficulty)

Wouldn't that depend on the cumulative hashing rate rather than number of nodes? I.e. I don't think it matters if 1k new nodes join if they're not doing any hashing.

You are correct that a 51% attack depends on hashing. Other attacks, Sybil, etc. depend on gaining network access to the (a) real bitcoin node with the latest blocks -- more nodes, I guess, helps prevent people from being unable to find the true network. Hence jgarzik's push to put bitcoin nodes into space to beam the latest blocks to earth, à la GPS.

good point. added to the todo list with top priority :)

Check this out for an awesome reference (maybe ask them for an API?): http://getaddr.bitnodes.io/

Great site. Here are some bugs I found:

In the charting view, switching between delta and cumulative view deselects your metrics. You can't deselect the initial chart (on top in black). Suppose I start out comparing metric A to B, then I add C, now I can't remove A (to compare B to C w/o A).

If you get a 404 error, eg here ( http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/chart/ ), the newsletter signup doesn't work (or at least doesn't turn green).

Thank you. You are totally correct. Forgot about the js include in the 404 (doh).

for those that are interested, backend is in clojure

using http-kit and enlive for scraping; templating with stencil

What do you mean by "average growth last seven days?" I noticed the growth for the past year was less. Are all the numbers annualized?

the left column says what the growth rate was from today vs 7 days ago. the right column is a weekly average growth rate over a period of time, by default 30 days. So if the value in the left column is higher than the one in the right, this would mean that this week the metric is growing faster than it has on average in the last 30 days.

So these values really are growing several percent per week. That's amazing.

It might be good to put the period on the page somewhere.

Agreed. Additionally there seems to a be a bug:

You can average monthly growth over the last 365 days , but you can't see yearly growth over "all time." Additionally the slider was very clunky feeling (hard to use) on my phone and I suspect all mobile (Android 4.4 w/ Chrome (Nexus 4)).

This might be a dumb question and maybe not the right forum, but there is a huge spread between MtGx and Coinbase. Any reason I couldn't transfer my BTC's from one to another to capitalize on that?

Yes! It's very hard to get your dollars in and out of Mt. Gox at the moment (this is not the case with Coinbase or Bitstamp). So what do you do once you've sold your coins at a higher price on Mt Gox?

When you see a higher price between in exchanges, there's usually some liquidity issue at play there.

This is great. Thank you very much.

No problem. Note that there are currency arbitrage opportunities in the Bitcoin market, but they're rarely as obvious or large as the one you see in the Mt. Gox market.

Also, note that the money transfer problem does not exist with Bitstamp or Coinbase, both of which are relatively easy to transfer money in and out of once you're verified.

Design got a lot cleaner since the last time i checked. (y)

Very nice dashboard. Would like GBP.

But great job. This is actually useful.

what exactly would you like in GBP, the prices on top?

Yes, the problem with the prices at the top is, I don't know off the top of my head what the dollar value of the Yuan price is, etc., making a quick comparison to the other changes more difficult. If you could provide maybe a second row of prices with a toggle that lets users select a common currency to display all prices in, that would be helpful. Show both local currency prices as you have now, and second row beneath showing those prices in a user-selectable currency.

I'd have one row of prices and a dropdown that is set to "local" by default.

Yeah, so I can compare on the same terms and also so it means more to me.

Many people could benefit from tracking metrices for altcoins too. Do you plan to add some of the altcoins (StableCoin for example)?

If you do add this feature, please have a toggle at the top to turn it off.

I totally agree. It would be even better to just toggle between altcoins.

Altcoins are a possibility. And if we do add that info, we'll definitely also add the option of hiding the info :)

How many of the "Github created repositories" are useless altcoins that only mention BTC in the copyright message?

Good question. Can't really answer that atm. Will note it for future investigation. Thanks.

This is really great. Very slick.

Add some of the exchange volumes? Num transactions? Number mined?

Thanks. In the TODO list :)

Can you add Bitstamp growth, too?

we could probably track the growth of trading volume, if that is what you mean?

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