Bitcoin was going to change the world until it wasn't.But now it is again.Oh sure, you've heard this before.Back in 2013, everyone was sure bitcoin was the next big thing.Then the world's largest bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox, imploded, and everyone was sure bitcoin was dead.Pundits tend to think that way: you're It, or you're not.The reality of it is a little different.Despite the travails of Mt.Gox—and the Silk Road, the online drug bazaar that relied so heavily on bitcoin—the digital currency never went away.Today, it's thriving like never before.And some say this is the year it finally reaches the mainstream.As a currency driven not by a central government but by a vast network of independent computers spread across the globe, bitcoin has been slowed by regulatory problems—particularly in the US.But these are easing, with regulators in New York leading the way.Ultimately, bitcoin can still provide a much cheaper and simpler way of moving money from place to place, particularly when you're a consumer or business moving it across international borders or a retailer accepting payments from online buyers.The price of bitcoin stands at $434, well below the high of $1,216 it reached in late 2013.

But it's not the price that matters.What matters is whether people are using bitcoin, and more than ever, they are.Check out the graph below, which shows the number of daily bitcoin transactions.The usage has hit a record high, and in December, compared to the same time a year ago, the average number of daily transactions more than doubled.A lot of this "usage" is mere speculation—people betting the price of bitcoin will rise.mining litecoin groupAnd as bitcoin watcher Tim Swanson explains, many transactions may simply be users shuffling the location of their funds for whatever reason.litecoin 1 gh/s—about 20 percent of the activity on its network now involves payments or uses as a currency.jual hardware bitcoin miner

That may seem small, but it's up significantly from previous years and continues to rise."Things are going up and to the right," says Adam White, vice president of business development and strategy at Coinbase.In recent months, bitcoin grabbed tremendous attention because its underlying technology, the blockchain, also can be used to reinvent the exchange of stock and other financial securities.The blockchain is essentially a database running across a vast array of independent machines.bitcoin kakoWith bitcoin, it oversees the exchange of money.litecoin pool softwareBut it can oversee the exchange of anything that holds value, including stocks, bonds, and futures as well as houses and car titles.bitcoin mine on raspberry pi, are now building systems that can use the blockchain in this way.bitcoin nyc meetup

But this doesn't preclude the use of bitcoin as a currency.More BitcoinTech and Banking Giants Ditch Bitcoin for Their Own BlockchainSEC Approves Plan to Issue Stock Via Bitcoin’s BlockchainBitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian GeniusIn September, several big names in finance and banking invested in the bitcoin startup Chain.This included Nasdaq, Citi Ventures, Capital One Financial, and Visa.bitcoin guide du debutantAll Chain's investors, says company CEO Adam Ludwin, are commercial clients or prospective commercial clients.wie entsteht bitcoinIn other words, they're companies that want Chain's help building bitcoin technologies.Some, like Nasdaq, see bitcoin as a way of trading stock and other financial securities.But Ludwin says his investors are just as bullish on bitcoin as a currency."Whatwe've built—and only work on with most of our partners—are blockchains that can issue assets of many different kinds," he says.

"You have to be able to trade not only one security for another, but for currencies.What you will see are networks that can handle transactions involving all currencies as well as other types of financial instruments."AndChain is hardly the only company pushing the digital currency forward.Coinbase, for instance, just unveiled the country's first bitcoin debit card, which can help drive the digital currency toward the mainstream in more ways than one.According to the company, more than 7,500 people have signed up for the card since it launched in late November.Using this piece of plastic, they've spent more than $50,000 worth of bitcoin.That's not a lot—yet.But the Coinbase card lets people spend bitcoin anywhere that accepts a VISA card.The hope is that this will encourage more people to spend their bitcoin, rather than just speculate in the currency.And if that happens, more businesses will begin to accept bitcoin without the VISA.After all, that's far less expensive than paying the fees associated with credit card transactions.

As more businesses catch on, the cycle repeats.As Coinbase's Adam White sees it, 2015 was the year that the blockchain moved beyond digital currency.Many observers saw this as bitcoin's "great pivot"—where its true purpose moved away from online money.But White believes that 2016 is the year the pundits realize that the digital currency can still change the world."We'regoing to come full circle back to bitcoin," he says."In 2015, we saw a lot of financial institutions, banks, thought leaders say: 'It's not about bitcoin, it's about blockchain.'That is a mistruth."Bitcoin Sign up or log in to customize your list._ Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top up vote down vote favorite 3 I would like to know if there are any statistics on turnover of Bitcoins for each country in the world.adoption user-base up vote 8 down vote WebGL Globe shows bitcoin nodes seen during last 48 hours.

Install Chrome Web browser if you have problem rendering WebGL.Google Trends has countries, cities and languages sorted by number of bitcoin related search queries.up vote 2 down vote Serith provides a link that shows location of Bitcoin nodes.Beyond that Bitcoin specifically makes geolocation stats difficult.Addresses are intentionally random and arbitrary.You can look at transaction to determine senders IP address however that can be obfuscated and will not correctly reflect anyone using a web based wallets.For bitcoin generation that is more difficult as roughly 80% of all Bitcoins are generated via a pool so any data in blockchain will simply indicate the location of the pool not the miners that make it up.up vote 2 down vote You can see how many times bitcoin was downloaded by going to sourceforge and looking up bitcoin.For example here is how many times bitcoin v4.0 was download by the United States: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.4.0/stats/timeline up vote 2 down vote Here is a breakdown of Bitcoin by countries taken form Google Trends: What you can see in that Estonia and Finland are first and only after that comes the US.