
Show HN: Bitcoin Pulse - Tracking Bitcoin Adoption - presty
http://www.bitcoinpulse.com
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sneak
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.

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user24
> 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.

~~~
user24
but it's still an interesting metric that you can roughly infer network
security from (eg 51% attack difficulty)

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viraptor
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.

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bdcs
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.

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bdcs
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/](http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/chart/) ),
the newsletter signup doesn't work (or at least doesn't turn green).

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

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presty
for those that are interested, backend is in clojure

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

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DennisP
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?

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flavio87
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.

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DennisP
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.

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bdcs
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)).

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schnaars
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?

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jnbiche
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.

~~~
schnaars
This is great. Thank you very much.

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jnbiche
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.

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

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user24
Very nice dashboard. Would like GBP.

But great job. This is actually useful.

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flavio87
what exactly would you like in GBP, the prices on top?

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SkyMarshal
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.

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user24
I'd have one row of prices and a dropdown that is set to "local" by default.

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

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

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

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

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

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radikalus
This is really great. Very slick.

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

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presty
Thanks. In the TODO list :)

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salient
Can you add Bitstamp growth, too?

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flavio87
we could probably track the growth of trading volume, if that is what you
mean?

