
Listen to Bitcoin - felixweis
http://www.listentobitcoin.com/
======
hamoid
Beautiful :) I didn't know people were moving around such large sums. I saw a
3400 bc bubble, and a 2000+ bc bubble floating out there. I wish I was able to
distinguish what was going on directly from the sounds. Those huge bubbles
sounded exactly like the small ones, and when I saw 50 bubbles appear at once,
that also did not sound any different than a single bubble. The amount of
simultaneous sounds seems to be limited to a very low number.

~~~
kzrdude
Bitcoin clients usually try to diffuse coin ownership by always sending two
amounts with one transaction, one (normally smaller) amount is to the
receiver, the second amount is to a new address of the sender. So your coins
diffuse out over tons of addresses this way, and the true number of coins
transferred between individuals is much less than it appears.

It can also be extremely unhelpful, for example to this chap today on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bd1d1/i_think_i_ju...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bd1d1/i_think_i_just_lost_90btc_are_they_stolen_help/)

Who didn't seem to know about return transactions and seems to have lost 90
BTC on that. (Because he/she used a "secure" live environment that would work
with a temporary wallet and just one extra address with his/her money.)

~~~
tocomment
Wow I can't follow that at all! Now I'm scared to ever spend my bitcoins!

~~~
jamoes
He only got into that situation because he was using the software in a non-
standard way, and he inadvertently deleted the "change-wallet" that had
automatically been created for him.

As long as you use the software in a relatively standard way and don't ever
delete your wallet files, you'll be fine.

~~~
eric_bullington
This. If you save all wallet.dat files on any bitcoin clients that you use for
transactions, you'll be fine. Don't be scared off by someone using the bitcoin
client in a non-standard, unapproved way (and as long as you use the GUI and
not the command line interface, you'll not have to worry about that).

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blhack
What on earth are people spending this much bitcoin on? I see a multiple
$100000 transaction on my screen.

~~~
clarkm
Most of it seems to be just trade volume on MtGox, not actual transactions
recorded in the blockchain.

~~~
w-ll
Deposits and withdraws of Bitcoin will show, but all trades within MtGox are
not recorded in the blockchain. It's just Gox moving balances between
accounts.

~~~
clarkm
That was exactly my point. Most of the bubbles on the screen on MtGox trades,
not blockchain transactions.

~~~
eric_bullington
He means Gox moving balances between internal Gox accounts, like hot/cold
wallets. Not trades. The trades you and I make on Gox don't show on the
blockchain until they're withdrawn.

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hayksaakian
I wish I could pop these bubbles.

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itafroma
It says no sound in Safari, but the sound works just fine in Safari 6.0.3. No
sound in _Mobile_ Safari on iOS 6.1.3, however.

~~~
itafroma
Just to note: it _did_ say there was no sound in Safari, but it was silently
edited after the comment edit/delete window on parent ended. Odd you can't
even delete comments that no longer apply after the edit window.

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codesuela
This needs a Satoshi dice version Ka-ching sounds

edit: obviously forgot my compliment, very clever idea and cool implementation
this digital art right here ladies and gentleman

also this gave me an idea: how about a Bitcoin ECG?

~~~
epscylonb
And a whack-whack-oomps for the losses?

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futhey
Are the pitches based on something? They appear to be totally random.

~~~
kintamanimatt
There are two kinds of sounds, "celesta" for transactions and trades (e.g.
<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/celesta/c003.ogg>) and string swells
for blocks (e.g. <http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell2.ogg>).

Looking at the source, you are, however, correct, that the pitches are
selected at random.

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justin_
Very appropriate in choosing bubbles to represent bitcoins :)

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waterlesscloud
I wish I could turn off the bubble sounds and just get sound for the blocks.
I'd leave that on all day.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Here ya go:

<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell1.ogg>

<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell2.ogg>

<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell3.ogg>

You could write a script to play these randomly!

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zoba
Wow, this is great! I got to see a block completed and see a 3392.80 BTC
transaction go by - both got me excited enough to be amusing to those around
me!

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tudorizer
Strangely relaxing to listen to money being moved around.

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lalos
What's the relationship between a sound (pitch, note, etc) and a transaction
value?

~~~
lalos
after some digging around the JS, I noticed the sound is completely random
except the volume which is based on the quantity of bitcoins

 _var maxBitcoins=1000;var minVolume=0.3;var maxVolume=0.5;var
volume=bitcoins/(maxBitcoins/(maxVolume-minVolume))+minVolume;if(volume
>maxVolume)volume=maxVolume;Sound.playRandomAtVolume(volume_100); _

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nelse
If I had a child, I would open this site and it will make it sleep for sure
;). PS. Good idea!

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zapdrive
There was 20,000 BTC transaction the other day. I wonder how it would have
sounded like.

~~~
eksith
Big Ben, presumably. This is oddly soothing in an "ew, economics" kinda way. I
wouldn't mind letting this run in the background for when there's no wind for
my windchime.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
The sound and the bubbles remind me somewhat of _Electroplankton_ for the
Nintendo DS.

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kefka
Oh boy.. I was going to buy some bitcoins, but the price is creeping towards
100 USD/1 btc. That's just ridiculous.

A few weeks ago, prices were around 26 USD/1 btc... So are we going to see a
swing down that low again? Or is this SilkRoad talking?

~~~
BrokenPipe
this is the effect of the scarcity of bitcoin. there's a tremendous network
effect, more and more online shops accepting them as well as AFK. it allows
much lower fees and risk than credit cards with their 3% plus chargebacks, up
to 5-10% better margins for sellers.

You can now use bitcoin to pay for services and even fines at some
municipalities, cities and what not <http://www2.egovlink.com/press-release-
bitcoin.cfm>

You can buy things on amazon via bitspend as well as other services.

And if you still don't trust bitcoin value to not go down, you can use
services like bitpay that will convert for you instantly in whichever currency
you want.

There's even some VISA prepaid you can top up with bitcoin for the places that
don't accept them.

And you can now use bitcoin to pay for expenses and contractors
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/expensify-now-offers-
suppor...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/expensify-now-offers-support-for-
bitcoin-an-alternative-to-paypal-for-international-contractors/)

And while all this happens, the USD keeps getting printed at a far superior
rate.

~~~
loceng
Thanks for explaining this.

------
shocks
I bet loads of people are moving between wallets just to see theirs right now.
:)

~~~
aarongolliver
If people are going to do that they should consider donating a bit to his
wallet (14zoTKB29NdsJRvk4qP3vB9mQZ3dcV3eWk)

It gets highlighted and is really easy to spot

~~~
walid
I like your optimism in thinking that people who use Bitcoin will fall for
that...

~~~
gibybo
Fall for what? It's explained right on the top of the page.

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sliverstorm
Is this actually representative of all bitcoin transactions?

~~~
AlpineWolf
Original creator here, it plots all the transactions it receives from
Blockchain.info. It's more or less pulling from the same recent transaction
feed that you get if you go to Blockchain.info's homepage. I'd like to think
this includes all transactions on the network :)

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm surprised, the volume is much lower than I expected.

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pjbrunet
@Maximillian Try a smaller font for smaller transactions.

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joelrunyon
Nicely done.

What feed/API are you pulling from to track these changes. I've been looking
for a solid way to chart bitcoin transactions and haven't been able to find
one.

~~~
ponyous
Check bottom left corner. I guess mtgox and blockchain streaming api.

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riderofrinos
You can see what are currency trades vs. transactions on:
<http://www.bitcoinmonitor.com/>

------
richardwhiuk
Nice. Bubble size based on (log?) bitcoin size would be good. I wonder how
long till bitcoin gets big enough that this sounds like techno ;p

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mactitan
As fiat money devalues bitcoin becomes more valuable; but it might be doomed
because the central banks could easily bubble it to oblivion.

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stickac
It's a pity that bubble size is unrelated to the amount of Bitcoins in
transaction. Or is it related to the transaction size?

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irremediable
How do the sounds correspond to activity?

~~~
tomsthumb
Deeper noise = larger amount, roughly. Larger bubble has some sort
(logarithmic?) correlation to size. It's necessarily rough though.

~~~
metalruler
Does this mean that a huge transaction for the right amount will hit the
perfect low note, and cause everyone within earshot of listentobitcoin.com to
simultaneously crap themselves?

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dmd
I'm seeing one transaction every 30-60 seconds, which seems wrong to me.

~~~
redthrowaway
Seems to be going fine now. I imagine the transactions are just pretty
sporadic. Either that, or it momentarily lost the connection with Mt. Gox and
blockchain.info.

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bgruber
i used to do quite a bit of sonification of stock trades. i imagine bitcoin is
the thing to use these days though, since realtime stock data was a pain to
get and deal with.

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ibarrac
Needs a volume button.

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md224
Where did you get the celesta and swells sample banks from?

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iframe
I wish I could pay my meal with bitcoins :)

~~~
27182818284
You can, depending on your location. <http://pizzaforcoins.com/>

I know you were really trying to be snarky about Bitcoin, but in case you
hadn't heard, you can actually do things with them. Also notable are
<https://wrapbootstrap.com/> and Reddit

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rheide
Very nicely executed.

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fuyuasha
Just brilliant!

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felipelalli
boua!

