I was at the Porcupine Freedom Festival in upstate NH last month and was conducting a survey about usage of Bitcoin.
The reason I chose to do the survey on Porcfest is because of the high concentration of Bitcoin users and enthusiasts and the high number who had likely used Bitcoin at an actual store. Without further ado, here are the statistics.
Total number of respondents: 168 (80 Bitcoin users, 88 Non Users)
For Bitcoin users:
74% had used Bitcoin online to purchase a product or service
74% had used Bitcoin in a store to purchase a product or service
(not the same 74% and many of the stores were vendors at Porcfest)
52.5% had experienced a problem when paying with Bitcoin
Most frequent problems included:
Bad network connection (53% of those with problems)
Commit time was too long (39%)
Other problem (31%)
For the 88 Non Bitcoin users:
44% didn’t use Bitcoin because the didn’t understand the technology
42% didn’t use Bitcoin because of a lack of Merchant acceptance
32% didn’t use Bitcoin because it was hard to obtain
32% didn’t use Bitcoin because the price fluctuated too much
11% didn’t have a computer or smartphone
and
62% cited other reasons including (too lazy, live off social security and they pay dollars, have iphone, not backed by physical asset, don’t trust the code, worried about the power going out, being broke, and security issues)
Respondents were further asked what would drive them to use Bitcoin more. The most popular answers were
If they could use Bitcoin without an internet connection
If it were easier to understand the technology
if it were more secure
The survey was conducted for a new business I’m involved in, Microdesic. To learn more about Microdesic, follow on Twitter @microdesic.