Blockchain.info, one of the oldest and most prominent Bitcoin wallet and block explorer services, surpasses 2 million wallet users.
The announcement came from a tweet from the startup, mentioning it has reached 2 million Blockchain wallets and linking to the relevant chart on its website:
Here's to Two Million #Blockchain wallets, millions more, & putting #bitcoin in everyone's hands! https://t.co/ZxHfIuom8u
— Blockchain.info (@blockchain) August 10, 2014
The product, called My Wallet, has considerably gained popularity in mid-November 2013 with a growth spike at about the period Bitcoin prices reached US$1,000. Since last December, the number of My Wallet users has gradually increased, according to the chart.
- Blockchain.info's outbound transactions interface
While prices remain stable and volatility has fallen by 42% over the past 3 months, according to Bitcoin investment firm Pantera Capital's researches, it is now clear that Bitcoin adoption has taken another path towards a steadier and more sustainable growth.
With more than 2 million wallet users, Blockchain.info surpasses its competitor, San Francisco-based Coinbase, with a latest wallet count of 1.5 million.
While Blockchain.info is gaining popularity and seeing its market share grow, members of the community are concerned about the company's product quality and lack of updates. On /r/Bitcoin, Reddit user historian1111 stated:
"Blockchain.info needs to step it up. Their website hasn't been updated in ages. Lots of features are broken/not working (what happened to firstbits, shared send is broken, etc). The new Android mobile app is also buggy as #$%^&. Not sure who's running the show there, but they should step it up."
Another user added:
"Blockchain.info was the first wallet I used after starting with Bitcoin Core and I loved it. It was so simple yet powerful.
A lot has changed since then, as they have had trouble scaling and meeting increased customer demand. My biggest issue is stability, which is huge when you are offering a financial service."
- The site also provides several types of charts depicting the network's current and historical state
Bitcoin mining, which consists in adding transaction records to the public ledger of past transactions and adding a block to the block chain, is a process that is being rewarded by a certain amount of bitcoins per block. Today, there are exactly 315,000 blocks in the main chain, which is making us halfway before the bounty decreases from 25 to 12.5 BTC per block.
Two weeks ago, Blockchain.org announced the return of its iOS app in the App Store, along with other Bitcoin wallet apps.
In February, Bitcoin wallet apps were pulled out of Apple's catalog, including Blockchain's. This caused a lot of discontent among the community. Many of its members called for a boycott and a few angry Bitcoin users even destroyed their iPhones over the ban.