On July 15, Coinbase, one of the world’s largest bitcoin exchange and merchant payment processors, released a half-year report on Bitcoin trends in 2015. They included information about increases in such activities as the creation of wallets, daily transactions, Github repositories and investments.
Increase in Wallets
In 2015, the number of bitcoin wallet registrations has substantially increased. Coinbase estimates that there are currently around 5 to 10 million bitcoin wallet holders around the world.
Of those, 3.1 million are Coinbase wallets and around 3.8 million have been created on Blockchain.info. The number of blockchain.info wallets has doubled since last year, due to the increasing worldwide adoption of the digital currency.
According to the “My Wallet Number of Users” chart on blockchain.info, the number of Blockchain wallets has increased from 1.8 million to 3.8 million since July 21, 2014.
Daily Transactions and Coinbase’s Expansion
According to Coinbase, daily transactions on the bitcoin network have rapidly increased since last year. In June 2014, around 60,590 transactions were settled on the blockchain. A year later, in June of this year, there were more than 110,000 daily transactions, marking a 94% increase in monthly transactions.
Coinbase has seen the highest user growth in the areas of Hong Kong, Tanzania, Philippines, Romania and Algeria in the first half of this year, following their international and European expansion in late 2014. Currently, 47% of Coinbase wallet holders are based outside the U.S.
The number of developers using Coinbase’s API has significantly grown in the past year, as there are now more than 7,000 applications built on the platform’s API. Furthermore, popular apps such as ChangeTip, Lawnmower and Zapchain have gained a lot of traction from Coinbase users.
Investments
The sum of bitcoin investments in the first half of 2015 have already surpassed total investments made in 2014. Over the last six months, more than US$350 million has been invested in bitcoin startups. The world’s largest bitcoin wallet service provider, Blockchain.info, in its latest round of funding, raised over US$30 million while leading Bitcoin infrastructure provider Bitfury has secured another mega funding round, raising around US$20 million.