Counting Them All: How to Figure Out Actual Number Of Bitcoin Users

Setting out to know the number of or to get a rough estimate of Bitcoin users in all the parts of the world currently could be daunting. This is partly for the pseudonymity and the double or triple chances of one user duplicating addresses or not being active with one and so on.
Counting businesses
Compared to 2014 when more than 64,000 businesses were reported to accept payments in Bitcoins around the world, the figure has changed to – at least – over a 100,000 merchants in 2015.
Citing a Federal Reserve Board 2014 Technical Background and Data Analysis, Banco Santander notes that some rough calculations suggest that the Bitcoin user base has doubled every eight months for the past three years, driving transaction volume growth.
However, Core developer Peter Todd said so much has changed since 2014 that the indices could not be applied now:
He stated via Twitter:
‘Back in 2014, that estimate was probably more reasonable, because the usage of Bitcoin was simpler. E.g., a changetip user barely does any txs (transactions) at all. Similarly, lots of investors are “Bitcoin users” yet all their txs stay on exchanges.’

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2016-10-12.