A Survey of The Top 100 Bitcoin Sites by Alexa Rankings
Summary
A survey of the Top 100 Bitcoin Sites by Alexa Rankings (Internet Traffic) for the three-month period to 21 January 2017 has this conclusion:
Bitcoin is developing quickly as a new asset class. There is limited interest in Bitcoin as a means of payment despite the many creative endeavours in this space.
The full results of the survey are available at Blocklink.info :
Alexa Rank
Alexa Rank is an estimate of a site’s popularity. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors to that site and pageviews on the site over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1. Google.com is #1.
Global Top 500
These are the Top 500. http://www.alexa.com/topsites
Top 10 Bitcoin sites by Alexa Ranking
The highest ranked Bitcoin site is #1952. But that is a faucet. The highest serious site is Blockchain.info
View full Top 100 list at Blocklink.info
Faucets and Ponzi sites have been excluded from this list.
Sometimes, like the bark of the dog in the night in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of Silver Blaze, events are notable for their absence, as opposed to the their presence.
Where are Payments sites in this Top 10?
Where are Chinese Visitors in the Top 10?
Bitcoin is gaining traction as digital Gold and a speculative asset, not as P2P e-cash as originally envisaged in the White Paper of Satoshi Nakamoto. People do not want to acknowledge that but it is a simple fact.
Blockchain.info is #1
Blockchain.info, a British company, has been #1 Bitcoin site for at least three years.
The popularity of Blockchain.info in Japan, US, Nigeria, India and Germany — with a combined population of 2 billion — suggests Bitcoin might gain traction in those countries. The possible exception is the United States where the County Rank for Blockchain.info is just 4,070.
Blockchain.info claims to have issued 11.5 million Wallets. In Part 2 I will demonstrate with independently sourced data that there are indeed 10–12 million active unique visitors to the Blockchain.info site.
Blockchain.info is a remarkable company and the research suggests it will become a giant. Its founder Nicolas Cary expressed his lucid thoughts in Newsweek on 7 January 2017.
Blockchain.info is hiring:
High Flyers: Fastest Growing Bitcoin Sites
Full data at Blocklink.info
Change Last 3 Months = Change in Rank. So, for example, the Alexa Rank of Blockchain.info increased by 405 from 3,144 to 2,739.
Growth Last 3 months = Change Last 3 Months / (Alexa Ranking + Change Last 3 Months).
Growth Last 3 Months does not mean growth in unique visitors.
Again, note the absence of Bitcoins companies/ sites specializing in Payments. Chinese Visitors are evident in this table: the three months leading up to 21 January 2017 included a great run-up in the price of Bitcoin, and many Chinese speculators likely got involved in trading at the Chinese Exchanges.
Slowing Down: Negative Rankings Growth
Note the Payments companies are slowing down or going backwards.
Nine to Watch:
These Bitcoin companies have strong Alexa Rankings and fast growth. They are growing fast from a well-established base.
Note: Categories of Bitcoin Site
Bitcoin sites have been categorized as follows for the purpose of analysis:
Update: I just found a similar survey conducted in July 2015 by Ofir Beigel.
This is the Top 8 Beigel identified and their performance in the Alexa Rankings in the 18 months to January 2017.
In short, six of them have risen up the rankings substantially, BTC-e Exchange is the big exception.
This is Part 1 of a series of articles on a Survey of the Top 100 Bitcoin Sites by Alexa Ranking.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.