More than 3 million bitcoin wallets have been created on Blockchain.info at present, as the backers of the popular cryptocurrency continue to rely on the world’s largest bitcoin wallet provider.
The number of Blockchain wallets has more than doubled in the last one year due to rising popularity of bitcoin among technology enthusiasts and companies. Over the last 30 days, the number of wallets has been increased by about 6%, according to statistics from the wallet provider. Until January 2013, the number of wallets on Blockchain were staying below 80,000. Subsequently, there was a steady increase in the number of wallets.
Blockchain, which is widely recognized as the most trusted brand in bitcoin, claims that it is operating bitcoin’s largest and most secure wallet service. The website, Blockchain.info was founded in August 2011 by UK developer Ben Reeves as a Blockchain explorer that will make it easier for bitcoin users to study transactions and analyze the bitcoin economy. Later, it launched its proprietary bitcoin wallet service – the first client side JavaScript bitcoin wallet.
The rapid increase in the number of Blockchain wallets comes in line with the growing adoption of bitcoin as a payment option by thousands of merchants across the globe. Blockchain claims it uses industry standard AES encryption to protect wallets from thieves and hackers. The online wallet service does all the encryption within the web browser itself and uses two-factor authentication for enhanced security.
Relying heavily on the firm’s unique products and their potential given the ever-increasing adaption of the digital currency by merchants across the world, renowned investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Wicklow Capital, and Sir Richard Branson invested in it. Blockchain has so far raised more than $30 million in capital – one of the biggest investments secured by bitcoin companies.
“I have invested in Bitcoin because I believe in its potential, the capacity it has to transform global payments is very exciting,” Sir Branson said earlier.
Among popular online wallet providers, Coinbase claims it has 2.5 million customer wallets.
The actual percentage of wallets being used is going to be a lot lower than 3 million.
yes, for both Coinbase and Blockchain.info I wish they would say how many active wallets with activity in last 30 days that they have. This would be a much more fair metric I think.
I alone have setup 3 wallets on Blockchain.info so do I count as 1 or 3 ?
not for long.
The blockchain info site has a few messed up links making them look amateurish. One link is titled “Largest Transactions, largest 100 transactions from the last 50,000 transactions”. They are large, 500k BTC, but all dated being in November of 2011. That is about the time Blockchain info got started. That is not even in the last 50k blocks! So a link to a static page passes for professionals paying attention to detail? Makes one wonder what other items they deem as too trivial to bother with. They should just take that link away if they do not care about it.