Local Bitcoins trends over the last 1.5 years. Better than you think! Up, up, up!

Please challenge any false data or incorrect conclusions.

Most of the localbitcoins charts out there show its volume in bitcoin volume alone. This does not account for the wild swings in bitcoin's value over time, and in the end has under-represented the actual value being transferred using the service.

Over the last 1.5 years I picked out the first week of each quarter of GLOBAL volume (all currencies represented in BTC) and then converted the bitcoin value into USD and here is what I got:

• 15176 BTC week of 01/03/15 313 = $4.75M USD
• 25487 BTC week of 04/04/15 248 = $6.32M USD
• 30964 BTC week of 07/04/15 258 = $7.98M USD
• 37221 BTC week of 10/03/15 235 = $8.74M USD
• 22896 BTC week of 01/09/16 434 = $9.94M USD
• 29226 BTC week of 04/02/16 424 = $12.88M USD
• 26257 BTC week of 06/04/16 548 = $14.38M USD

The equivalent of two million USD of value (all currencies together) is traded on localbitcoins daily now!

As you can see, even though the amount of BTC traded fluctuates heavily with its value, the value of all currencies converted into USD has increased consistently.

Additionally, over the past two years, the currency denominations trading into bitcoin have changed drastically. In early 15', USD <--> BTC accounted for 56% of global volume. Today it stands at 43%.

The amount of USD volume hasn't decreased. On the contrary, over the past 1.5 years, it has linearly increased. It is just that the USD volume increases have paled in comparison to the exponential increase of OTHER currencies now using localbitcoins.

Broadening out the scope a bit, developed country currency (USD, GBP, CAD, AUD, SEK, EUR) constituted 90% of volume on localbitcoins in early 2015. Today they account for only 67%!

We all know that over the past year Russia has shown a crazy amount of demand at localbitcoins, but there are many other developing countries that have seen their localbitcoins volume rise significantly.

I converted the following developing countries currency volumes into USD value. These were all measurements of the last two months and I did NOT cherry pick the peaks of each, but rather eyeballed the average of about two months. These are all volumes per week.

• Russia = 2,600,000 USD
• South Africa = 460,000 USD
• Columbia = 33,000 USD
• Croatia = 25,000 USD
• Argentina = 43,000 USD
• Brazil = 36,000 USD
• Czech Republic = 21,000 USD
• India = 125,000 USD
• Kenya = 60,000 USD
• Malaysia = 80,000 USD
• Mexico = 42,000 USD
• Pakistan = 35,000 USD
• Phillipines = 32,000 USD
• Romania = 60,000 USD
• Thailand = 100,000
• Ukraine = 15,000 USD
• Venezuela = 5,400,000 USD

The last one is debatable because their currency is pegged to the USD and is actually worth much less. Nevertheless, Venezuela has seen big increases.

EDIT: I divided the total amount of Venezuelan Bolivar by the price that it is going for on LBC and it came out to the equivalent of about 50,000 USD per week for the last several weeks.

Most of these developing countries had almost zero volume 1.5 years ago.

Additionally, anecdotal evidences suggests that repeat buyers who meet sellers through LBC take their business off of LBC after they have established a bit of trust to save on fees. If this is true, there is even more volume in these countries that is happening that the LBC API does not see.

Conclusion: Like I said before, I like looking at LBC volume because I see it as a more functional, less speculative exchange platform than other exchanges. When people use LBC, they are seeing big spreads and wouldn't be 'day trading' on speculation like most of the other exchanges. I suspect most of the money is black/gray market exchanges where anonymity is key. Additionally, you can see that a lot of the countries that have seen increases are also countries have strict capital controls or crumbling economies. This suggests that Bitcoin is indeed being used as a reserve currency, even outside of China.

My questions to the reader:

1. What are your opinions on perceiving LBC volume as more 'authentic' volume. What do you think of my argument that LBC exchange is less speculative and more functional. Agree, disagree? Why?

2. Do you agree that most of the LBC volume is black/gray market exchange? Why or why not?

Graphs can be found at: www.coin.dance

TLDR: Moon!

Submitted June 19, 2016 at 07:04AM by mattius459 http://bit.ly/1Y1NX5x