# Analyzing the Bitcoin Network: The First Four Years
## 6 Analysis and Results
### Statistics
#### 6.1.2 Bitcoin Business Statistics
In comparison to other business categories, the exchanges can be attributed to a rather small number of transactions over time. In February 2011 the well-known vendor Silkroad started its business. The following media attention about the goods that were sold on this platform attracted more users and subsequently the network activity increased. Support of independent and liberal media and news platforms and the donation via Bitcoins made up a large portion of transactions in the first half of 2011. With the emergence of online or web wallets to hold Bitcoins, more users could then easily store and transact their Bitcoins in a convenient way; thus increasing activity and transactions related to the web wallet business. In this statistic the category is mainly driven by one of the first services called Instawallet that launches its business in April 2011. The most active time for wallet services were in the time from August 2011 to February 2012, compared to other business categories. The introduction of Bitcoin games in mid-2012, especially dice games such as SatoshiDICE and BTC Dice, resulted in an inflation of executed transactions in the Bitcoin economy. The gambling category makes up the largest portion of transactions in the network since its introduction. Between October 2012 and March 2013, the speculation on exchange rate movements surged and one can see that Bitcoin OTC trader become very active in this phase. The activity of the mining business also increased, since it is more profitable to  
Figure 10: Composite of Businesses over Time (in Terms of Number of Transactions, #TXs). - donate computing power in times where miners can exchange their Bitcoins at higher exchange rates into fiat currencies. Overall, one can see a high fluctuation in the activity of different business categories. Again, these results can just be seen as an indicator because conclusions about transactions that do not have a business tag cannot be made. Comparing the results in case of the three major businesses in the Bitcoin economy gambling, exchanges, and mining with their larger representatives SatoshiDICE, Mt.Gox, and Deepbit, respectively, there is no significant correlation or even a negative correlation. Hence, the development of a business category over time is not representative for particular services related to this category. For the complete picture the composite of business categories over time in terms of the _transacted value_ in BTC is shown in Figure 11. The first thing that can easily be recognized in comparison to the previous statistic is the development of the donation business. In the early stage of the Bitcoin economy the transacted value in the network can be mainly attributed to early adopters such as Bitcoin Talk users, media news and miscellaneous services. To attract more users in the early stage, Bitcoins were donated to potential interest parties; thus, the donation business makes up around 60% of transaction volume in the time from June to September 2010. Then the attributed value decreases in comparison to other emerging businesses such as IT, media news, exchanges, and vendors. The start (April 2011) of the Silkroad vendor, which mainly drives the vendor business according to the transacted value in this statistic, incorporates large portions of the transacted Bitcoins. The tremendous increase of transacted value in the case of the Silkroad vendor is mainly explained by transactions related to the address \"1 DkyBEkt... \", which is believed to be associated with Silk Road. In the active time of this address (January-September 2012) it received large volumes of Bitcoins until August 2012; subsequently, Bitcoins were aggregated and withdrawn from this address. One can see that the suspicious address associated to the vendor Silkroad dominates the business category vendors within the network. [PERSON], _et al._[8] analyzed this particular situation more thoroughly and came to a similar conclusion, although they incorporate different businesses in their vendor category.