<p>I have not seen a chart.  The only way I think it would be to go through the history of the wiki page and count the merchants at certain dates to get the data.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-23T18:39:45.973Z
2011-09-23T18:39:45.973Z
tysat
<p>I went through the last 500 revisions of the wiki page, pulled the byte count into excel and graphed it. Line count would probably be a better metric but I didn't have a readily available data source for that. If someone wants to write a script that wget's each revision and counts the number of <br /> tags that might be more accurate, but here's 500 revisions worth of data as a chart:</p>

<p><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/XlWql.png" alt="Byte count of trade wiki page over time"></p>

<p>500 revisions goes back to Jul 8, 2011.</p>

<p>Also of interest, the <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Trade&amp;oldid=3376" rel="nofollow noreferrer">earliest revision</a> (Feb 10, 2011) of the Trade page has a scant 117 <code>&lt;li&gt;</code> tags while the current page has a whopping 785! I haven't taken the time to count all the revisions inbetween but that's quite a lot of growth - 668 new entries in 225 days for an average of almost 3 entries per day or about 1,084 per year! While some of these are bound to be non-merchant list items, that's still an impressive rate of growth.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-23T19:29:41.693Z
thanks, as a result of this i went and looked quickly at the byte size over time - i didn't realise it had only been around since February - and the increase looks more gradual and steady than i had expected. is there any info on trade before 2011?
Jay
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-23T19:53:31.827Z
Perhaps over on the forums, but that data is likely to be widely dispersed and very difficult to scrape.
David Perry
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-23T18:47:19.443Z
2011-09-23T19:27:47.133Z
2011-09-23T19:27:47.133Z
David Perry
<p>Does there exist a chart documenting the number of bitcoin merchants over time, and if not, would it be possible to create one from any available data source?  (I'm thinking mostly of <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade" rel="noreferrer">https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade</a> for source material)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-23T18:12:06.890Z
Should be easy enough to create a script that scans the history and charts this.
ripper234
<commerce>
Is there a chart of Bitcoin merchants over time?
Jay
# Is there a chart of Bitcoin merchants over time?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2011-09-23)

Does there exist a chart documenting the number of bitcoin merchants over time, and if not, would it be possible to create one from any available data source? (I'm thinking mostly of <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade> for source material)

**Tags:** commerce

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Should be easy enough to create a script that scans the history and charts this.  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2011-09-23. Score: 8 | Accepted answer

I went through the last 500 revisions of the wiki page, pulled the byte count into excel and graphed it. Line count would probably be a better metric but I didn't have a readily available data source for that. If someone wants to write a script that wget's each revision and counts the number of   
 tags that might be more accurate, but here's 500 revisions worth of data as a chart:

![Byte count of trade wiki page over time](https://i.sstatic.net/XlWql.png)

500 revisions goes back to Jul 8, 2011.

Also of interest, the [earliest revision](https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Trade&oldid=3376) (Feb 10, 2011) of the Trade page has a scant 117  tags while the current page has a whopping 785! I haven't taken the time to count all the revisions inbetween but that's quite a lot of growth - 668 new entries in 225 days for an average of almost 3 entries per day or about 1,084 per year! While some of these are bound to be non-merchant list items, that's still an impressive rate of growth.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: thanks, as a result of this i went and looked quickly at the byte size over time - i didn't realise it had only been around since February - and the increase looks more gradual and steady than i had expected. is there any info on trade before 2011?  
> **username_3**: Perhaps over on the forums, but that data is likely to be widely dispersed and very difficult to scrape.  

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### Answer by username_2 on 2011-09-23. Score: 0

I have not seen a chart. The only way I think it would be to go through the history of the wiki page and count the merchants at certain dates to get the data.


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