Blockchain.info Exceeds 4 Million Users Worldwide
Blockchain.info the worlds most popular Bitcoin wallet has just exceeded 4 million users this week. The block explorer and wallet providers team is thrilled to have so many users with its base doubling from last year. In 2015 the company’s wallet count continues to grow at an exponential rate and the host site gets millions of individual visitors a month. The service has been around for quite sometime and continues to shine down crypto road.
Also Read: Introducing Bitcoin to Family and Friends
Blockchain.info’s CEO Peter Smith told Bitcoin.com:
“We’re proud that more users choose Blockchain than any other bitcoin wallet. We’re even more excited to see transaction volume generated by our wallets surge over the last six months. The ecosystem is gaining ground and we are excited to be a part of that.”— Peter Smith, CEO Blockchain.info
Blockchain.info was launched on August 30th, 2011 and in two weeks the veteran Bitcoin service turns four years old. The explorer and wallet site has been trusted by the community since its inception and no other wallet provider has been as popular. The Coinbase exchange and wallet service based out of San Francisco is the second most popular Bitcoin wallet to date. In 2013 Blockchain.info’s website became the most visited site in the Bitcoin universe. By the new year of 2013 the wallet user base grew to exceed one million users.
Whenever research or academic papers are cited on forums usually quite a bit of citation comes from Blockchain.info as source. The service provides technical data in graph form of transactions, mined blocks, hashrate, and other useful statistics. In March of 2012 the company released its first phone application for Android users. In April of the same year, they released its first IOS app with Apple. The app for smartphones and tablets has had millions of downloads since its creation. In February of 2014, Apple had banned Blockchain.info and all Bitcoin wallets from its app store and Itunes. Many people in the community were quite unpleased about the banning, even releasing a video of destroying iphones that went viral. In the month of July 2014 Apple let Blockchain.info back into the app store and it has continued its pace as the most popular wallet app there.
The wallet is considered a Hybrid EWallet and the service recommends the wallet owners back up their copies of their encrypted wallets. The wallet has always offered user operated security for its wallet system, such as 2 factor authentication and users can import private keys with ease. Blockchain.info uses 2FA with either your email, phone SMS, or Google Authy. The service also has added features of security like second passwords, notifications if used from a different IP address, on screen keyboard to thwart off keyloggers while typing passwords. Blockchain.info also offers customer service support if you happened to lose your phone or your authenticator acts up.
In 2013 the company acquired Zeroblock the leading price ticker and news app. The Britain based wallet provider and explorer also closed a 30 million fundraising round in October of 2014, giving the business an extra boost to amp it’s newest wallet build, core investments and team player strategy. The move led by Lightspeed ventures and Wicklow capital made this capital fundraising one of the first largest injections into the virtual currency. The company now in 2015 continues to work on building a better search engine that watches transactions on the blockchain, a stronger wallet desktop client and the most popular mobile wallet app in existence. Rafael Corrales a partner at the venture capital firm CRV who invested in Blockchain.info told the NYTimes:
“Blockchain is far and away an early leader in Bitcoin — They’re actually enabling the entire ecosystem.”
With its latest acquisition of 4 million users Blockchain.info has been the choice wallet for mainstream adoption throughout Bitcoin’s life. With its history in the industry, the wallet provider has always been part of the fabric of cryptocurrency. Blockchain.info was also the second wallet in Bitcoin existence to offer a .onion address. The team enjoys sharing as much as possible, offering large amounts of data on the hashrate, transaction volume and more. Blockchain.info has kept up a blog keeping people informed, which offers educational resources to its own services and the Bitcoin protocol itself. The service was one of the first web based wallets to offer users access to private keys. Other major wallet providers have added this feature recently, yet there are still some that do not. The company continues to remain in the light and shines its active innovation throughout the industry. With new builds on the way, security being tightend regularly, and the monumental task of recording the longest worldwide ledger, Blockchain.info aims to stand tall.
What do you think of Blockchain.info’s achievments? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of InsideBitcoins, Blockchain.info, and Redmemes
