Temporal and Geographical Analysis of Real Economic Activities in the
  Bitcoin Blockchain
Rafael Ramos Tubino Remy Cazabet Natkamon Tovanich Celine Robardet
We study the real economic activity in the Bitcoin blockchain that involves
transactions from/to retail users rather than between organizations such as
marketplaces, exchanges, or other services. We first introduce a heuristic
method to classify Bitcoin players into three main categories: Frequent
Receivers (FR), Neighbors of FR, and Others. We show that most real
transactions involve Frequent Receivers, representing a small fraction of the
total value exchanged according to the blockchain, but a significant fraction
of all payments, raising concerns about the centralization of the Bitcoin
ecosystem. We also conduct a weekly pattern analysis of activity, providing
insights into the geographical location of Bitcoin users and allowing us to
quantify the bias of a well-known dataset for actor identification.