I'm not sure if you freaks recall, but back in early February we covered an article from our friend Matt Ahlborg in which he put forth that Bitcoin is working as Satoshi intended, for the people who need it most. Matt did this by creating the metric Usage Per (Online) Economic Person (UP(O)EP), which attempts to measure Bitcoin's relative impact on a country by country basis. The metric takes into consideration the overall access to Internet that exist within certain borders, GDP per capita within the borders, and LocalBitcoins volume denominated in USD.

Matt found that, when all of this is taken into consideration, the data shows that Bitcoin is being adopted and used in developing countries way more than one would expect when looking at pure volume. On top of this, most of the demand is being driven by utility and not speculation. Individuals living in countries with bad currencies, oppressive governments, or both are turning to Bitcoin to trade, remit money from family abroad, and store value in a vehicle that is considerably harder to confiscate than the other options on the market. The type of encouraging fundamental development that should, frankly, get more coverage than it does these days.

Luckily for us, Matt is back, this time with a brand spanking new website that includes a more robust data set dissecting LocalBitcoins volume by country and region. Useful Tulips is here to help give this fundamental more coverage. The site currently has a robust set of LocalBitcoins data that will soon be joined by a robust set of data from Paxful, the second largest P2P exchange behind LocalBitcoins. Combined, the data set should help us get a better understanding of Bitcoin's impact around the world. Hopefully this data set only grows and includes more exchanges over time including Bisq and HodlHodl.

On top of the data sets, Matt plans on writing more articles about his findings, so definitely keep Useful Tulips on your radar. We here at the Ƀent will certainly be keeping track of the site's progress.

Final thought...

Been going on long walks lately. Bullish on long walks in the Fall.