Visualizing Realtime Bitcoin Transactions in ReactVR

https://bitcoin-vr.github.io/

by onggunhao • 9 years ago

117 67 9 years ago

bitcoin-vr.github.io

onggunhao2• 9 years ago

Hi! Robin and I built this as a side project to learn ReactVR and Redux. Bitcoin-VR uses pure client-side javascript to visualize Bitcoin transactions in Virtual Reality.

Please wait for some time for it to download as the assets are quite large!

The code is open source, and free for anyone to fork. We're also really new to web development, so we welcome all criticism and avenues where we can improve!

danboarder• 9 years ago

Nice! Is it easy in ReactVR to add a button for Google Cardboard 3D viewing on smartphones? I've played with Mozilla A-Frame and it provides this, curious if ReactVR does as well.

FLGMwt• 9 years ago

Yup! It shows up by default, IIRC.

It's a layer on top of WebVR, similar to A-Frame.

gt_• 9 years ago

I like the metaphor of BTC investments as just floating the quantity into the atmosphere via hot air balloon.

sAbakumoff11• 9 years ago

>Designed for Chrome or Safari.

I am pretty adamant that these days you gotta design for Edge as well.

knocte• 9 years ago

And Firefox! And Opera! And Brave!

sAbakumoff11• 9 years ago

This is not funny.

afraca• 9 years ago

I'm no frontend developer, so I'm unsure what technology actually is used by ReactVR, but according to [0] only Edge and Firefox support th e WebVR API, that was funny to find out. It worked on Firefox.

[0] https://caniuse.com/#feat=webvr

sAbakumoff11• 9 years ago

LOL, this is what I am talking about!

wuliwong2• 9 years ago

I actually found this super confusing. I opened up the app on chrome on os-x and I could move the view around, nothing seemed broken. I don't have a VR headset attached to my mac so maybe that's where the problems arise?

It seems most of these browsers support webvr with their proprietary hardware, whether it be google daydream/cardboard or edge only supporting windows mixed reality headsets.

It will be interesting to see where this goes moving forward.

oneeyedpigeon4• 9 years ago

Surely not for experimental demonstrations of new tech such as this. Maybe if the creator wanted to monetise or present to the widest audience, sure, but this is aimed at a sector that is 99% going to have access to Chrome or Safari.

sAbakumoff11• 9 years ago

where did you get this insane number? There are plenty of people who use and like windows 10 and its wonderful browser which has nothing to do with IE!

muxator• 9 years ago

Never wanted a Mac. Google is too much invasive of my privacy. I simply like Firefox. Does this make me less technologically literate?

megaman22• 9 years ago

Lol, why? Nobody uses Edge unless that's the only thing allowed.

fermuch• 9 years ago

A lot of people use it because it's what comes installed.

sAbakumoff11• 9 years ago

I think, you probably confuse Edge with IE. The latter is what you said, the former is the modern beautiful and powerful browser

baud147258• 9 years ago

I am reading this page on edge. I have also chrome on this computer and I have admin right so I could install Firefox too.

pjc50• 9 years ago

But Edge is terrible.

Edit: ugly font rendering (common to a lot of Metro desktop apps?), failure to save tabs state on exit (dealbreaker)

sAbakumoff11• 9 years ago

IE is terrible, Edge is amazing!

germainelol• 9 years ago

Am I the only one that just sat there seeing BTC transactions of $1m+ and thinking "Damn, who's that guy?"

opportune2• 9 years ago

I noticed that and I have absolutely no idea how there are so many huge transactions. The peak of the drugs-from-the-internet era looked like child's play compared to this. The only rational explanations I can think of are either money laundering, institutional investors, or very wealthy people buying bitcoin as an insurance strategy.

I do feel bad for the people who are buying into the "digital gold" narrative at this point in time. I hope none of these big buyers are just regular joe's with sub-7-figure net worths who are just being irresponsible with their money due to the "hype"

Cthulhu_• 9 years ago

The BTC market cap is nearly worth $300 billion, naturally there will be "large" transactions like that in something that big. Just Coinbase moving something to / from their cold storage is probably worth tens of millions in USD. And of course there's a lot of rich people and businesses that make larger transactions.

A million doesn't feel like that much money anymore for billionaires. That's like spending $1 if you've got $100 in your wallet.

losteric3• 9 years ago

Why, exactly, is everyone purchasing crypto-"currencies"? I abandoned bitcoin over 5 years ago because it was just blackmarket barter... now the Chinese use it to bypass state regulations while Russian ransomware holds computers hostage for bitcoin.

What is the volume of legal purchases versus speculative and blackmarket transactions? Why do people have any confidence in these digital assets?

lambda• 9 years ago

Why would you think it was a single person?

Many of the large transactions are likely payment processors moving bitcoins into and out of exchanges, not any individual. Or mining rig operators cashing out to finance their power bills (and I'm talking the big mining operations, not someone's one or two miners in their apartment).

ohnoesmyscv• 9 years ago

Sometimes it’s just exchanges moving their assets around

sschueller• 9 years ago

Nice, but I think fish would be more appropriate :) (Yes, I know a whale is not a fish)

Diggsey• 9 years ago

Actually, you can call whales fish (it's not like there's a common ancestor of all fish of which whales aren't a descendent) they just also happen to be mammals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish

oscilloscope• 9 years ago

Another classic, BitListen: http://www.bitlisten.com/

almostdigital• 9 years ago

And https://realtimebitcoin.info

SuddsMcDuff• 9 years ago

My personal favourite: http://btc4me.com/bitcoin/bitcoin-traffic/

nicoleczhu• 9 years ago

Would be interesting to see some more data viz on the blimps. Are these individuals or funds - very curious

_red• 9 years ago

Its says balloons<1BTC and blimps>1BTC....however that appears wrong, looks like it should be 100BTC as conditional.

onggunhao2• 9 years ago

Oops!! Fixed it! Thanks for pointing it out to us

https://github.com/bitcoin-vr/bitcoin-vr/pull/84

PS: We set the param of 1 BTC when we built the first version a few weeks ago. Then came the massive surge in transactions and prices... we had to change the info panels to accomodate a lot more digits (esp for the USD price). Kinda crazy how the parameters changed within such a short period of time

no-such-address2• 9 years ago

Visualizing: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. VIS guy

paulgb• 9 years ago

I think it means communicating data visually, which this does. What do you think it means?

bengotow• 9 years ago

Maybe you thought it'd be an infographic? This is totally a valid visualization as far as I'm concerned. It packages and communicates data visually that would otherwise be difficult to see. It doesn't abstract up from the data with summary graphics, but it uses a time axis to give you a deeper understanding of the nature of the data. It even uses balloons, which I think may be the author suggesting a "bubble". So look, it even communicates a message.

[Disclaimer: not a VIS guy]

ChristianGeek2• 9 years ago

This is a textbook (dictionary) example of visualization.

dang• 9 years ago

Please don't post unsubstantive dismissals to HN. If you know more, please teach us by adding relevant information. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but then it's better not to post.

Either way, please drop the swipes, and for bonus points we can leave out the internet clichés as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

no-such-address2• 9 years ago

Your criticisms of my comment are fair, but you are also defending an animation of hot air balloon that somehow describe attributes of cryptocurrency transactions.

There's nothing wrong about making visualizations that look interesting and appealing, but do the most salient features of this display actually encode the data? Or was it designed mostly to convey a subjective view about Bitcoin?

Didn't Tufte call designs like this building a "Duck"? https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...

jimrandomh2• 9 years ago

Note that the transaction sizes, in most cases, do not represent amounts of money moving between parties. The reason for this is because of how Bitcoin transactions are structured. Suppose you have 5.0BTC at an address, and you want to send 0.1BTC to someone else. The transaction that gets recorded to the blockchain has an input of 5.0BTC, an output of 0.1BTC going to the recipient, and an output of 4.9BTC going to a "change address" which is also yours. But if you don't know anything about the addresses then there's no way to tell, by looking at the blockchain, which address is the recipient and which is the change.

(Also, the very biggest transactions represent exchanges and other deposit-holding institutions moving coins from new deposits to cold storage and from cold storage to their hot wallets to service withdrawals.)

g09980• 9 years ago

Did not know this. Is there a technical reason it works like this? In Ethereum, for example, if you're sending 0.1 ETH, you will just send that amount (no change address).

masonicb00m2• 9 years ago

This design makes it simple to prevent double spending. You just check that the transaction inputs are in the set of unspent transactions (UTXOs).

jimrandomh2• 9 years ago

It gives better anonymity that way. If unspent change went back to the same address, people would be more inclined to reuse the same address over time, which makes it easier for someone looking at the blockchain to identify who's paying who.

masonicb00m2• 9 years ago

This visualization is broken. I can’t see the moon.

Visualizing Realtime Bitcoin Transactions in ReactVR

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