November sure is a very productive month in the history of digital currency. By the end of the month the number of shops that accept bitcoin payments impressively increased. Coinmap.org has added in the list of bitcoin friendly businesses 552 entries.
That means that the number of merchants, mentioned on the site, that now accept bitcoin increased for 81% in a single month. It is worth to mention that in April 2013, when the CoinMap was launched, there were a few marked locations on the map.
New locations of the businesses accepting bitcons have been added by bitcoin users in different countries who find this information or by merchants themselves.
In September the developer of the site Pavol Rusnak got a contact with Rene-Lee Sylvain, who was ready to become a contributor of the CoinMap. He wanted to promote the map on forums and meet-ups concerning bitcoin in Vancouver. By that time, Sylvain said there were about 200 entries on the map.
Since then the information on CoinMap began increasing shifty in following two month. Today there are around 1000 entries.
Sylvain believes that the rush of the bitcoin prices and recent US Senate hearing could be the reasons why the popularity of CoinMap began to grow faster. There are other alternatives of CoinMap. One of the most popular is useBitcoins.info. It is built on Google Maps and has 1,412 entries to date of writing.
In contrary to that CoinMap’s interface is easier, user can only move around or zoom in and out of the map. When user chooses a desired city or country he/she have to click the mark or bitcoin icon to see merchants that accept bitcoin there. A dialogue bubble appears displaying the name of the merchant, his precise location and contacts.
CoinMap is simple, but exactly this makes it so attractive.
Rusnak said that in future CoinMap could be improved but they will have monetized the site to afford an extra developer to work on it.