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I think looking at transactions is a reasonable metric. In fact, even this metric may be overstating things. Tim Swanson has analyzed transactions excluding pop
by wsxcde 12y ago
I think looking at transactions is a reasonable metric. In fact, even this metric may be overstating things. Tim Swanson has analyzed transactions excluding popular addresses (apparently this excludes things like SatoshiDice) to identify transactions that are positive-sum in an economic sense and then the numbers look even lower. [1]
Another factor to consider is that if you count purchasing power transferred (which I assume means dollar value times transactions) you'll end up giving a lot of weight to events like when coinbase/mtgox moved their coins from one wallet to another.
[1] http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/06/23/separating-activity-from-growth-on-bitcoins-network/ http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/06/23/separating-activity-from...
- vijayboyapati 12y agoI've already had this debate with Tim in private (we're friends). Some of his analysis of transactional use is quite misleading. For instance: http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/a-marginal-economy-versus-a-growth-economy http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/a-marginal-economy-vers... Here he compares bitcoin to m-pesa which is a deeply misleading comparison. The former has a floating price, the latter is a money substitute and its price is fixed against the currency which is substitutes for. This is why I've suggested to Tim that it is total purchasing power transferred that should be measured, and I think I have convinced him of that.