Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin estimated transaction volume,  USD (https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=2year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=)

Bitcoin transaction volume in US dollars is surprisingly flat, and has been for the last year. Occasionally there's a day with a transaction volume spike, but that's frantic trading, not usage. While the number of Bitcoins involved in transactions is up, that's because the price of Bitcoins is going down.

because all they want is more fiat apparently, thus they keep converting bitcoin to the rubbish fiat

the number of transactions isn't a good instrument at least for bitcoin, because there are many transaction that are there because of cold storage(many are just securing their coins) or for anon purpose(others are trying to mix it to maintain their privacy)

True. So what be done about this? When do you expect this situation to change?

Actually, if bitcoin is able to keep up with the dollar this year it is doing better than 99% of world currencies.

When I arrived in Germany last summer the rate was $1.35 / euro. Today it is $1.08.

The dollar is exceeding other currencies because the Fed plans to raise interest rates while other countries are planning on pumping more money into their economies.

But I can see the dollar triggering some very bad economic moves when they do raise the rates later this year.

Most bitcoin users are speculators and not consumers. Bitcoin is failing miserably on the consumer side.

If someone can explain to Joe down the street why he should jump through verification hoops so he can buy bitcoins on coinbase, and then go make purchases for goods and services at a limited number of places using those freshly exchanged bitcoins, while he could have bought those same goods and services at those same places, and at a wider range of places, with the debit card he already has in his wallet, then Bitcoin usage will increase.

Indeed. Most of the people here are just here to cash out for a lot of fiat. Those people deserve being burned while trading. I usually try to buy something using Bitcoin or sometimes gamble for fun. There is still the problem of payment processors where sales are just continuously pushing the price downward.

That is true, however the media won't report this. The media usually reports about Bitcoin when something bad happens. Remember the articles about Bitcoin being the worst investment in a period of time (I can't remember)?

looks like the transaction volume goes flat everytime there isn't price bubbles, overall its still a higher flat vs previous years, maybe that is something to be optimistic of.

It will take a lot of time for the flatness on that graph to translate into the Bitcoin price, which is great for us early adopters since it gives us extra time to benefit from the ups and downs.

Techcrunch article from the outside looking in.


http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/bitcoins-q1-record-vc-investment-falling-prices-and-slow-consumer-adoption/ (http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/bitcoins-q1-record-vc-investment-falling-prices-and-slow-consumer-adoption/)

I would guess merchant adoption to be down until bitcoin makes another evolutionary jump is usability.  Everyone who would want to accept bitcoin in its current state mostly already has.

QFT. More to the point, it's folly to compare the dollar to bitcoin, it's completely apples to oranges.

The dollar is a giant lumbering 300 year old animatronic beast, it's movements manipulated by the agendas of men. Bitcoin is a protocol, a software organism.

It's strongest values are speculation as an inflation hedge. escape money incase your country falls apart.  to use it as worldwide currency  may work in thrid world countries but in a fairly stable place send a coin to a company for an item is not worthwhile to a buyer.

The biggest problem is the average Joe down the street really should not use it to shop.  Why? hardly any protection for him.

Now I have multiple accounts with coins.

 Do I really ever want to shop with my coins?  no because the seller can fuck me far too easily.

Once you make an escrow service for btc that protects the buyer you basically add a ton of cost to moving the money.
I do not think it will ever catch on for buyers of products.
I have free cc's :

 with 60 price match
fraud if hacked
1 year returns
2x warranty
and they earn 5% back.

How on earth does btc match that for a buyer.  the answer is they do  not and can not match that.

So BTC for me has speculation value.  And if I ever need to run from a country due to it collapsing I will be able to access coins once I get out.

Yup.  But that won't change the numbers.  Whether that article is totally based on facts or not is besides the point (for me).  That article is from Techcrunch.  The group of people who run it knows what's up in the tech world.  And that article shows what they think of Bitcoin at present.  It's a bleak picture, and an article that insinuates that Coindesk was skewing the numbers to make it seem everything is booming.  When in reality, it's not.  Techcrunch is probably trying to show the people outside of Bitcoin what's up.

This is what matters. Bitcoin usage (measured in bitcoins) is actually up. The dollar value does not matter.

When people are talking about bitcoin its always good news usually, unless its dead i say its bullish that such official media is covering stories like this.

There is no incentive to shop with btc.  There needs to be discounts for people to go through the trouble of buying bitcoins.

This is a great idea worth spreading to all merchants :)

It's because you can't explain inflation in a 3 second news blurb.

Perhaps Satoshi over-estimated bitcoin by thinking that it will replace fiat and ended up creating 21 million Bitcoins. If be had only 21000, then due to the decimal values, we could have had the same volume just by that.

I doubt anything can be done about the price decline, except for hoping that the halving next year might improve things. But it is hard to say what exactly will bring about the stability in the price

Is there data on formerly Bitcoin-accepting businesses? That needs to be subtracted from the above chart?

* NewEgg - Bitcoin promotion over. (http://www.newegg.com/bitcoin)
* "No, big companies don't really accept Bitcoin" - Money (http://time.com/money/3658361/dell-microsoft-expedia-bitcoin/)

Thats why we need to work on people getting paid in bitcoin.  Fees are saved all around when you dont convert to fiat at anytime, problem is exchange value is wide.

As the price kept going down, less and less buzz was around BTC and as a consequence, less businesses got involved into BTC.

The question s how low can the price go before we see the opposite trend resulting in increased merchant adoption.

There have been some honourable exceptions. Newegg offered some serious discounts for a while. I think Overstock are looking into making some very specials offers for BTC users too.

That means the bubble is over.

So you more or less can trade or hold safely without having nightmares about losing 80% of your money.

Things probably will change by the next halving

Volume is down but number of daily transactions are double since the bubble.

We need to have next price rally long before that. Next halving is over a year ago and by that time, BTC community must continue to grow.

since jan, 2015. price of bitcoin falling to down. so there is nothing to expect indeed to stable it price at the moment until long.

Most places are recovering from the economic turbulence of recent years by inflating their currencies.  Bitcoin (or $USD) are therefore attractive in those countries as an inflation hedge.  $USD are lower risk, Bitcoin have a higher upside and also hedge against some particular disaster scenarios better - but have a much higher risk. But that's not transaction volume, that's investors.  And speculators looking for a massive price increase later too, but not people looking to use it for transactions. 

The US and its relatively anti-inflationary policies make the inflation-hedge argument less attractive for American investors, and as already noted using Bitcoin (and finding places where you can use it) is an inconvenient hassle if what you want to do is day-to-day transactions.  So Americans are not hedging inflation, they're investing mostly on the basis of speculation about a raised value in case of widespread adoption.

It is the third-world (undeveloped) and fourth-world (kleptocratic) countries I'm looking to as places where Bitcoin will gain traction for daily use.   These are places where the local currency cannot be stabilized, the laws make any use of it beyond spending it hand-to-hand just as much of a hassle as bitcoin, and there is no protection (in fact sometimes active risk) provided by local financial institutions.  In short, Bitcoin can flourish where the competition from the localized fiat economy is particularly weak. 

Newegg tried that and gave it up. See http://www.newegg.com/bitcoin (http://www.newegg.com/bitcoin).

Yes, Bitcoin is still heavily overpriced. I think the real value is around $50 or so.

Sad, but true. :-\

All stores of wealth go through bubble-burst cycles, including BTC. Right now is a perfect time to store and amount, it's a waiting game until the next bubble happens, and then sets at a higher floor.

Most of the fiat volume is built from coin payment processors like bitpay,coinbase etc. The services like microsoft, dell or overstock auto dump the bitcoin for fiat.

And this has me wondering why any retailer would want to accept bitcoin.  It's harder for the consumer and it's an extra, unnecessary step for the retailer.  The only real reason I like the idea of bitcoin is that it's a worldwide currency that transcends political borders.  On the other hand, I never buy anything from overseas anyway, nor would I trust an individual in another US state, much less another country, with my money!

It costs them nothing extra, no charge backs or fraud, gets a wee boost in publicity and milks the occasional early adopter. There are also people who are committed to using it for ideological reasons.

It's a piddly market no doubt, but there's no risk for them. They also get the money a whole load faster from Bitpay than from a credit card company.

Part of the problem is that it's absolutely wonderful for merchants but there's no incentive for their customers. They'll have to address that if they want it to grow.

The businesses also save money accepting bitcoin versus a credit card, because credit cards charge the business fees whenever someone makes a purchase with their card.

Noone know this, but my bet is more "simple usage" applications for smartphone's. Bitcoin is still quite complicated for common user.

It costs them nothing extra, no charge backs or fraud, gets a wee boost in publicity and milks the occasional early adopter. There are also people who are committed to using it for ideological reasons.

It's a piddly market no doubt, but there's no risk for them. They also get the money a whole load faster from Bitpay than from a credit card company.

Part of the problem is that it's absolutely wonderful for merchants but there's no incentive for their customers. They'll have to address that if they want it to grow.
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Thank you, sir, for the thoughtful reply. 

Yes, just looking at the scam accusations and the currency exchange subsections here, folks are having trouble even obtaining BTC without getting scammed.  And with exchanges there are fees and of course BTC price fluctuations.  Should be interesting to see where all this is in a few years.

retailers are crazy not to accept bitcoin as payment option. the lack of knowledge is an important reason for why they still not accept it. if more know how it works and what the benefits are, then they will show support.

And this is why I think bitcoin may still be going down. I don't think the floor has been hit yet.

Whats with the spike in transactions? You'd think this would correlate to a possible price spike? Can anyone determine where it's coming from?

https://www.coinbase.com/charts

I've heard suggestions much of this volume is faked.

Everything has his flat periods. Also you would need to take into account every single fiat ever, transactions in between cryptos are important too. Everything adds up. But in general, what matters is if the project is good, the adoption will come eventually. We are still on the primitive days of Bitcoin.

We are in October now. So seven months after the open of this thread. The transaction volume has continue the trend mentioned bu the main post. In other words continue to be flat. But the price in those months was and is almost stable (with movements up and down but not only down as it must be following the logic of the OP). Is anybody able to explain this phenomenon?

Yes price of bitcoin is almost stable these days as i am looking at the price daily for 2 months now. I know the floor price it hit was 226 but eventually within 2 days it get back again to 232 range. I think price will keep on swinging between 225 to 240 mark for few more months.

Why is this happening to bitcoin?

Don't you think that the relative stability of the price of bitcoin is actually good for the wider adoption ?

I think most of people would rather hold bitcoin if its price was steady, than if it was swinging up and down 30% each month or even each week.
Stability of price is likely to drive the usage of bitcoins for payments and remittances.

This is because the BTC users total quantity is more or less constant and BTC price is stable  ;) If BTC price will start to change, market will either start to buy or sale, like with any currency, when it go up or down  ;)