Interesting video, some of there conclusions are disputable as you pointed out, but interesting nonetheless. It's worth a look.

You raise some good points. I suppose a pulse on the 'Bitcoin Economy' is what I'm looking for. When I talk about the economy I mean all transactions denominated in BTC.

I have some thoughts on what the most important sectors are, but having an idea of the current compositions and how those sectors are growing (or contracting) would be useful. For example I could look at the US dollar economy and say that it's X (% or absolute dollars) agriculture, Y technology, Z exports, etc.

For Bitcoin you'd have to get at this in some other way. One method of measuring the 'potential' is valuing all services and products denominated or offered in BTC. That doesn't mean that the market is that size, but the market potential is of that order.

Just some thoughts. If all else fails we could just call it ~42.

This seems to give an indication: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf

I guess this is post #5. Still have a little more time left though.

That's correct.

That's an interesting method of measuring volume. I'll have to think about that a bit. It seems like there would be a way to measure the order of magnitude for other transactions though and infer the composition of that volume. For example, we know the number of transactions on Mt. Gox and other exchanges, we know how much is being mined, you may be able to estimate volume for some vendors, etc. I understand that an exact value isn't possible but even saying that currency exchange accounts for XX% of transactions would be a useful metric. Mostly curious if someone has attempted this.

Any ideas on what the composition of the Bitcoin economy is? Meaning, how many of the transactions are simply transfers or distributions, services or goods, or currency conversions? Has anyone tried to deduce a reasonable breakdown?

I'm obviously James Bond. Enough said.