Bitcoin scaling - which metrics are useful indicators for growth?

[nwbitcoin]

We all want to see bitcoin succeed but what is the best way of measuring if it really is growing?

Using the value of a bitcoin vs Fiat is flawed because of speculation driving prices.
Using market cap is essentially the same thing
If we look at trading volumes we see a few spikes, but generally, its never more than 20k coins traded an hour - more like 1k per hour.
If we look at blockchain transactions its only about 20k a day
If we look at general awareness, as in marketing measurements, we could use Google, or Twitter, but its not very substantial.
We could count press releases and the number of times they get published
If we look at the numbers of members of this forum, its not peaked more than 3k and that was in 2011 - although there are far more forums than their used to be.

So How do we measure if bitcoin is taking off in the real world, or if its just the activity of those who are interested that is increasing?

[Bitcoinpro]

total capitalization would be the best metric

its sits a 1 billion hardly anything

if the systems remains safe

it would easily hit a gigantic figure

like $20 trillion US, with derivatives in play it could hit

anything

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836AAnbTnr

[refaelsh]

We can judge it by counting the amount of merchants accepting Bitcoins.

[franky1]

number of merchants
network difficulty
current network hashing power


much like how gold gets a value, how costly it is to get from gold miners vs how many people want it.. add a little more on for speculation and profit. and u get a rough idea.

[nwbitcoin]

If we were to try and compare it with others, we would need to come up with a workable GDP figure.

Is there a way to add up all the transactions going through the blockchain over a period?

That would give you a nice GDP figure

[hazek]

Here are some goods stats: http://thegenerallifeblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-popular-is-bitcoin.html

[justusranvier]

The number of BitPay employees is a good measure of how much Bitcoin is being used for commerce.

[nwbitcoin]

Here are some goods stats: http://thegenerallifeblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-popular-is-bitcoin.html

Good article +1

But it does move the original question along a little in that as we measuring who can use bitcoin or how much people are using bitcoin?

I would have though that how much people are using it is more important, because number of account holders are only of interest in press releases and for IPOs!

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number of merchants accepting bitcoin
frequency of transactions www.bitcoinmonitor.com