Nobody spends their coins and that is killing Bitcoin, everyone "knows" that.

[DeathAndTaxes]

How many times have you heard that (never backed up claim)?

Infographic in MIT technology review.

[ManeBjorn]

It seems like it could be true.
Great info by the way.
I have to say I spend almost all I get as I do not get much so I make the most of it.
I enjoy being able to mine and actually pay the electric bill with it and buy more miners and coins and such.
Very fun.
Using the coins will stimulate them to gain value and adoption.  Can you imagine if say the Winklevoss twins would spend or give away even a fraction of their hoard it would really stimulate the whole BTC economy.
Heck if someone gave me just a couple coins I would spend most of it supporting BTC accepting vendors.

[ex-trader]

Sorry, but that analysis is very interesting, but very wrong in it's conclusions.

In the early days bitcoins were mined by individuals, who largely held them. Now they are mainly mined by pools, or professional industrial miners, who then distribute the coins to the shareholders/investors.

All this analysis shows, as anyone who understands mining would know, is that mining has become more centralised.

Simple Blockchain analysis tells you nothing unless it is put into context of the 'cause vs effect'.

[lnternet]

We need some clarification on how that spending speed / holding period is calculated.

Surely cold storage by the big holders accounts for more than that brown bar in 2013.

[sdp]

We need some clarification on how that spending speed / holding period is calculated.

Surely cold storage by the big holders accounts for more than that brown bar in 2013.

The title in the chart says 'New bitcoins are much more likely spent....'.  It doesn't say all bitcoins.  Suppose every ten minutes when a block is mined you tracked when those coins were spent.  Then you would only be measuring the behavior of the mining pools.  This chart might just be telling us what the miner pools are doing.  Of course they spend the lion share sending to the users contributing to the pool and keep the fees. 

sdp

[pening]

Spent or transferred.  Or sold on exchange?  i'd love to see the method because it doesn't seem to scan with common knowledge and understanding of bitcoin.  Of course it might well be true in which case, where are all those bitcoin spent?

[freedomno1]

That seems like an interesting graph wondering what the source is
AKA link to it

[BTCisthefuture]

Interesting indeed.  Is there a link to the whole study or is it just these two pictures ?

I agree with some others though that stats on the blockchain can really be misleading and you can come to multiple conclusions with the same exact data.

I do tend to believe that the average bitcoin holder out there is holding their bitcoins in hopes it increases in value, not spending much of them.  However, it's not unreasonable to think people wont spend their profits or wouldnt spend x amount of bitcoin and buy back in right away to keep the same number of btc.  Also I don't believe everyone needs to spend all their bitcoins for bitcoin to have real value in the marketplace , I do think it's perfectly fine if say only  30% (random number I made up) of bitcoin holders spend them.  Just my thoughts though.

[EvilPanda]

In the topic name you say "nobody spends their coins", on the poster below it's clearly written "new bitcoins are now more likely to be spent (...)" So do they spend or not? To spend or not to spend?