After Seeing the latest hacks and price effects I started to think that BTC prices are directly related to the "daily transaction volume" which reflects the "need" for this new revolutionary currency and hence the pricing and the future of this experimental software.
I know it will be long (really long like in 10 years) time before miners(= the network and the future of BTC) start earning their fees from transaction fees rather than new blocks. Yet
"daily transaction's volume" is the major criteria for "how this project is doing?"
But anyways, right now I can imagine
the transaction's volume "demand" is split between two major things:
1) Black markets like SilkRoad/Hack,..etc. which is not the future and is to be shut down and traced 'soon'. and this is a "positive demand".
2) Pooled mining rewarding. which again is a "passive demand".
3) Exchange Trading, i.e. trading transactions in places like mtgox and tradehill. yet another "passive demand" as it include no services or goods.
4) Few are the places that accept BTC and have considerably important traffic that would reflect on the total network.
It would be nice to see something more advanced than the usual block explorer/bitcoin watch to reflect the total network daily transaction volume and maybe point out some major stock markets in a category like view (polled mining rewarding share, black markets share, amazoncoin , google coinout shares
.. etc).
Again, the daily transaction volume reflecting the adoption of this commodity/fiat money by major players or even countries is the cross road for this project to Either CHANGE THE WORLD or at least introduce new concept with decent shares of the world daily commerce volumes OR to be a remarkable HISTORY lesson with mid-range success ended by painful bubble.
I am trying to make it non-technical/non-financial in this post and its comments .. just the average Joe scope.
Please leave comments and IDEAS.