Network Nodes as a Measure of Demand?

[ZhioN360]

After reading up a bit on the value of Bitcoin (and anything in an economic space really) as a measure of the supply and demand in the market I got to wondering whether it would be technically possible to have a Bitcoin-centered measure of demand by looking at the number of new clients in the network.

Is this a plausible method? Is this something that could be used to stabilize volatility via technical means? Am I a fool, because this is already factored into the mining difficulty based on the number of miners?

It would be a push to say I'm even an amateur economist, so I'd love to hear some thoughts.

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[TheQuin]

The number of nodes on the network has no direct correlation to demand. This is because it is possible to use Bitcoin from many different types of client. Only a small number of Bitcoin users still run a full node due to the overhead involved in running a 150+ Gb database. It's not something that is possible from a mobile phone for example.

[ZhioN360]

The number of nodes on the network has no direct correlation to demand. This is because it is possible to use Bitcoin from many different types of client. Only a small number of Bitcoin users still run a full node due to the overhead involved in running a 150+ Gb database. It's not something that is possible from a mobile phone for example.

Is there no way of tracking thin clients as nodes, or do these not count as nodes to the network? I get that there would be no way of doing this for something like an exchange that "funnels" many people, but wouldn't a hypothetical thin client on a phone still count as a node?

[TheQuin]

The number of nodes on the network has no direct correlation to demand. This is because it is possible to use Bitcoin from many different types of client. Only a small number of Bitcoin users still run a full node due to the overhead involved in running a 150+ Gb database. It's not something that is possible from a mobile phone for example.

Is there no way of tracking thin clients as nodes, or do these not count as nodes to the network? I get that there would be no way of doing this for something like an exchange that "funnels" many people, but wouldn't a hypothetical thin client on a phone still count as a node?

No, a node is something that actively participates in the running of the network. Thin clients connect to a node, so you would need them to make the data of how connections they have available, which they don't.