What is the current main use of btc as a currency for purchasing goods? Overstock and giftcards?
i think that there is a ton of transactions into and out of exchanges which means speculative investing (as a currency), miners are prone to buy a metric butt load of equipment from the likes of tiger direct and the hundreds of asic distributors, gyft and egifter for sure, and more and more small business owners are accepting etc. etc.
i think that there is virtually NO money laundering going on in bitcoin and the FBI has stated as much. the reality of "illegal" activities being conducted in bitcoin is probably less than 10%