Agreed -- this is what I signed in to post. I have been waiting for a long time, with growing frustration, for Bitcoin's transaction rate to start taking off[1]. For several years, the transaction rate was near flat. But look at it now! Clearly, people are using Bitcoin for to buy and sell.
In fact, my thesis is that increased use of Bitcoin as a currency is partly what is driving down the price. Most of the highest-volume Bitcoin-accepting vendors (Overstock, Gyft, Tiger Direct, etc.) change their Bitcoins immediately to USD, which creates significant selling pressure.
1. If anyone is wondering why the most popular addresses are excluded, it's because those addresses are almost invariably the exchanges, and so they skew the data upward.
In fact, my thesis is that increased use of Bitcoin as a currency is partly what is driving down the price. Most of the highest-volume Bitcoin-accepting vendors (Overstock, Gyft, Tiger Direct, etc.) change their Bitcoins immediately to USD, which creates significant selling pressure.
1. If anyone is wondering why the most popular addresses are excluded, it's because those addresses are almost invariably the exchanges, and so they skew the data upward.