Proof Bitcoin is Overhyped

BitCoin has gotten a ton of buzz, so when I came across a graph of the number of bitcoin transactions per day, I was flabbergasted: there are only about 60,000 transactions per day. I graphed the number relative to the number of tweets about bitcoin per day below.

So there is one tweet about Bitcoin for every three transactions!

Furthermore, this is only the number of transactions, and not the number of times wealth is exchanged between individuals. I suspect a majority of them are transactions of individuals moving bitcoins between wallets, using mixing services, and so on.

Even if a large percentage of these transactions were to represent real transfers of wealth, it is still pitifully low. In the US alone, there are about 70 million credit card transactions per day (26.2 billion in 2012).

For BitCoin to be money, people need to be spending it. But it doesn’t seem like that is the case.