[sanswork]

If we were seeing real growth surely we'd see at least some signals outside of transaction rate. We also have an ongoing block size debate at the moment and I wouldn't put it past some of the proponents(Ver) to be willing to spend money to artificially inflate block sizes.

[timeal]

There are plenty of signals. Price is rising. Activity on Bitcoin forums is growing (r/Bitcoin users grew from 173,000 to 198,000 in a year, bitcointalk.org activity grew from 5900 posts/day to 6700 posts/day in a year, etc). Bitcoin remittance usage is growing (one example: http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-remittances-20-percent-...). Bitcoin trading is increasing (especially in China, look at the volume starting in Q4 2015: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/okcoin/btccny). More wallets are created (not a 100% "vanity" metric, but I agree the number of used or active wallets would be a better measure). More venture capital poured into Bitcoin year after year (https://news.bitcoin.com/venture-capital-all-time-high-new-r...). And more.

If a single metric was increasing this wouldn't be a reliable indicator. However all of the above are growing.

[sanswork]

>Price is rising.

Given how much the price is driven by speculation this isn't an indicator of growth of users.

>(r/Bitcoin users grew from 173,000 to 198,000 in a year

And visits dropped every month of the year and are at less than half where they were 2 years ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/about/traffic For 2016 the average was around 400k uniques per month and around 3m pageviews per month.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150207080404/http://www.reddit...

For 2015 it was about double that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150207080404/http://www.reddit...

For 2014 again we see about the same numbers as 2015 and about double 2016.

>Bitcoin remittance usage is growing

Again a bunch of bitcoin companies saying they are doing large numbers while avoiding giving actual figures. SCI is famous for this. Godfreee regularly post on /r/bitcoin about how successful they are and how great their business is while also claiming that giving any numbers would put them at a competitive disadvantage but that they would be releasing a report soon(for ~2 years now he has been claiming to be releasing a report soon).

Also http://www.coindesk.com/why-bitcoins-remittance-disruption-s...

>More wallets are created (not a 100% "vanity" metric, but I agree the number of used or active wallets would be a better measure).

Wallets is a 100% vanity metric because there is no limit to how many wallets a single user to can great. Same with accounts on coinbase.

>More venture capital poured into Bitcoin year after year

At the start of 2015 through to the end of the first quarter it was claimed that 1b in vc would happen in 2015. The year ended with less than half of that with half of that being funds raised by 2 companies.

In 2016 it's dropped back below 2014 levels with 1/3rd of the claimed bitcoin VC going to non-bitcoin companies like Ripple.

Bitcoin users still get excited when they see it discussed anywhere outside of bitcoin specific forums because there is virtually no one that cares about it outside their bubble.

Pretty much every store online that has started accepting bitcoin that has reported results later on has shown it to be a huge failure. Even bitcoin darlings like Overstock reported that after the initial spike sales dropped off to meaningless numbers. Things like the bitcoin blvd in the netherlands reported something like 1.6btc in total sales amongst all retailers in their first 18 months.

The users that are in the bitcoin space now a days largely fit into one category. People who likely need a lottery win to ever be rich and having seen a few early adopters do just that are convinced bitcoin is their sure thing. So they constantly double down on their efforts and purchases.

People are constantly showing growth on things like coindance while ignoring that once you account for inflation the numbers are actually flat or decreasing pretty much across the board.

It's possible there is some random event that drives bitcoin to be a success in the future and I look very silly for my opinions of the years but there is no real evidence that the new users in bitcoin are outpacing the churn. Though I will happily accept I'm wrong once some of the bitcoin companies start reporting real numbers. We may get our wish as part of the Coinbase IRS lawsuit since Coinbase has already started reporting much lower numbers of US users than they have previously claimed.