Bubble Trouble 2: BitPay And The Growing Economy

Those who believe Bitcoin is in a bubble claim that usefulness of BTC does not match up to the $1 billion+ market cap. In this series I'm looking at evidence that shows the economy is on the rise.

First article in the series: http://bitcointrends.blogspot.com/2013/03/bitcoin-and-bubble-trouble.html

If you believe that Bitcoin is in a bubble, you probably accuse speculators. But if you look at BitPay, the largest processor of online Bitcoin payments, you'll see that demand for BTC as a currency (something that people can exchange for real goods) is up. This doesn't mean that there aren't speculators, because surely there are, just that more and more people are using Bitcoin for what is intended.

The traffic ranking for BitPay has gone from below the threshold for
Alexa tracking to the 78,684th ranked site in global traffic and 33,455th in the US in the last month and a half.

According to a new blog post by BitPay, the service has exceeded the sales of Silk Road

Silk Road, the "Dark Web" marketplace for illegal drugs, is one of the original big users of Bitcoin. The pseudonymity of BTC caused many of its early adopters to use the currency for illegal transactions.

According to the post, BitPay processed over $5.2 million worth of transactions during the month of March with 5,100 completed invoices, $3 million in the last eight days. Compare that to February, which only saw $687,000 in transactions and 2,300 completed invoices.

BitPay has also approved over 1,300 new merchant applications during the month of March, bringing their total number of approved merchants to over 4,500.

Interest in BitPay skyrockets

In addition to the Alexa.com rank, Google Trends shows that more people are searching for BitPay.


As more people desire to hold Bitcoin, more merchants will desire to cater to a Bitcoin economy, as is shown by BitPay's rise in popularity. And as more merchants enter the economy, the currency becomes more useful which will attract more adopters.

The question is if enough new merchants are adopting Bitcoin to sustain or even further elevate the price.


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