Is there a way to determine the number of people who are actually using Bitcoin till date? Who would have access to such information? Meaning a way to find out, how many new people have used Bitcoin in 2016 , so that we can say exponential growth is natural not artificially created by hoarders.
I think there is no way to determine this. there is nothing that can determine the actual growth accurately but i bet you there is increasing growth of people because of rising price.
Yes, it is very hard to trace the actual numbers of the bitcoin users, particularly in everyday happen in our lives there is lot of new users around the world are getting interest unto it or to adopt why bitcoin really is.
No matter how many people repeat that same statement, it won't make it true.
Obviously you can't be accurate about it but there can be a general estimate.
Blockchain.info claims that there have been 206 million Bitcoin transactions, ever. It also estimates that 30 days ago, there were about 197 million transactions, so in the region of 9 million transactions in the past month, which amounts to 0.3 million, or 300,000 transactions each day on average.
Then you're left with the dilemma of how many people holding Bitcoin actually spending it, and the number for that will be significantly lower. But guessing conservatively that every person owning Bitcoin does a transaction on average once every 3 days, that would be 100,000 people using Bitcoin.