To a long time holder, and even to a speculator. There will simply not be a sustainable price advance if volume (=people wanting the freakin' bitcoin) is not there.
I'm sure you agree that the relevant volume here is USD (since that's the ressource we need enough of to maintain or raise btc price). Hence: "Volume in currency" in the following chart:
Looks good to me. Between 2 and 5 times as high as in March (when the price approached 40), and 10? 20? as high as in January, February. Maybe not the volume to support a price in the multiple 100s, but enough to support 100, 150? Why yes, looks like it to me.
Yes, in the long run volume is higher, that is correct. But that would be reasoning from a "buy and hold" long position only. Yet, the chart is confirming my chart and point of view: the intermediate swings that you see show higher volume on falling prices, and lower volume (compared to the previous price drop) on price appreciation. Just look at it in a bit more detail. Otherwise, I just rest my case, but had hoped to point you to the "internals"
Looks like we're in agreement then.
Also, your post gave me an idea: I am wondering now if there is a detailed comparison between trade volume in USD and bitcoin price. The bitcoinchart rendering doesn't give me what I want, and a quick Google search didn't help either. So I downloaded the raw data from bitcoincharts and will see if I can run a correlation test on it.