With Metcalfe's law, bitcoin is indeed quite promising, as the users have been increasing and are expected to increase further.
This means the value of bitcoin is increasing. Could this argument be valid?
We do not know whether the number of "bitcoin users" is increasing.
The sources that I know (such as blockchan.info) do not give that information. They give some quantities (such as wallet software downloads, transactions per day, total BTC volume per day) from which some people claim to be able to derive the number of users. However, those quantities include an unknown amount of operations that do not imply real additional use. Some of them (like total BTC volume) have been relatively constant for the last 6 months. Moreover, there is no information at all about people who stopped "using" bitcoin, e.g. after buying a bit just for curiosity.
With Metcalfe's law, bitcoin is indeed quite promising, as the users have been increasing and are expected to increase further.
This means the value of bitcoin is increasing. Could this argument be valid?
We do not know whether the number of "bitcoin users" is increasing.
The sources that I know (such as blockchan.info) do not give that information. They give some quantities (such as wallet software downloads, transactions per day, total BTC volume per day) from which some people claim to be able to derive the number of users. However, those quantities include an unknown amount of operations that do not imply real additional use. Some of them (like total BTC volume) have been relatively constant for the last 6 months. Moreover, there is no information at all about people who stopped "using" bitcoin, e.g. after buying a bit just for curiosity.
It is quite a surprise that there's no concrete information confirming increasing users, though news is flying daily for more adoption!
Giving it a careful consideration, I agree Jorge's comment. Anyone have different opinion.
If users are not convinced to increase, Metcalfe's law is not valid for bitcoin. How do we get to be convinced for increasing users?
Sometimes you have to conclude based on a combination of direct evidence and inferential evidence. Accordingly, Maybe you will begin to understand that there is increased adoption when you begin to see the price go up? You are asking for more direct evidence, and maybe that direct evidence is ambiguous. so therefore inferences need to be made from it.... Reasonable inferences, that is... You can argue that a reasonable inference is less adoption ... when that is NOT reasonable... But trolls and FUD spreaders like to engage in this kind of selective vision.....
Increase liquidity opportunities, investments, conferences and various mainstream news pieces on bitcoin also help to establish that bitcoin adoption is going up and has been going up... If you blindly do NOT want to see various signs that adoption has been going up, then pointing out more direct evidence will NOT help your selective blindness.. imhbo....