A better global metric of transaction volume would be the number of bitcoindays destroyed.

I believe that transactions are prioritized according to the value of the transaction multiplied by the amount of time since the coins were spent. A similar concept is useful in measuring the transaction volume.

If someone has 100BTC that they received a week ago and they spend it then 700 bitcoin days have been destroyed. If they take those 100BTC and send them to several addresses and then spend them then although the total transaction volume could be arbitrarily large the number of bitcoindays destroyed is still 700.

Currently, bitcoindays are replenished at around six million bitcoindays per day which reflects that there are about six million bitcoins in existence.

If there are days when there are few transactions then the total number of bitcoindays increases dramatically. If everyone exchanged all their bitcoins at once then the total number of bitcoindays would be reduced to zero. Some bitcoins will never be spent because the private keys have been lost (or never existed) so the number of bitcoindays will never actually fall to zero.

Note how transaction flooding and mix-network activity do not significantly influence the number of bitcoindays destroyed. I believe that the bitcoindays measure is a good indicator of market health and participation.

ByteCoin