<i>&quot;In fact, last week, as the price of bitcoin topped $500, the usage rate reached an all-time high, after roughly doubling over the past twelve months. “The real usage is catching up to the hype,” Armstrong says.&quot;</i><p>That is a highly questionable claim, and considering the source, all the more questionable.<p>As this article mentions, the metric of bitcoin &#x27;transactions,&#x27; is in no way equivalent to what would commonly be understood to be an economic transaction.<p>Anybody who has been even cursorily following bitcoin the past six months, or so, can look at that chart and know exactly what it is showing, especially those spikes this past summer, in the lingo, &#x27;stress tests,&#x27; or &#x27;spam attacks.&#x27;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Bitcoin&#x2F;search?q=stress+test&amp;restrict_sr=on" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Bitcoin&#x2F;search?q=stress+test&amp;restri...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Bitcoin&#x2F;search?q=spam+attack&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=relevance&amp;t=all" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Bitcoin&#x2F;search?q=spam+attack&amp;restri...</a><p>And since carrying out one of these &#x27;stress test&#x27;&#x2F;&#x27;spam attacks&#x27;, simply involves writing a script to shuffle around some bitcoins and then running it on a server, it is pretty obvious that is where the majority of transaction volume is coming from since the block size increase proponents have an ideological incentive to do so.(I&#x27;m on neither side of the block size debate btw.) And anybody banking their livelihood on bitcoin has a financial incentive to paint a picture of increasing &#x27;transactions,&#x27; and when painting that picture is as simple as flipping a switch on a server, it&#x27;s pretty obvious that is what is occurring.