Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paper that you linked doesn't say that 75% of crypto activity is speculation, at least as far as I can tell. Are you referring to the line that says >Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders. Because there is certainly plenty of speculation outside of those entities. And for the tra…
> Because there is certainly plenty of speculation outside of those entities. Sure. And there's plenty of non-speculative activity outside of those entities as well. The paper explicitly looks at on-chain activity only. > Because those metrics are terrible proxies for "global financial activity" or "speculation" Maybe so. I put forward my sources, but there could be a better way of calculating it. My broader point wa…
You claimed that 75% of bitcoin volume was speculation. There is nothing in the paper to support this claim. I'm not arguing that there is 0 non-speculative activity, I'm saying that it is significantly less than 25%, and you're making up bogus statistics that aren't supported by your sources in the way that you say they are.
> Say I'm subscribed to a Australian musician's patreon. I send her USD, then a middleman sells that USD and gives her AUD. I also support a French musician. I send him BTC. He (or a middleman) sells that BTC for EUR. How can you say either of those situations is more or less economically meaningful?
Yes, these are both economically meaningful. This type of transaction is much more common in the fiat world than it is in the crypto world (where speculation and wash trading drive the majority of transactions).
Currency speculators make up a tiny portion of the real-world economy, while they make up the vast majority of the crypto economy.