Gavin Andresen - 2011-04-22 14:54:09

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Very good idea.  Anybody want to implement it?  I've got a Python tool that walks the block chain gathering transaction statistics:
  https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcointools/blob/master/statistics.py

Teaching it to compute 'bitcoindays destroyed' shouldn't be terribly hard.  I think.

This morning I taught it to add just the smallest or just the largest output in each TxOut and report the range to get an estimate of 'true' transaction value being exchanged without counting change TxOuts or mining pool payouts.

So, to be conservative, assume that the biggest-value TxOut for every transaction is change and the smallest is the actual bitcoins being transferred.  Taking the smallest TxOut of all the transactions last month, an average of about 35,000 BTC were sent per day.

This month the average is about 55,000 BTC per day.   Add in the MtGox trading volume to get a reasonable lower estimate of something like 70-80,000 BTC changing hands every day.