Bitcoin Average Dormancy: A Measure of Turnover and Trading Activity

Abstract

Attempts to accurately measure the monetary velocity or related properties of bitcoin used in transactions have often attempted to either directly apply definitions from traditional macroeconomic theory or to use specialized metrics relative to the properties of the Blockchain like bitcoin days destroyed. In this paper, it is demonstrated that beyond being a useful metric, bitcoin days destroyed has mathematical properties that allow you to calculate the average dormancy (time since last use in a transaction) of the bitcoins used in transactions over a given time period. In addition, bitcoin days destroyed is shown to have another unexpected significance as the average size of the pool of traded bitcoins by virtue of the expression Little's Law, though only under limited conditions.