Bitcoin keeps getting written about as a revolutionary virtual currency (as on TechCrunch here, and CNN here, and also GigaOM here, and that's only a small sample of coverage from this week alone), and all this attention makes me feel like I'm eating crazy pills. Because here's the thing: Far as I can tell, hardly anyone is actually using Bitcoin to buy and sell goods and services. That was true three years ago, and to the best of my knowledge, despite constant media coverage, is still true now.

Here's what I mean. Take a look at this chart captured below, first sent to me by a number of Bitcoin advocates when I noted its paltry usage early last year:

So currently, there's less than 70,000 Bitcoin transactions a day, which suggests little absolute growth from last April, when there were around 64,000 transactions. Even assuming each transaction represents a single user, that's a tiny, economically meaningless number. Or to put it another way: