Historical transaction/trade ratio. Available? Useful?

Question

Blockchain.info lists both "Trade Volume" and "Estimated Transaction Volume" in both BTC and USD. It occurred to me that the ratio of one to the other might be a useful metric in determining how much of the Bitcoin market is currently speculative versus how much is actually being used for trade.

I would be interested to see if there were, for example, a much higher trade:transaction ratio during the buildup of the bubble than in previous or current days. It might also be a useful metric for determining whether the bubble is truly over and for predicting Bubble 2.0, should one ever occur.

Does anyone know of a good historical source for this data, or perhaps have both the programming acumen and time available to create a simple graph? Or have I missed something important, economically, that makes this information less useful than I'm currently assuming it to be?

Answer 1

You can access the data for each currency on each exchange with the Markets API from BitcoinCharts:

For example, for USD:

• http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.json?m=thUSD
• http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.json?m=mtgoxUSD

Answer 2

[Update: The stats page does show Trade Volume, apparently the number of BTCs traded on an exchange or all exchanges?]

There is no "Trade Volume" There is "Total Volume" and "Estimated Transaction Volume".

Are you possibly misunderstanding what the "Estimated Transaction Volume" reflects?

That metric is: "Similar to the total output volume with the addition of an algorithm which attempts to remove change from the total value. This maybe a more accurate reflection of the true transaction volume."

As far as a source of the daily summarized totals, the html source from the chart includes the data for each point. That data is also the source for the "Output Volume (BTCs)" column of this Bitcoin Time Series spreadsheet.