Despite USD value of bitcoins received by merchant services is still considerably lower than in January 2018, the number of bitcoins being spent among retailers and merchants is on an upward trend, according to data collected by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.
Actually, even preliminary numbers, based on data gathered from twenty merchant service providers, show that in January 2019 more than BTC 32,300 were spent, or 47% more than in January 2018. The same preliminary data show that USD value of bitcoins received by merchant services in January dropped by 70%, as bitcoin price crashed last year more than 70% (and is up by c. 50% this year.) However, Chainalysis stressed that their system needs time to process the clusters, so they expect the values recorded in the last three months (January, December, November) to be even larger and resemble those of October 2018 values, but that remains to be seen in three months’ time