Below is a chart of the number of HBD transferrs per day, after exchange accounts (deposits and withdrawals), delegation rewards and dust payments (HBD <= 0.01) have been removed.
As you can see, aside from a brief spike during the bull market of 2021, it has been very flat over the last few years. However, it started to have a bit of an uptick in late 2023, and since September of 2024 the number of such transfers has basically doubled.
We can also look at the daily value of these transfers, which has historically been much more volatile. Here we can see that while it is not outside of historic norms yet, the 30 day average values have gone from a low of $4,000 per day in September, to over $12,000 a day now. It's also worth noting that the price of Hive was generally much higher in 2021 and 2022, so that is understating the relative growth in the usage of HBD as a currency (there was more value to go around during bull market).
That maybe have an explanation with the #spendhbd and distriator project. They incentivize with cahsback (upvotes) when you spend HBD in a business and post about it.
It's also worth mentioning that the recent upward trend in HBD usage started before the recent Hive price spikes.
The number of HBD transfers has increased, necessary information