"We first document that 90% of transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is not tied to economically meaningful activities".
How much of the actually meaningful use is legal? E.g. buying good and services, not evading laws, regulations, sales taxes etc.
Global GDP is $101T. Global yearly forex volume is $2738T. So by this logic you should conclude that 96% of transaction volume in the traditional financial system is also not tied to economically meaningful activities. You're going to be disappointed if you want to believe society as a whole is any less financialized than bitcoin.
What do you think would be an acceptable percentage of speculation?
https://www.compareforexbrokers.com/forex-trading/statistics...
Surely what we actually care about is how many useful, legal, meaningful transactions there are.
For example if for every 1 legal transaction there is 3 illegal transactions and 96 speculative or maintenance transactions... it starts looking like this is predominantly for criminal uses even though only 3% of transactions are criminal.