Is there a way to determine the number of people who are actually using Bitcoin till date? Who would have access to such information? Meaning a way to find out, how many new people have used Bitcoin in 2016 , so that we can say exponential growth is natural not artificially created by hoarders.
I think to determine the actual number of people using bitcoin is can be found in the exchange platform, or in the blockchain. But not precise count I think.
Not everyone trade bitcoins with other currencies also not everyone use blockchain.info
So predicting the numbers of users on these things is useless.
If I am not wrong then many Darknet websites uses Bitcoin and counting the users who use bitcoins there is nearly impossible.
So I think it's impossible to find the number of users using bitcoin , It's like counting the starts.