I was trying to make a simplification to the effect that there is some amount of Bitcoin usage apart from speculation. I think that's what people mostly refer to when talking about fundamentals - developments that affect non-speculative use. The point is, we don't know what the price of BTC would be in a philosophical la-la land where price is driven solely by non-speculative uses, so we can't argue that an increase in such uses must lead to a proportional increase in BTC price.
That "fundamental" demand -- people buying BTC for the express purpose of paying for something -- seems to be relatively small, and it may not be increasing.
Note that such demand would only sequester the bitcoins for a few days, perhaps a few hours; so that it might take 1000 BTC of payments
per day to have the same effect on price as one investor buying 1000 BTC
once for hoarding.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no data on the USD volume of
payments made via bitcoin (from the blockchain we get
transaction volume, but only some transactions are bitcoins changing hands). Moreover, we do not know how much of that volume generates new bitcoin buying demand (as opposed to being bitcoins that were bought previously for investment or speculation). Sadly, the "bitcoin press" does not seem to be capable (or willing) to dig out such data.
