Some are holding coins in order to spend them later when it's easier and safer and they can buy the normal things they would buy in their everyday life without a second thought, and without having to change back to fiat... yes that doesn't account for the transactions now, but as merchants accept more and infrastructure develops, if the speculation does drive the price up, I am assuming people will want to spend their (now more valuable) coins... obviously this comment also doesn't have much to do with the transaction volume affecting the price on the exchanges now, but on that subject I will also put forward the idea that it may not have much impact on the exchanges, as day to day purchases of coins to spend coins would be inefficient, I will assume that many people already have large stashes of coins they might spend.... finally also bear in mind that some of the philosophy of bitcoin (for some people, and anecdotally a majority) is not to spend spend spend to drive a consumerist economy. As mentioned before, just because the economy is not full of high volume transactions, doesn't mean it's not living and breathing.
Stream of consciousness waffle here so take it or leave it
Do you know what merchants do with payment solution that don't generate any sales?
If you get only a sale / month you wil drop it just because it's more of a hassle to work with it than the outcoming profit.
My fear is this might happen first.
later edit:
As usual people see my point of view as a bitcoin enemy and a non-believer.
For me , bitcoin is just an experiment , quite a funny one. I ended up using bitcoin by necessity and I have no god damn interest in price (besides making fun of bulls or bears).
For me its use is far more interesting.
Dude, stop the Keynesian "deflationary currency leads to hoarding and hoarding is bad"-crap. People buy things, because they both want and need things. You cannot delay a purchase forever (post-mortem anyone?) so the fact that the underlying currency gains in value isn't going to stop economic traffic in the least *.
*Although in the beginning people might need to get used to this, but it will be temporary. People will need to get used that merely holding currency isn't voluntarily paying more taxes and that saving can actually be a good thing as opposed to the credit hungry society the west is these days. I don't have any debt, but I can assure you I'm a vast minority ....
Keynesians are like cockroaches