I think you can join the number 1 and 2 into 1 part which will be like this "Yes, as long as it helps me to earn money and using it for payments and savings" because I think when we earn money from bitcoin, at least we use bitcoin for payment because we buy and sell bitcoin in any price.
Formulation is still not ideal, but the idea is the following:
Vote for 1) if you
only would use Bitcoin if you earn money with it (where Bitcoin is important for the source of income, e.g. Bitcoin-related services, signature/bounty campaigns related to Bitcoin). The exact way you use it is not important, it's the reason you use it.
Vote for 2) if you also would use Bitcoin if you didn't earn money with it. For example, because you replace your bank or savings account with a Bitcoin wallet, or because you use it for remittances.
So in the case you mention, option 1 would be the correct one.
I'll clarify that in the OP.
Yeah, it can't be a perfect poll in this sense, but then you could have different polls for a different target audience.
This would be ideal, but it is difficult if you aren't using an online panel or other complex poll mechanism, because otherwise you don't know if those answering really belong to your audience. The goal of the two different "Yes" answers is just to approximate to that ideal a bit ("signature campaigners" would select mostly option 1, "bitcoin users" option 2) without making the poll too complex.
And if you're really going for usage, then I think leaving out traders is fine (and most merchants settle in fiat anyway and don't see a single satoshi or have a wallet so they don't care) because traders don't need an ATH.[...]
In fact, if you're wondering who cares about an ATH, it really is speculative holders only you're looking at. Then there's no point in asking if they'll use it, right?
While you could argue indeed that traders using fiat settlement and never making any transactions on the network are not really "using" Bitcoin, the existence of Bitcoin is relevant for them.
For example, I want to differentiate between the following two cases:
1) a trader who tries to "ride" bull markets (and perhaps bear markets as well). He would only trade Bitcoin if it's an asset with a certain probability to see a new rally. He thinks that only if people are thinking about "the moon", dreaming of getting rich and an ATH was possible, price moves would be high enough to make good profits. This type of trader would select "No".
2) a trader who only trades small price swings, i.e. a daytrader, and he would only continue to trade Bitcoin if these price swings were high enough to make profit. This kind of trader would select "Yes, only if it helps me to earn money".
The difference is that for trader 1 the fact of a new ATH is important, and thus he would leave the BTC market if the price stabilizes. While type 2 would stay if he can still make money.
Both are only "traders", and are not really using Bitcoin, but their existence is important because both contribute to volume and liquidity. If type 1 traders and other people answering "No" are a big majority, then Bitcoin's volume, liquidity, and also the price are probably in danger if for a long time it fails to achieve a new ATH. "Convinced Bitcoin users" (unconditional "Yes" answers) would stay, so it's important to know the size of this audience. Type 2 traders, signature campaign participants and other "Bitcoin earners" are something in-between: they would probably stay longer than those that only use it if an ATH is possible, but if the ATH-dependant group is too large, they would also leave.
We could have the following scenarios if Bitcoin fails to reach an ATH in a long timeframe:
1) Most users depend on an ATH -> Price eventually crashes dramatically.
2) Many users depend on an ATH, but group 2 ("Bitcoin earners") and 3 are also big -> Price could see a bear market, but would eventually stabilize again.
3) Only few users depend on an ATH -> Price could continue to stay stable.
This is basically the idea behind the poll, to know the probabilities of these scenarios. I know a forum poll is very limited, but if participation is high enough then maybe we can draw some conclusions from it.
(Hope this was understandable
)