Miners are making money, if that's what you're asking. https://blockchain.info/charts/miners-revenue https://blockchain.info/charts/miners-operating-profit-margin Researcher Nicolas Christin estimates $1.2 million in monthly SR seller revenue, so you just have to figure out how much fiat currency is converted to BTC per month. That's hard to determine because there are so many ways of buying bitcoins, and you don't know from analyzing the block chain which are purchases (or conversions from fiat currency to BTC) and which are just bitcions moving around between addresses. It's trivial to determine the transaction volume (ie, BTC moving between addresses) but lots of that activity is people moving BTC around to mix it, obscure it, etc., and that doesn't represent purchases of BTC. Yes, I think it's mostly speculators, various anarchist types who support non-state sponsored currency, and people buying illegal things.