The 160k+ is meaningless when no one is actually using BTC to buy things. Also, not far from the truth anyway:

http://www.businessinsider.com/merchants-arent-accepting-bit...

Your comment is irrelevant to the point being discussed: it's obviously false that "ALL merchants STOPPED accepting bitcoin".

Also this Morgan Stanley research note, and the reporting on it, is of laughable quality...

1) They don't release data: "Morgan Stanley, which based its usage analysis on the information, didn’t say which companies are using bitcoin."

2) They extrapolate from an insufficient number of data points: 3 companies in the top500 this year, down from 5 last year, accept Bitcoin. It's like saying Ferrari's market share is dropping because only 3 billionaires bought a Ferrari this year, down from 5 last year.

3) They attribute a quote to the analyst ("The disparity between virtually no merchant acceptance and Bitcoin’s rapid appreciation is striking,") when in fact it was a quote from Overstock CEO: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-merchant-shunning-is-...

4) They claim Bitcoin's skyrocketing price is one of the causes of the decrease in payments. They present of course no facts to justify this theory, because it's false. In the past, anecdotal data reported by merchants has shown precisely the opposite: customers spend their newfound riches.

But it also makes sense "from the first principles": BTC is wildly deflationary right now, so there is a very strong incentive to hold BTC instead of paying with it. It's a flip side of "sheltering from the inflation" point that is quite popular among BTC enthusiasts. You can't have one without the other.