Bitpay (one of the largest Bitcoin payment processors in the world) processed a record $1 billion in transactions in 2018. This impressive increase of people using Bitcoin to buy real-world products and services shows Bitcoin is doing very well as "money": https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190116005701/en/Bit...
Also, $1 billion sounds huge, but for a payment medium it's still really low: worldwide, last year that's also the order of magnitude of the transactions made in Vanuatu vatu. As a comparison, PayPal recorded more than 500 billions dollars in transactions last year.
> In the past year, the BitPay wallet added integrations with major gift card brands, enabling users to buy gift cards in-app for travel, food, and shopping with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
They don't break out what types of goods/services are being purchased. I wonder to what percentage of their transaction are being used to sell / launder bitcoins associated with illegal activity by buying gift cards that can then be resold.