RE:Not impressedForget this obsession with average gold per account. The initial emphasis has been on building up the client base in order to establish momentum, credibility, and first mover advantages. This is resulting in a lot of deadbeat accounts that may or may not amount to anything in the future, but I'm sure this wasn't unexpected. (FWIW, I never cared much for the "free gold" promotion, either, which has certainly exacerbated this trend.)
The trick is going to be moving from growth in quantity to growth in quality. (Modeling PayPal as opposed to say, Amazon.) In other words, figuring out how to motivate more people to fund their accounts and make use of the system for transactions, and then building on the network effects. For the most part, however, this may just be a waiting game.
At this point the need for an alternative system is perceived mainly in regions of great monetary stress, but you have to imagine that as this stress spreads and deepens, more and more people will see the value of BitGold. But the company will be poised to capitalize on this only if it has a large established customer base, a proven track record of reliablility and integrity, and time to have worked out most of the technical bugs and regulatory hurdles.
In the meantime, I don't think there is any legitimate reason to think XAU is going to go belly up. Administrative costs are low, the company has deep pockets, and growth so far has been mostly organic and isn't heavily reliant on debt.
It's still VERY early days, and way too soon to pass judgement on the business model, just because a lot of gold isn't moving through the system yet. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You might understandably not want to flaunt your BitGold T-shirt in public, but I wouldn't send it to Goodwill just yet.