Why buy mined bitcoins?
Institutions and investors are now buying new, freshly mined coins as they are guaranteed to have a clean history and not involved with scams/services with bad reputations (Mt. Gox, Silk Road, hacks, etc.). As the public blockchain system has a permanent record of where bitcoins came from, serious long-term bitcoin investors do not want the headache of discovering that bitcoins in their portfolio are "tainted". For those who are familiar with the traditional coin collecting world, the analogy would be buying a "mint" or "uncirculated" coin.
Institutions and investors are now buying new, freshly mined coins as they are guaranteed to have a clean history and not involved with scams/services with bad reputations (Mt. Gox, Silk Road, hacks, etc.). As the public blockchain system has a permanent record of where bitcoins came from, serious long-term bitcoin investors do not want the headache of discovering that bitcoins in their portfolio are "tainted". For those who are familiar with the traditional coin collecting world, the analogy would be buying a "mint" or "uncirculated" coin.
LOL. A bitcoin is a bitcoin is a bitcoin; the network don't give a bit.
I'm guessing there is a premium for these "uncirculated" coins, because they are.. "fresher."
I like the idea of buying directly from miners (I'd like to establish these kinds of connections), but this seems like a silly argument to make; what is the "headache?" If my bitcoin is "tainted," does that mean I can no longer include it in a transaction that the blockchain will accept? I suppose the recipient of the coin could stipulate in their contract that the inputs must not come from an included list of outputs; this is blacklisting. If this becomes a prevalent practice, the bitcoin market will fork into a white and black situation where coins from one pool are worth more than coins from the other. But the fact remains, the network will always allow the sending of coin from both pools; I could just send tainted coin into your pure address, and taint your "freshly minted" bitcoin. Then you'd have the headache of trying to explain why scammed coins ended up in your wallet.
I think the "serious investors" don't care where the bitcoin comes from, and that your line of thinking is in line with the kind emanating from the "please regulate us" crowd that is probably infiltrated with/started by the government agents keen on subverting the crypto-currency revolution.