I think you misunderstood what I am saying.
The transaction cost I'm talking about is the blockreward miners are currently receiving. You know, the 3600 bitcoin's created on a daily basis that is being allocated to a few hands? This is a cost. That blockchain link shows total miner revenue(which came at the expense of someone) divided by transactions.
The entire bid book of bitstamp is $12million dollars. At current price of $600~, there is $2.2million dollar worth of bitcoin's created daily. Every week you are creating bitstamp's entire active bid side.
The current profit margin for the top tier miners is obscene, they have huge incentive to realize this gain. Miner's tend to hoard when their profits are low, and sell when they are high. They have been feeding this market since November 2013. Where do you think the ASK side is coming from? It's miners. Because mining is so concentrated, new bitcoin's are ending up in fewer and fewer hands. This leads to persistent volatility as supply is withheld when prices are low, and increased when prices are high. This makes settlement in bitcoin impossible as you cannot perform economic calculation. Hedging this is too costly since a small % of people can influence prices immensely in an illiquid market. I hope this makes it more clear to you. Bitcoin will continue to trend lower as miners realize huge margins.
The competing side is demand, comprising speculative and transactional. Speculative demand can change on a whim, as it is more based on passions and emotions. Transactional demand is more or less fundamental and it has increased by only 25-30% from a year ago.
I understood your original statement, I just disagree with some of it. I'll explain why.
- The transaction cost isn't the block reward. After 2140 (Should Bitcoin even make it that far) the transaction cost would be the block reward because all new coins have been mined. Currently, the transaction cost is a tiny fraction of the block reward. The transaction volume will need to grow exponentially before the transaction fees constitute an appreciable block reward. 1MB block size won't cut it by then and the block size will be increased as needed to deal with the transaction volume.
- The profit margin of top tier miners is obscene, but they aren't really holding Bitcoins out of circulation. The top tier miners are selling the Bitcoins to anybody willing to buy; spreading the wealth as the market allows. The medium and small miners may hold at a temporary loss but the cost of mining increases as the difficulty increases. This
temporary coin-holding encourages market stability rather than volatility.
- The distribution of Bitcoin is broadening, if you look at data extracted from the blockchain you will see that the number of coins in wallets containing greater than 1,000 XBT have decreased by more than 3% since January. The growth has been most prominent in the 1-5, 5-10, and 10-25 XBT wallets. The smaller holders are expanding rapidly while the large holders are dwindling down.
- Withholding supply when price is low, and increasing supply when price is high is a price buffer; it encourages stability. If the demand is high enough that it exceeds the inflated supply, the price will increase, if not, price decreases and supply tapers...
- Settlement in Bitcoin isn't impossible. I'm not sure which economic calculation Bitcoin doesn't afford which is required for settlement... The people you are settling with should understand that Bitcoin is volatile and if they prefer to be paid in conventional currency then that should be an option. However, you could always take your conventional currency, use it to buy as many XBT as it will afford at a fixed time, then the product of your purchase will be the settlement amount... Or you could use a daily set price, third party, localbitcoin price, there are plenty of ways to settle in Bitcoin while mitigating your risk. You don't need to base your settlement on a 1m chart...
- You are right about the impact some wield over the market. This is a temporary problem left over from the birth of Bitcoin. This is a growing pain and soon it won't be easy for so few to manipulate the market.
- 25-30% growth in transaction demand in a year is amazing.
- If the price continues to trend downward it isn't solely the result of miners. The distribution of coins should be considered to determine which groups are buying and which are selling... The price today should be climbing, but the increased demand has been met with an abnormally high supply from some very large coin stashes. This is good for the long term but its causing a downward trend in the near term. Many more coins are being sold into the ASK walls right now than are being mined... The BID wall has been very strong considering the level of negative press.