This is a great post, and I totally agree about being willing to hold out for a higher sell price. I'm also playing around with trying to buy low and sell off a few points higher, although I think this is a tough time to get into that because the price of Bitcoin is running away so much, so I've kind of backed off of that even for the time being. I'll try that again once the price of Bitcoin stabilizes a bit and alt coins start to move more.
I was noticing too that considering the fact that Bitcoin has about tripled in price over the past three weeks, Devcoin is actually holding out fairly well. Yes, its value has fallen, but not proportionally to how much Bitcoin has gone up. In fact, Devcoin has been sitting right around 19-20 sat the entire time that Bitcoins have gone from just under $300 to just under $400. Now I notice bitcoin is back at $300 and falling and Devcoin price hasn't gone up either. I'm not sure what all that means, but I have noticed a lot of alt coins have taken a hit, but I was expecting Devcoin to take an even bigger hit than it did.
I had never considered the whole issue where the amount of Devcoins doubles between year 1 and year 2 but only increases by a third between year 2 and year 3 and less thereafter. So that would mean that we are currently experiencing the greatest price drops due to inflation that will ever happen, and this part should balance out as the coin "matures."
And I have a greater appreciation for those Devtome writers who have been at it for a long time and are holding onto their Devcoins (and not dumping them). Although I do sell some of mine I do not sell anywhere near all of them (I don't have any desire to kill the price by selling down the buy wall either) and mine are starting to pile up as well.
My position has tended to be that the merged mined coins are ultimately a good bet simply because it is so trivially easy for miners to support them.
Most of the altcoins all have to divide up among them the hashing power that is available in the world, but the merged mined coins such as DeVCoin can all share the same massive bunch of hashing power so hopefully will long term be the most secure.
The thing about coins that never stop or even decrease the number of coins minted per block, such as DeVCoin and GRouPcoin and, I think, also CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld, is that in their second year the number of coins minted is 100% of what had previously existed, in their third year the number minted is 50% of what previously existed, in their fourth year the number minted is 33.33333333% of what previously existed and so on, that is to say it takes years for the new coins coming into existence in a given year to become a small fraction of the number already existing. Billions of DeVCoins already exist, but billions more are still being made. So it seems reasonable that it should take years from the time such coins are launched until their rate of inflation is low so we should expect that the first bunch of years people will dismiss them as printing way too many coins per year.
Take some comfort in the fact that at least some people who hold billions of them are not dumping them, because they could totally clean out the buy offers any time but they have not done so. They are maybe even the very people who are buying as well as selling, like I do, to keep the coin liquid. I have offers on Vircurex at every possible price on both buy and sell sides except the gap in between buy and sell where the actual trading at a given moment is going on. Thus basically whenever anyone sells I am buying but also whenever anyone buys I am selling. I have a fixed amount on the exchange and it just keeps changing how much of it is in bitcoins and how much is in devcoins as the buying and selling goes back and forth.
I would suggest that unless you like the idea of doing that - sitting on both sides of the gap between buys and sells, to profit on either direction - you simply forget about your DeVCoins until you hear they have gone back up above 200 satoshis each, or maybe 200 satoshis adjusted for bitcoin value increase since back when above 200 was the reasonable level bitcoins themselves were only worth $100 or less.
Looking at how much bitcoins have been going up, it has looked to me like maybe devcoins were actually being carried up with them to some extent, that is, devcoins haven't seemed offhand to me to be dropping relative to bitcoin as fast as bitcoin has been going up relative to fiat currencies. Is that not lately the case? Maybe I had the wrong impression.
I consider the times when DeVCoin is low to be great times to be buying, because I am confident they will go back up eventually.
When you bought for 250 satoshis per devcoin, how many dollars were bitcoins worth?
If you buy more devcoins while they are cheap, your average price paid per devcoin will become lower than 250 the more you buy the lower!
I suggest not directly/instantly buying or selling "accepting the market price" but instead pick the price you want to buy or sell at put your offer there and sit back waiting for someone someday to take you up on your offer, instead of being the impatient side of the trade accepting some offer someone else already has in place. (Assuming a somewhat trusted exchange such as Vircurex that historically has always made good to its customers any time it took losses from hacks etc, of course, so you can feel reasonably confident leaving coins on the exchange waiting for your offer to be taken up by someone.)
-MarkM-
