Those of us with substantial holdings will not deplete them by buying stuff at a low exchange rate. We didn't get where we are by buying high and spending low, so price needs to go up gradually and then we'll share with merchants. Overstock bitcoin sales went down because the exchange rate went down. If it goes up, more bitcoiners will buy stuff there and then more merchants will jump on board.
If Overstock sales went down it's because the initial rush of bitcoin buyers has passed. And anyone with substantial holdings of BTC almost certainly acquired it more than a few months ago (ie when BTC was < $150). In the context of the gains made, the exchange rate has barely moved.
I started buying when it was less than $10/BTC and I still am going to wait. You seem to think it was easy money. It wasn't. Everybody was screaming at us to sell when it jumped to $50, $100, $200, etc. We held. and we held through the crashes too. Easy money spends easy. Hard money is hard to part with.
I was around the time when bitcoin was $32 and $2. The fact that you continue telling people to hold at $700-$800 compared to when you bought at $10 is ridiculous. I like to think back at when I mined an average of 3 coins with my 5770 in a week and I thought that was slow. I hold a good amount of Bitcoins from when it was $2-$20 and I believe that at these prices bitcoins are way overvalued for what they are capable of currently. Back then I was actually willing to spend my coins to buy things. I still have my DDR2 memory that cost 10BTC and thinking about how much I would have if I held on to them till now. Telling people to invest thousands of dollars in BTC when I was mining these coins when I was 17 makes BTC like such a joke.
I mostly hold because it's going up. It might go down first, but it's going up and I think even you know it. Market timing is not something everybody should attempt. I'm pretty good at it and even I use less than 5% of my holdings to play around with. Investors are forward thinking. The utility value today is only one piece of the price. It's also the implied future value. When the shit hits the fan in Turkey, Argentina or wherever, liquidity is gonna dry up fast and I want to be in a position to supply it.
Just wondering, where's all those coin you mined now? Still got em? hodling? or did you sell too early? You sold at the top and now you wanna buy 'em back?
I have only ever invested $2000 mostly mining hardware and occasionally bought a few bitcoin when I had spare cash. I haven't sold because I already took out my initial investment last April. To me bitcoin is play money and if I lose everything I have learned a valuable lesson in economics and trading. I actually trade for fun on Bitfinex with the majority of my bitcoins which is 30ish coins. I lost about 25 BTC during the bitcoinica hack and 75 during the pirate ponzie scheme but that is somthing else.
