Today I saw how the BTC fall from 245 to 200 (250 to 136 on eBTC). I saw how the LTC/BTC exchange went from 0.025 to 0.019.
All important coins were going down (BTC, LTC, TRC...).
Now, everybody knows here something important about offer/demmand, if people want to buy coins they'll rise, if people sell it they go down.
Our mistake is using market to exchange the coins for fiat money.
First, because when we sell we are saying: "your USD has more value than my BTC", so the price go down.
Second, because imagine I can make as much money I want; then I can buy all the coins.
That may sound like a "conspiracy" but, reading here there is a lot of people who don't like banks, who don't like the taxes we pay to them; and, after saying that, you run to the market and sell your coins for 2 dollars made for that guys. Even if you sell the coins for 1000 dollars it does not worth the shot.
If we hold the coins, they go up, there may come rich guys with millions trying to buy our hard mined BTC or LTC, but, if nobody sell, the price go higher and higher. Everybody here wins if we work together.
So, I think, we should separate cryptocurrencies from the "normal fiat money"; we should use BTC to buy directly things, property: computers, a TV, a Sofa, anything; but never change them directly for money.
I know almost everybody here does don't know nothing about economy (even me, who studied economy for a year). I know that here there is a lot of people who don't care about the currency, the taxes, or anything, they are here because they think they can make money with this "business". We are, i think, almost everybody nerds who know a lot about VGAs and internet protocols, but nothing about economy, market; so we are easy to fool when we jump to the field of economy. For that reason I tell to who want to listen: Think twice before sell your earned coins.
And, finally, I repeat if nobody here sells his coins, the price will go higher, and everybody will make more money. If you like "speculation" exchange BTC for LTC for TRC or other coins but never for money.
All we win if we work together.
And excuse my english.
Bitcoin is indeed a positive-sum game, for everyone but the bankers I suppose, if we work together. Many things in game theory are like this -- or at least, the best outcomes almost always result from perfect information and perfect cooperation. The problem is, people are greedy, selfish, and not very smart. So, we'll never get them to work together -- someone will always cheat and undercut the rest, like a heist movie where one thief betrays the rest.
That leaves us with how to properly strategize, knowing how everyone else will behave. And that's game theory as applied to global economics and bitcoin. Or more correctly, how to incentivize economically helpful behavior and disincentivize damaging behavior. Not easy in a decentralized market!
Note that one of the big arguments used in recreating the Federal Reserve in the US back in the early 1900s was a major market destabilization and a run on the banks. Bankers and economists were convinced that the market needed to pay the price of being less "free" and transparent, in order to create stability. JP Morgan himself singlehandedly saved NY at a personal loss, in the end, of $21M or so. His leveraging of the situation ended up making people portray him as evil, after he saved them. The world is not black and white, it is gray, very murky, and full of people who are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally, in both cases. The jury is still kind of out on the artificial stability thing, and we're testing it mightily with Bitcoin. With that stability came a massive increase in the Shadow Banking realm, and a few became quite rich while giving us this stability. And, since we've seen a few times that even that isn't particularly stable, most Bitcoiners will argue that it isn't worth it and we'd rather be back with a backed-with-something currency.
