The thing is how would anyone know if there ever was a shortage if coins seeing that price is derived by only the coins being traded back and forth on an exchange? If the same 5000 coins are traded back and forth to determine price, scarcity will never be taken into account right? Because all that matters are the coins on the exchanges being traded.
i don't get it. why would you ever conclude the same 5000 coins are being traded back and forth? haven't you ever deposited or withdrawn from an exchange? placed an order, market bought/sold? if so, you are literal proof that supply and demand on the exchanges is not static. every one of us can affect price discovery on these exchanges---assuming you have some coins or fiat, anyway.
I guess I am explaining it wrong. There are x number of coins on an exchange right now. If everyone outside of that exchange held on to their coins the only trading that would be going on would be the existing coins back and forth between the bots right and that would be how the price is discovered. meanwhile outside of the exchange a coin cannot be bought because no one is selling. how would the trading bots/traders realize this is happening if say only 10 people buy $100 worth of bitcoin each day not showing the true scarcity outside of the exchange?
Now the second one really made me scratch my head...
Going for the first keeping away the isolation factor.
It doesn't matter how many times those 5000 coins are being traded, what matters is how many people are willing to trade and how much money they have.
If there are 5000 people and everyone wants to buy 2
BTC there will be demands for 10 000 and scarcity will play its role.
If there are just 10 guys and all they do it actively trading for cents, with cents, then there will be no scarcity and there will be no active markets, the price will stagnate....deja vu.
Now for your second scenario, this is not possible, and will never be.
Exchanges are not entirely separated from the world and if everybody would stop sending coins to an exchange there is only one way out of this, people will slowly come, buy whatever is left and in the end demands will be so large that the price will go up and of course at this point coins will fly back to be sold.
As for the trading bots will realize this when they run out of money since their algorithms are most likely never built for such situations, and the fall of mt gox when bots were still trading there while everyone was putting pop-corn int he microwave is proof enough.