If "rich" hoard a coin and there is more scarcity on the market, price goes up and the lack of # of coins is compensated by increased value per coin.
Isn't this what's happening with gold?
Above ground reserves of gold are ~180ktons. Above ground reserves of silver are 5 times that. In terms of mining, the ratio is nearly 1:9 (1kg gold for 9kg of silver). Yet gold is 60x in price. Why? Historically it was near 1:10 to 1:19.
The reason for the price today is because gold has been effectively taken out of circulation (as money), thus the Elite can hoard it. Their massive hoarding* is what actually allows the average person to hold a gram of gold in their hands and have it cost 30 euro instead of 5 euro (if the 1:60 ratio of gold/silver was adjusted to 1:10 which is the scarcity in nature).
* price manipulation is not factored, because
both gold and silver are suppressed.
Another one that I hear often is this: Inflation is necessary for the broader economy blah blah blah and that deflation is bad blah blah blah - so deflationary currencies create depression through hoarding.
That's OK as a perspective but it can only be applied on the level of a national currency and how it dominates the affairs of an economy. There is no monopoly of currencies and as such what one currency does, cannot affect the necessary expansion of the monetary supply in terms of fiat. In other words countries increase their fiat supply everyday, and stuff like gold or bitcoin add further inflation - although in relative terms the later (gold, bitcoins) are better store of values because they are less debased. Gold is debased by 1.3% per year while Bitcoins are substantially more than that.
If a crypto is being debased faster than fiat, there is simply no reason to hold that crypto unless there is massive demand that compensates.
Why the obsession with price per coin, anyway? What matters both for the individual and for the overall MRO market is price*amount. Price is lower, but the amount is correspondingly higher. There's always 42 Coin for those who want a high price per coin. Unfortunately, you might only own a tenth of one coin.
It's not price obsession or an issue of price per coin. It's debasement. Even 42 started at like 400-500 BTC or something per coin and is now 16 BTC per coin.
What matters for the individual is that he can put his money on a coin and know that it won't tank, or that the price of electricity that he is paying today to mine it can be recovered by holding. If the price is to go down, this creates pressure for the miner to sell. But miners are the least part of the equilibrium since hashrate and difficulty are adjusted depending their costs.
