So yes one can buy today and see a loss in the short term. The more interesting question is what happens if one holds for say 30 months?
There are far more coins that failed in long run. Coins that are now 2000% below their ATH. No one knows what is in 30 month or 20 years.
If for example somewhen in 6 month the exit of AB and DreamMarket clashes together, where is a high chance that a decentralized market will be supported by high credited vendors. There are already some vendors who are no longer willing to use centralized markets. There is DutchMasters for example who only used jabber for a long time since he lost a lot of money to the evolution exit scam. He said it was something around 400.000 EUR
Market like The Majestic Garden have the problem that there is no repuation system integrated. Everything is done by trust only. Thats why there are sold psychedelics only. This type of drug users / vendors have another spirit in trading drugs compared to the ordinary Speed vendor.
Maybe AB is supported by the Russian GOV and will never disappear aslong it weakens Russians enemies.
Maybe still hardly no one cares for XMR in 30 month. Maybe everyone wants it.
I prefer to keep on facts. In fact more coins failed in the long run. In fact 95% of the markets did an exit scam. So far every market introduced a new currency did it for scam reasons. In fact the XMR acceptance is not so good atm. In fact XMR is a very good coin with a good core dev team. Another fact is: Other coins and their dev. are also sometimes good.
I dont see any key facts why XMR should get a new ATH this year. And if AB will leave the show this year for example, XMR will stay for a long time below 100. Maybe it will never recover. Maybe it will. Who knows. Atm i know selling was very good, shorting is still good. No shorter has probably to be afraid that XMR will make a big bounce this year.