It's about adding liquidity. You think bitcoin would be worth fuck all without trading? I'm done arguing with an idiot, moving on now.
Well, there'd be a discount, as buying and selling OTC carries a natural penalty. I'm not sure it would be worth "fuck all" however. There are plenty of illiquid assets that possess speculative value.
i'm with chesthing, "fuck all" is an exaggeration but obviously the biggest game in bitcoin town has been is likely to continue being for some time the buying and selling of bitcoins.
collectively traders have a high degree of control over price... and not only add liquidity but also bring prices higher and prevent and major jump/dip, if it drops like 30% in 5 min, you can bet your ass traders will buy it back up to 50% fib No questions asked.
IMO
Not all that surprising, 'round these parts we have people who think exchanges and order books dont matter in terms of the utility and value of their tokens. Perhaps BTC should only be sold at the local bullion/coin/curiosity shop to a subset of their customers, or P2P in a parking lot or alley
They think that 1MB blocks are perfectly appropriate for this point in the adoption/distribution curve, because decentralization that can fit in a single conference room. Segwit in April, Lightning sewn.