Quote from: BBanzai on June 29, 2011, 03:41:27 AM

The house always wins. The basic principle of money markets is "screw the other guy, he's stupid." Playing that particular game at length is a clear indication that you have nothing of value yourself to offer, as is true with all gambling.

This is a common misconception about market functions. What good traders will do is smooth out the price. They are like a capacitor in a parallel DC circuit acting as a voltage reculator. The voltage is the abundance of bitcoins (low price). If the price were high on Thursday and low on Saturday, then this means the supply on Saturday is over average and Thursday it is under average. If you buy when it is abundant (cheap) and take coins off the market, and sell when it is scarce (high), you smooth out the curve.
This is what grain contracts do which is why the price of wheat does not crash at harvest time. Speculators are buying like crazy, storing, and selling later in the year. This helps everyone.
Communist Revolutions are lead by violent economically ignorant people and these "speculators" are some of the first to go to the gulags. Why not, they aren't working for a living, the farmers are growing the food and they make money by gambling. Note that some form of famine usually follows a Communist take over as there is not enough food later in the year before the next harvest.