Quote from: MatTheCat on November 24, 2013, 01:20:22 PM

Really!?

If you research my posts you will see that I have predicted two crashes (not that it was hard to see), in the face of a flurry of desperately unfunny 'face palm' jpegs etc. The first time around, I admit I took took pleasure in revisiting the most arrogant and asking how their investments were doing.

The last crash however, never turned out the way I was expecting. Bitcoin bounced right back (on western exchanges) and is being held up by hoarding, [...]

That's all I saw; I stopped reading when I realized he was going to whine about hoarding.

Those damn hoarders! You sound like FDR during the great depression - it's just so darn EASY to blame everything on speculators and hoarders, when the behavior of those market actors is merely an effect of market conditions rather than a cause.
I would love to speculate on a single current cause of the price being held up, but chances are, there are dozens of significant reasons, and blaming it on "hoarders" is a great way to illustrate the kind of reductionist, polar, linear thinking that is taught in public schools these days - and even university economics courses, where the idea that the great depression was caused by foolish monetary policy is considered to be held by fringe lunatics.

Fekete would say that hoarders are a natural part of a market and serve to provide and remove liquidity. Everyone has their price and that goes both ways. We can't really consider this an artificial or unnatural influence. People like to whine about hoarders and centralization in BTC yet the USD has 1% of the holders with 40% of the dollars or something along those figures... and what about gold? Unless you're attending Porcfest or live in some backwater town in Arizona, you can't exactly spend gold, so every single gold-holder is a hoarder! Who or what is immune to this natural behavior? Hoarding is really not suitable as a scapegoat, especially since there is really not an appropriate definition of how much savings vs. monthly spendings makes ones a hoarder vs. a responsible saver. If I have 5000 BTC but spend about 2 every month am I a hoarder or just someone with a big retirement account? If I have 100 BTC but spend none of it, am I a hoarder or just someone who spends in one currency and has a responsible savings account in another? If I have 20,000 BTC am I a 'hoarder' or just a rich mofo with a lot of bitcoins? What a futile game. "Hoarder, responsible saver, or rich motherfucker?" What about if I have 25,000 BTC, am constantly investing more fiat, and spend 500 per week on my chaffeurs and mansion upkeep and bunch of other stuff? I might be very offensive but does not my ratio of spending vs. saving qualify me as a 'responsible saver' rather than a "low-down dirty hoarder"... except that it doesn't work that way, does it?

EDIT: Here you go: Hoarding and Dishoarding, first section. Learn something! http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFMonEcon102Lecture1.pdf