Hi Ribuck,
like I said before, there is a big difference between buying an electronic device like a TV.
Lets just say you bought a TV last year (2013)with bit coins. The TV was worth $1,000 and you paid in bitcoins. This year 2014 the value of bitcoins has increased that much that if you did not purchase your TV, you would now be sitting on a fortune and be very rich.
Now lets just say you bought a TV with normal dollars, sure there will be a newer model next year which will be better thank your old one and maybe the same price. But you can sell your last years TV and get the new one. you are not really taking a big risk. But with spending your bit coins you are taking the risk that your coins will be worth an enormous amount more in a years time.
Comparing not spending your bitcoins to waiting till next year to buy your TV is not relative at all.
Do you understand my point about the possibility of todays bitcoins being worth much more tomorrow and by spending them you could be losing out.
And what if it went down? It's a gamble either way. Let a person spend when they want. Also to answer your question if everyone held onto their bit coins and didn't sell or trade them then they would become worthless at that point. It would be seen as no more bitcoins are being produced because there are no transaction to be filled releasing any new coins. You can trade 1 Bitcoin off and 25 more drops right now when the transaction is actually completely finished. So I got rid of a bit coin now there are 25 more in existence. The pool dries up with no transactions. Things have value because we perceive it to have value. Think of gold right now. Would you buy stocks of gold? Does gold have any real value or is it just a pretty mineral? The truth is gold like bitcoins or any form of money doesn't exist it is only perceived to be worth something. If every person on the planet decided to not buy any more gold and just hold their stocks of gold for a year and no gold is produced that year? Would the value of gold go up or would drop tremendously in points? It drops big time. There are two ways to totally kill off the value of something. 1) Everyone holds onto it for a long period of time. No one can buy stock either because no one is selling it because no one is getting rid of it remember. 2) A mass amount of people sell off at once. For instance you don't have to worry about the 51% thing ever happening because if someone controlled the majority of the bitcoin which is what would happen and that is the reason of the talk about 51% then it no longer becomes free or open anymore as someone has taken it over and the market collapses so the person just took their billions and burnt it because they might have given everyone else a hit but they also took a huge hit and no one is going to take a 12billion dollar loss on purpose. So if someone gets close to about 45% they sell off about 5% now that 5% alone is such a huge sell that yeah they just made a huge chunk of change but that was a lot of people selling stock right there so the market value of bit coin dropped about 10 points or 45 dollars if you will. Now as spending goes back to normal there are a lot fewer bitcoins to be made now because so many coins dropped and were mined to complete that transaction that value did go up after everything leveled back off that it went up 14% in value and they made even more money by making their 40% more valuable than their 45% of the market they had.