You know, somehow I can tolerate Mat's doom & gloom brand of bearism... at least he has some skin in the game in a way most bears rarely do, he's actively shorting. I appreciate the drama around that, if not his analysis.
But you, Impaler...
your incredulity is surprising. I am indeed not a miner, I am an observer of miners and a student of macro-economics which puts me in a better position to predict the overall trends then an individual miner who thinks micro-economically. First you confuse 'declining profitability' with 'unprofitable', as you said the unprofitable miner ceases to mine and the miners as a whole stay profitable but JUST BARELY. And just barely profitable miners still have costs that need to be paid, so the percentage of your daily take that can be hoarded declines. It is as simple as that.
You just sound like a pompous prick when you put on that bear suit.
I remember the last discussion we had about this topic.
August 7th, in one of chodpaba's threads. Price had dipped slightly below 100 again these days (on bitstamp), and based on the same "I have a deep insight into the psychology of miners" bullshit argument, you predicted, what?, going back to 50? Something like that.
You recommended fucking shorting, in fact, a few days before a trend that took us from ~100 to ~1200.
I'm sure you will forgive me if I'm not exactly reading your analysis based on miners' sales/hoarding strategies with the utmost reverence.
I indeed don't have any skin in the game, as I rejected the whole BTC paradigm as unsustainable the moment I read how it worked, and I consider taking money from suckers in the process of a bubble market to be morally repugnant so I don't touch BTC, I post here purely for Socratic reasons. A Bear is generally someone like Mat who is IN the market but expects it to go down so he can profit in the future, and I'm NOT nor will I ever be in the market so I'm not being a 'Bear' when I comment here, I'm more of a Gadfly. If Bears find what I say useful then so be it. I would fully expect BTC fanatics to me even more hostile towards me then they are to a true bear, your reaction is just another data-point to me and one that confirms my earlier post.
As for my predictions in chodpaba's thread, it was a perfectly reasonable prediction at the time, a bear market had been in place for months already and the similarities to the 2011 bear market were obvious to everyone. The prediction clearly failed for two simple reason.
The freezing more or less of USD withdraws from Mt.Gox, this fundamentally broke the exit route out of BTC and halted the market decline. Then a few months later the entrance of China into the market and a second 'hype-cycle' that started before the full capitulation of the bear market. As I said the price of BTC reflects the ability of buyers to buy up coins and adding a HUGE ravenous population of speculators able and willing to do just that will logically drive the market.