people with large volume of testnet coins like yourself give it out and advice the receiver to return it once they're done testing their apps. Since many of them may not return it anymore due to the value it's attracting in marketplaces
Very few people return free Testnet coins. The ideology that they are worthless contributed to the scarcity in v3.
If you live in America, drive around a Walmart parking lot vs an Aldi parking lot (grocery stores) and see which one has more carts not put up. Walmart gives carts out for free and Aldi requires a 25-cent deposit that is refunded when you put your cart back. Walmarts parking lot is generally a shit show... where as Aldi has the customers bringing the cart back to the front door for their quarter back + customers/kids/bums patrolling the parking lot for carts to put up to get a free quarter. That little quarter appears to go a long way.
it derails the test coin circulation.
I argue that it improves circulation and contributes to a greater amount of testing, as well as more users.
Faucets are running dry and
developers are sending dust from their +9,000 v3 TBTC stashes. This seems more derailing than offering a way to circulate Testnet to people who need or want it.
I don't live in the US, but your business model implies similar strategy as the Aldi grocery store, to help the returning of Bitcoin testnet due to the value surrounding it on your exchange. I forgot to mention it on my first response, so it's kind of deposit certain cents before getting the testnet and then come take it back once it's returned. Instead of leaving it dormant and untouched after usage people can sell it so others get to see it next time to purchase.
It's your world now, you make the prices what you want it to be, but why is it scarce actually, I'd still argue that it's not because people didn't return free gotten testnets. One user above said it's easy to mine, to tackle your kind of business model developers can gather enough of it and circulate for free to users. Imagine a platform with your kind of traffic giving out a substantial amount of testnet completely for free. Do you think it'll make you more money?
I'm also curious about the Bitcoin testnet box that's run on the Bitcoin core regtest mode, why is a lot of users not going for it? And create blocks manually to earn rewards about 50tbtc per block I guess so. It's clear that everyone else who are not testing projects are testing users too.
Lastly, you having to share that thread here is quite funny, I read it when it was published, and didn't know about you selling testnets, and it got me wondering why you didn't ask for testnet like the other members did, now I understand that developers now know of you, and may decline testnet coin request coming through you, do you see it as a challenge?