These guys making sidechains are extremely vested in bitcoin. I am sure they all have huge stashes and are doing this to protect their investment.
"Huge stashes" is a bad assumption. Tweet from Jeff Garzik earlier this year:
"As such, I dare to do what few if any others do: My #bitcoin balance is 348.006 BTC."
I'm guessing other frequent contributors have this mindset:
I'm investing a lot of time into this, because it is interesting, fun, potentially world-changing, and might be good for my career.
Since I'm investing so much time and expertise, I'm not going to invest a lot of my hard-earned money-- I see how risky Bitcoin is, and I'm not willing to "go all in" with both my time AND my savings.
And I'm sure lots of early adopters thought:
I bought 100 BTC at $1. They are now $10. I would be an idiot not to cash out half of them and lock in that insane, 10x return. I'll keep 50 just in case the price ever goes to $100.
Thanks for this post. I am glad that you seem to have a very level-headed perspective on Bitcoin. Thank you for all that you do for this experiment!