Siacoin is going to be so different from all other coins for so many reasons including speculation. It was intentionally designed this way
to not have large speculative traits. Certainly we are at the beginning and it must surely rise in price unless its a failure.
First of all i dont see any reason not to compare it with other minable coins like DASH/DarkCoin.
Miners, Devs, buy / sell pressure - we can learn from history here and see:
If the coin provides use (anon payment for dash) then it will gain value.
Another thing is the first movers advantage, which is quite strong and which is why bitcoin is still around.
(Seen any other non coins beeing successful? no - only for short times at 1/10 of what dash is).
I really dont see any point, which indicates it to be designed not to have large speculative traits.
Even the fees can be compared to other networks, at which they are paid to miners or holders (PoS) and most likely sold.
If all goes well and Sia has a large user base with lots of demand for storage then there will be big buy pressure. But it will also have
equally if not more selling pressure. This is intentional I believe. Not even the founders believe Siacoins themselves will be worth a ton.
After the initial rise and price discovery Siacoin will find a consistent price parity I believe based on the storage market. So buying for
speculation will not be an avenue.
The miners mine and sell right away, who buys? The people who rent storage. Those people take these newly bought Siacoins and
right away give them to hosts who provide them the storage. The hosts take these coins and sell them again to people who are
going to use them to rent storage.
I totally disagree on this part. If Siacoin will be successful storage-renting-wise, then it will be because of miners and traders.
They shift attention to it. As more miners and traders focus sia (and generate volume on exchanges), this will pull in even more traders etc.
This increased attention might lead to more people using the storage. So the renting - at least for the first months - will only create
ADDITIONAL buying pressure or reason not to dump coins. I have an example of someone mining and holding some of the coins in order
to upload files lateron.
Now these same hosts who get paid Siacoins from renters also get 3.9% of this payment subtracted as a fee to siafunds. The devs
who hold the majority of Siafunds in turn take these Siacoins and immediately I would imagine turn them into btc or dollars to pay
for their employees which will hopefully be in the hundreds soon. So from Nebulous alone there will be a constant sell pressure which was
the point of Siafunds. Sia is different. The devs are incorporated and their company Nebulous has "Googleesque" aspirations. Now imagine
a coin that is backed by Millions in income for development money and time.
In order for Sia to grow in users it needs money to develop faster. In order to develop faster it needs people to rent a lot of
storage. But how do you get people to trust and use Sia storage without professional polish and stability? Thats why now, the
beginning is crucial. With not a lot of money the dev team have to make Sia Superman strong, reliable and sexy with less money
and more work.
So price speculation is relevant now. But its not going to be like bitcoin where you hope in 3 years it has over a Billion MC. Imo
thats not going to happen. (But I'm usually wrong)
This is why siafunds is the real investment with huge possible rewards. If the storage rental aspect of Sia catches on then Siafunds
create a consistent income in the small fee hosts pay forever. Siacoins will always be just simple income, like dollars. Nobody buys dollars
hoping for 10x return. People earn dollars to buy stuff. Renting out storage and mining earns you Siacoins which will
always be worth x amount of bitcoins or dollars which in turn buys you stuff and pays your bills.
So what I'm trying to say is holding Siacoins for speculation is silly. Sell some now, sell some later when it goes up (maybe who knows).
But it ain't a hoarding coin, its a circulation coin.
Of course development will be important. Yet thats the same for all coins and blockchain services.
On this block of analysis you try to point out the value of siafunds compared to siacoins.
What you miss is: If siacoins are not worth alot, then holding 1 siafund out of 10000 gaining 3,9% of the renting fees will also generate siacoins that are not worth alot.
Whenever you attract as many people to use sia for renting, you will definately also attract a few collectors and investors, that buy and hold, which will lead to an increase in value of sia.
So we have the following chain:
--> If the tech of cloud hosting on sia works (which it does, tho polishing is required)
--> traders and investors will shift attention to it (think about adding it to an exchange and it getting high volume)
--> more people might actually use the renting
To think that sia initially will gain alot attention among people not comming from the coin-community (miners, traders) early on is very unlikely.
So siacoin beeing successful is a precondition for siafunds to be successful.
I like that people bought siafunds to support the development - of course - but calling it the real investment is wayy too unlikely compared to siacoin
To put it more simple. Whenever the rewards of siafunds will earn you a ball of icecream, my holdings of siacoins have paid out several trips around the world.
Do the math: 1 siafund at 1/10000 of 3,9% of fees will earn you a total of 0,0000039x of all fees.
So in order for it to ROI, you would roughly 140000 worth of btc = 31,5 million usd spent on renting.
Whenever that happens the coins themselves have ROIed AGES ago.
