Greed and centralization holding back BTC.

[Xrim]

I will begin with admitting that I am an idealist.
When I first heard of BTC in 2011 I thought that this was the best thing that had happened to economics since the first man made a trade with another. Now we where on the way to something new and grand. Freedom to send resources in an instant to whoever I wished, and no one could object, apply rules, take fees or interfere.
I mined all I could with my old graphic card, but this crush only lasted one month. People got greedy, discussion about how to maximize profit and how high BTC would rise dominated many forums.
Then the crash came, I was disappointed. I encrypted my wallet file and stored it away in my backup system, thinking, in a few years it might be different. And a month ago I started to hear people buzz about BTC again. - YES! This might go public and people might understand that this might be the key to economic freedom.
And so it was! For a few days at least, people bought BTC and it was starting to make a serious public entrance. But this drove the price up, madly. And somewhere on the way people got greedy again, really greedy. Everything was about "the next ATH", it was bulls vs. bears, bets where made on when it would pass 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 1000.
Instead we should have discussed how we could make this more available for the average Joe, support shops and find new ways to evolve this.

And here is why I posted this in speculation:
A few individuals sitting with a huge amount of BTC saw the circus and waited (and probably helped) for BTC to hit a nice big round number. And so it passed 250 USD, and it was time to repeat the circus again. They sold off a lot of BTC and hit mtGox with  DDOS to prevent people to interfere and in the same time create panic. So they sold all time high and bought back low. Now they are sitting with a huge amount of cash and a huge amount of BTC. And we helped them with greed and panic.

So what am I trying to say?
Well, we need to support and cultivate BTC, use it! Don't sit watching charts at MtGox, buy things. Give some away to friends so they can get involved.
If you are to exchange BTC for fiat, use other exchanges than MtGox, having exchanges spread out will make things harder to create panic through DDOS. We need to decentralize, not applying the same infrastructure as the current fiat economic system we have today.
And DON'T PANIC the next time (yes, they think we are stupid and will try the same trick again on us)! Just remember that they are selling! Nothing else, and when the day comes, then we just buy out their BTC and say thank you. They will lose part of their power to manipulate the market.

I am not an early adopter, I got 2.69435119 BTC in my wallet, I mine at 300Mhash/s. But I will use what resources I have to get this going. I will not close down my mining and encrypt my wallet file and store it away, not this time!

/X

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[b!z]

Another dream that will be shattered..

[Qoheleth]

There's a funny quote from Warren Buffet about the lopsided rewards of expertise in modern markets - about how we have "an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions." It might be part of why, in a foetal economy such as this, so many people ignore the things that will make the economy real in favor of being Rio Grande navigators.

That said, I'm working on the decentralization part, and trying to put my money where my mouth is on the "spend your coins" part. The fact that I can order local delivery food for BTC is helping on that count - the more stuff you can buy with your coins that everyone needs, the easier it'll be for people to spend them instead of cashing out, and the easier it'll be for second-stage adoption - people taking payment in BTC and spending them as BTC - to begin in earnest.