If that isn't what is really happening you have the makings of a great novel!
If too many people get rich it's just hyper inflation
Will be fun to look back on in a few years!
I think there's only a few thousand people/entities in the world that hold any substantial amount of bitcoin. The wealth concentration is obscene.
The velocity of fiat is another concern altogether. Once all this QE starts to move, look out. Could be a nasty bout of inflation.
- Big industrial miners must sale a big chunk of all the bitcoin mined to pay the bills. I don't know the numbers, but there's approximately 150 blocks of 25bitcoin every 24hours that are mined, which is 3750BTC. At 75% resale, that means approximately 2815BTC/day (no source for that, just guessing)
Folks seem to think many/most of these coins are sold on the exchanges and thus create selling pressure.
I strongly suspect the majority of newly-mined coins are purchased off-market by investors.
One interested sheik could fully absorb a large miner's output for years simply out of curiosity. Let alone hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, institutional money... governments etc.
If GABI really is going acquire $200M in BTC they are sure not buying on the open market. There are only so many early adopters, and most that were willing to sell have probably done so.
If large numbers of coins were being sold consistently on exchanges someone would have tagged them by now.
So I keep hearing this, but as far as price/market cap is concerned I do not believe the daily mining output has much impact.
- Merchants: When they accept Bitcoin as a payment, the companies like Coinbase sell those BTC immediately and pays back the merchant in fiat. This increases the number of BTC for sale.
This is another common sentiment. There is merit in the near term, but there are only so many early adopters.
I have trouble believing that the handful (a few hundred? a few thousand?) of folks with substantial holdings can create enough sales volume to impact market price through BTC conversions.
What are these folks buying? How many are there? Really, how much are they spending and how often?
Relative to the amount of BTC conversion that is required to drop/suppress the market price? Every day?
I suspect most early-adopter types that would qualify for this thought experiment already have the vast majority of material goods they want and are into occasional luxury purchases.
Not buying sheets off of Overstock. Daily.
So while I understand where this sentiment comes from, I don't buy it.
The vast majority of post-sale conversions will be/are netted out by the purchaser re-buying spent coins.