Thu Jul 20, 2017 5:43 pm
People like giving and getting gifts. When you give a gift and when you receive a gift, it triggers pleasure centres in your brain. This happens even if the gift is trivial and tiny. For example, it's been shown that waitresses who give you a gift of a few candies with your restaurant bill get tipped a few percentage points higher on average!
When an asset isn't worth much, gift giving is fun and easy because you don't feel like you're losing anything, but you're still making someone else happy. As the asset appreciates, the sense that you're losing something becomes larger and you're less apt to give merely for the sake of giving. Sad but true.
There's still a vibrant donation economy in smaller cryptos, but probably not for BTC anymore. It's moving into the realm of actual significant charity donations as a currency.