People who want to buy BCH have relatively unrestricted access to the market since most of the exchanges have reopened BTC deposits. (Of course, whether they can withdraw that BCH is another story entirely.) Most people who want to sell do not have access since BCH deposits are either not available or require multiple days worth of confirmations. Can you see the problem here?
You're saying that people buying BCH right now aren't aware that there's a huge glut of supply waiting to flood the market, and aren't taking this into account in their buying decisions?
There is no need for anyone to have BCH in hand today, no reason for someone to value a BCH today more than a BCH in a week. If they thought that thousands of people selling BCH once they are able will lead to a drop in price, they would just buy at the lower price.
I think the average cryptocurrency trader is much lower-information than you are estimating.
There are hundreds of rubes who see "Bitcoin Cash" and think that because it suddenly jumped to the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap, lots of people are talking about it, and its cheaper than Bitcoin, this could be their chance to get the elusive short-term 3x+ crypto ROI. Many of these people have no concept of the locked supply.
I'd estimate that roughly 1/4 of buyers are informed BCH proponents, the other 3/4 are low-information get-rich-quick hopeful speculators.
Pretty much. BCH bulls who find out about the supply issue have been assuming that it can't be that much of a big problem, that most people who wanted to sell must've done so by now anyway, and of course there's no way to tell how much supply is actually locked up. BCH bears are mostly irrelevant to the price since, unless they expected it to be worth enough to justify locking their BTC in less reputable exchanges during the fork, they can't actually sell yet. Anyone who isn't following the online discussions closely probably simply doesn't know about this - the news articles I've seen haven't mentioned that issue, and it took many hours for this information to even percolate through the discussions. Claims like "3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap" have been a lot more prominent everywhere. (Also, if you want an idea of what BCH supporters are thinking right now, the front page r/btc is currently a good place to look.)
Fair enough, we'll all find out in due course. The constant flow of comments where people are trying to equate this particular hard fork (the end result of a very long and messy civil war) with any old Joe creating his own BTC fork is clearly just grinding my gears a little too much. There's a reason to expect BCH to end up as more than just a boondoggle (to the extent that any cryptocurrency can be said to be more than just a boondoggle): Bitcoin with larger blocks has been desired by many people for a very long time.
The "it's priced in" argument doesn't hold for in my experience. The halving was supposedly "priced in" as well. This is still a small market with inexperienced players.
> You're saying that people buying BCH right now aren't aware that there's a huge glut of supply waiting to flood the market, and aren't taking this into account in their buying decisions?
Why do you think buyers even exist right now... with the tiny amounts available it's just as likely that it's a few people painting the ticker trading with themselves at more or less arbitrarily high prices.
