> the world is full of people who feel very different paying $100.00 vs $99.99
Agree, though that effect is not constrained to Bitcoin. Retail orders, for instance, follow Benford's law. This is despite well-documented psychological biases towards e.g. certain digits, whole numbers, round numbers, et cetera [1]. Benford's law [2] derives from deeper mechanics.
As you point out, however, a better control would have been not all prices in public stocks, but retail orders.
Liquid retail stocks follow Benford's law because there is a notion of intrinsic value from the company and an army of quant traders trying to exploit any price inefficiency caused by the retail traders.
With cryptocurrency, the market is less mature and the intrinsic value largely comes from people believing in its value. So really, it would be surprising if we didn't see some Benford's law anomalies associated with people picking numbers.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion; the links above have given me stuff to chew on and calmed the red mist after I got so many drive-by downvotes.
With cryptocurrency, the market is less mature and the intrinsic value largely comes from people believing in its value. So really, it would be surprising if we didn't see some Benford's law anomalies associated with people picking numbers.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion; the links above have given me stuff to chew on and calmed the red mist after I got so many drive-by downvotes.