If you own a large amount of a currency, you want to ensure that the currency in question is trusted, or otherwise that currency would end up losing its value. It is your greed that is guiding you, not your benevolence.
Eh, I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. Owning a bunch of ETH so you can set ETH on fire would be a waste of money, only so long as the person setting the fire didn’t value the mischief more than the ETH. I don’t see why nation states wouldn’t attack each other by burning down the crypto assets of citizens, either.
One problem with this - speculative assets are at least partially valuable because of their volatility - their ability to appreciate quickly. Even if eth is untrusted for long term value, so long as it has the potential to make money for someone in the short term it's going to continue to get transactions.
And, as always, sometimes folks just want to watch the world burn. It's a relatively low investment (~$50k) to become a validator, and the fine's only about $7k (.5 eth).
Imagine the damage someone with a few million (say, some baby-boomer who just sold their California duplex) could do if they wanted to.
thanks, I work at a financial institution, so I "Googled" it a few times, short selling is based on borrowing the underlying securities - not owning them - or alternatively owning a(n often bespoke) derivative, related to those securities, which behaves as a short.
Not really, you can be long in one market, and short in the derivatives market, and your net position be short. You'd be holding eth, but you'd be short.