What I take from this (and I think I really should invest my own time in researching more on) is psychology. People want to protect their investments. But beca

What I take from this (and I think I really should invest my own time in researching more on) is psychology. People want to protect their investments. But because we are talking about money, don't confuse this for meaning that the investments are just about money. Investments in code contributions, investments in all the articles read, investments in community, friends, social networking, investments in belief systems, investment in the justification for choosing one thing rather than another. It's simply not consistent to say "oh you only have 20BTC, so you've nothing to lose" or "oh, you made no code contributions, so why are you complaining" as both ignore the potential for massive psychological and personal investments. All these investments act as a barrier to change. It hurts, it hurts physically to lose big investments. There is a cost benefit analysis that humans perform internally. Is the hurt of losing this investment now worse than the pain by keeping the investment later. If we go back to the article, we see Mike repeatedly tell us that Bitcoin is an experiment. He is saying to us now "look, don't invest your time, effort and money into it" - and he is telling himself "I have made the change, I have accepted a loss by investing so much of my time and effort into this, and am moving on".