But is that $10 profit going to be worth the risk of default when an investor could get a satisfactory return by just sitting on the money in the first place? W

But is that $10 profit going to be worth the risk of default when an investor could get a satisfactory return by just sitting on the money in the first place? What incentive does an investor have to take bets and possibly lose thousands or millions of dollars when his money appreciates considerably without doing anything? People loans each other bitcoin in the bitcoin economy all the time, abiet with high interest rate. if everyone is forgoing their metaphorical pizza in the hope of exponential growth in currency value, the market will be unusable. The demand for pizza will be low, but not zero, because the desire for pizza competes with desire for monetary profit. At some point in the future, people decides that the waiting is enough, and they will buy pizza as reward for all their patience.