Surrender your plate to me

"Surrender to me" sounds like a corny line from a teen vampire movie. That is all.

Twice today I have read the word capitulation and while I know what it means in terms of market situation, I had never looked it up before. The etymology of words tends to give me a better visualization than a dictionary definition, which is why some of you might have noticed I use screen shots like this from time to time from etymologyonline:

While an agreement on specified terms, does sound fitting for market trading, it is the narrowed sense, "the making of terms of surrender; a yielding to an enemy upon stipulated terms." that is used when traders are losing faith in what they hold and sell. I think "losing faith" is a particularly good definition for crypto at the moment as essentially nearly all projects are built on faith alone, with very few having much that is tangible to show.

It is kind of like religious dogma that relies on support by pushing the belief in an afterlife that it will never have to prove to those who support it. The difference is of course that eventually, these projects will have to prove to supporters exactly why they should continue their patronage and not sell and go elsewhere. If a restaurant advertises the best steak in town and you go in and order and pay up front, you expect something to get cooked in the kitchen and brought to your table. Whether it is the best, or not is in the tasting - and preference.

However, it is interesting to think of sellers as those who surrender as it changes the frame a little, depending on where you stand. If we use those who give up on Steem as the example, what they are actually doing is surrendering to their fears that it will not deliver the kind of steak they want, when they want it and perhaps, the restaurant next door offers a better deal.

The problem is of course that all restaurants in the cryptosphere offer deals, but there is a great deal of uncertainty whether they even have a kitchen on premises or, if it is well-equipped enough to cater to needs for now and in the future. When it comes to waiting for food at a restaurant though, how long is too long, does it depend on if you have already paid and, what if it really is the best steak in town and they are just plating it up?

There are no waiters in crypto, and I mean of the restaurant kind. Instead of having someone who can head back into the kitchen and find out what is taking so long, you have to ask other patrons who are potentially just as clueless as you as they sit their and wait for their own meals to come.

While the restaurant is full, it is more likely that everyone is going to wait it out due to social convention, but once some people get frustrated at the wait and get up angrily and leave, shouting at the waiterless restaurant as they go, others can follow.

Would you stay, or would you surrender to the social movement?

Let's say you leave and walk out angrily cursing and lamenting paying upfront for a steak you never got and go next door to another restaurant. Would you ever go back to the first?

What if you stayed and while the wait was overly long, you soon enjoyed the best steak of your life? Would you tell anyone?

Now, the first person may hear from peers about how fantastic the restaurant that has the best steak in town is and when the question of wait time comes up, there is a different experience. Their friends inform them that there was trouble with equipment in the kitchen when they first opened, but now things are humming along splendidly with not only the best steak, but all the food, cocktails and service being brilliant. Would they try the restaurant again?

For the second person who opted to wait it out on that first night, they are the ones who have the option to drive social direction being among the few who have experience. This gives them some social capital.

But if people remember, a person who has a bad experience will spread it to more people than those who have a good experience, and this can be make or break for a restaurant. Does this translate into the crypto industry? Probably, at least early on, which is why people still talk about the hyperinflation on Steem - that hasn't existed since the very earliest days.

But as long as a restaurant can survive long enough, once it does start to gain some traction and clientele who have great experiences, love the food, the staff and the atmosphere, word of mouth spreads and people start to pour in the door and funnily enough, don't mind waiting to be seated.

Incentives drive behavior and while many people will say "I will never...", once there is adequate incentive to justify and reason doing that very thing, they will. Which is why so many people return to Steem time and time again, coincidentally when prices are climbing. What they have done is surrender again, this time to FOMO.

Do not ever underestimate the power that social proof can have on behavior to drive jumps onto the bandwagon. While many think that leaving is jumping off again, it really is just jumping on another, in the same way that the first person to leave the restaurant influences others to get up and leave too. There are costs to early adoption, as well as gains, and some people adopt the surrender stance too early, before the gains can be realized.

However, we all act on our own needs and position and some of us are hungrier than others, some have low blood sugar, some are just impatient and take every negative as a personal slight. It doesn't really matter if we stay or leave, follow others o take the lead - we all have to eat what is on our plate - even though we may have our eyes on another's.

But... if they surrender their plate to me...

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

Note: this might be a crappy analogy, but I had fun writing it :)

To note and bring some more awareness: 10% of the rewards of this post will go to @sbdpotato as part of the @ocd beneficiaries experiment. The "ocd community" is found under the #hive-174578 tag and you can join the community through the Beta site, https://beta.steemit.com/trending/hive-174578