Bitcoin was not much in the public consciousness by then. It was trading at ~$10, mainly on MTGOX. It's likely its transaction volume was much lower than other non-crypto digital assets (and MTG cards) at the time.
Bitcoin was not much in the public consciousness by then. It was trading at ~$10, mainly on MTGOX. It's likely its transaction volume was much lower than other non-crypto digital assets (and MTG cards) at the time.
2011 is when it had its first big public boom - and bust, accompanied by even generalist press reporting on it.
And the nerds at Valve would have been *in particular* aware of it. So causality is more likely to be reversed in that example.
You claiming that Valve hired an economist to study digital scarcity, not because of Valve's booming ingame economies, but because Bitcoin was at $10. Sure.