The myth that bitcoin is an effective store of value (aka "digital gold") has just died. The proof is available in your crypto wallet.
Real gold bullion has now been fully "digitized". You can buy and hold real bullion without taking delivery, without transactions fees and without dealing with tbe schenanigans of unregulated markets and manipulators.
Over the past year of unprecedented marketplace turmoil and upheaval, "real gold" has risen just as dramatically as "digital gold" has fallen.
Only one myth left standing in the way of bitcoin's total demise --- the idea that PoW is a reasonable and effective basis for financial markets/transactions. Are you willing to put real money on it?
But terms of amount-of-money that needed to be reinvested to bring it back to prior highs (let alone ever go like even 50% past its prior high) is significantly more this time.
Well the reason people buy bitcoin at 100k is because they think it will someday be worth a million. If it's never going to be worth a million, then it's not worth 100k either.
So a minus of about 45% from the all time high three months ago?
If this is it for this cycle, that would indicate the volatility of Bitcoin went down significantly.
Taking a look at the Bitcoin to USD price chart, I see roughly these numbers:
2013: $1,100 -> $238 = -78%
2017: $19,000 -> $3,500 = -82%
2021: $68,000 -> $16,000 = -76%
It will be interesting to watch if the volatility really stays this low suddenly. If so, one could point to the institutional adoption over the last years as the reason for this. When I ask Gemini for the number of public companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets over the last years, I get:
2023: 67
2024: 79
2025: 190
And a similar trend for Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs. Twice as many in 2025 than in 2023.
i used to think, well the 'serious' stuff is stocks, PMs, RE, etc., but crypto is a 'shitcoin', a 'gamble'.
but infact, it recently dawned on me, its (almost) the other way around. everything is a 'shitcoin'. your real estate is a 'shitcoin', and can get 'rugged' with crime rates, or tax band shifts, or legislative changes with the sole purpose of winning populist votes. stocks can (and have) been getting rugged. gold got rugged recently (although now recovered.) cash gets rugged with money printing (but everyone already knows that.)
for a long time i felt an implication that there's a 'safe house' for your resources, like in a video game, but at your choosing you can 'leave' the safe house for a risky win. but thinking about it more - that's a very 90s US-centric viewpoint of 'the end of history' - no, you can get absolutely screwed doing the 'right thing', playing 'smart'. you can do your homework and get deep fried anyway.
i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous?
It’s my personal belief that btc has been the currency of foreign influence operations ie for paying media figures to influence popular opinion and sentiments. I believe this can be most readily seen in the US right and maga. The messaging is all very consistent across YouTube, x, fox, news nation etc across weeks, months and years.
Brexit was a proof of concept, certainly it has spread.
After trying to trade the cycles I gave up and stuck some key currencies on a hard wallet put it somewhere safe and told my wife. My kids will either thanks me or wonder what the heck I was thinking in the future. Worth it for pure asymmetric payoff scenario and just to have some skin in the game. All imho and not advice!
Remember that bitcoin miners have to pay for electricity with real currencies, so they have to sell bitcoin regularly.
Most other bitcoin uses are balanced -- ie user buys bitcoin gives to dealer who sells it. When the number of transactions per day is going up this is slight buy pressure because of the time lag between buy & sell, but in a steady state system this is neutral.
IOW, the natural direction of bitcoin prices during steady state is down.
XMR has dropped about 50%, which means it’s back to November prices. (If you ignore the unusual January spike, it’s not even down that much, price is usually rising slowly over time.)
Since the maturation of XMR, I really don’t understand the popularity of Bitcoin except as a speculative asset. XMR is everything that BTC promised and failed to be, with real anonymity baked in. I’m not big on crypto, but it’s strange to see the continued focus on one of the least interesting technologies in the space.
Too difficult to audit the total supply, and tail emission.
Bitcoin is anonymous enough while remaining fully auditable (nobody secretly printing it out of thin air) and perfectly scarce.
If you think it's one of the least interesting technologies, then I suggest you don't understand the power of ideal scarcity in a liquid, digital asset
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] threadReal gold bullion has now been fully "digitized". You can buy and hold real bullion without taking delivery, without transactions fees and without dealing with tbe schenanigans of unregulated markets and manipulators.
Over the past year of unprecedented marketplace turmoil and upheaval, "real gold" has risen just as dramatically as "digital gold" has fallen.
Only one myth left standing in the way of bitcoin's total demise --- the idea that PoW is a reasonable and effective basis for financial markets/transactions. Are you willing to put real money on it?
(I dont own any bitcoin and believe the world would be a better place without cryptocurrencies)
But terms of amount-of-money that needed to be reinvested to bring it back to prior highs (let alone ever go like even 50% past its prior high) is significantly more this time.
If this is it for this cycle, that would indicate the volatility of Bitcoin went down significantly.
Taking a look at the Bitcoin to USD price chart, I see roughly these numbers:
2013: $1,100 -> $238 = -78%
2017: $19,000 -> $3,500 = -82%
2021: $68,000 -> $16,000 = -76%
It will be interesting to watch if the volatility really stays this low suddenly. If so, one could point to the institutional adoption over the last years as the reason for this. When I ask Gemini for the number of public companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets over the last years, I get:
2023: 67
2024: 79
2025: 190
And a similar trend for Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs. Twice as many in 2025 than in 2023.
i used to think, well the 'serious' stuff is stocks, PMs, RE, etc., but crypto is a 'shitcoin', a 'gamble'.
but infact, it recently dawned on me, its (almost) the other way around. everything is a 'shitcoin'. your real estate is a 'shitcoin', and can get 'rugged' with crime rates, or tax band shifts, or legislative changes with the sole purpose of winning populist votes. stocks can (and have) been getting rugged. gold got rugged recently (although now recovered.) cash gets rugged with money printing (but everyone already knows that.)
for a long time i felt an implication that there's a 'safe house' for your resources, like in a video game, but at your choosing you can 'leave' the safe house for a risky win. but thinking about it more - that's a very 90s US-centric viewpoint of 'the end of history' - no, you can get absolutely screwed doing the 'right thing', playing 'smart'. you can do your homework and get deep fried anyway.
i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous?
Brexit was a proof of concept, certainly it has spread.
Most other bitcoin uses are balanced -- ie user buys bitcoin gives to dealer who sells it. When the number of transactions per day is going up this is slight buy pressure because of the time lag between buy & sell, but in a steady state system this is neutral.
IOW, the natural direction of bitcoin prices during steady state is down.
Since the maturation of XMR, I really don’t understand the popularity of Bitcoin except as a speculative asset. XMR is everything that BTC promised and failed to be, with real anonymity baked in. I’m not big on crypto, but it’s strange to see the continued focus on one of the least interesting technologies in the space.
If you think it's one of the least interesting technologies, then I suggest you don't understand the power of ideal scarcity in a liquid, digital asset
Bitcoin gets a zero price target in wake of Burry warning
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907794