Bitcoin has gone through a number of narratives. A big one was the it was digital gold. Then, gold went up like crazy and bitcoin stagnated and people lost interest.
HN is very, very bitter about being there at the beginning of an interesting, fun, and promising technology that could have easily enriched them. Bitcoin and crypto is very on topic, but pricing not so much.
All it takes is one modest upward blip and it's price will "crash" to the moon. There is very little interest now, but FOMO is real and the moment it does something interesting many defenerate gamlblers will reconsider their disinterest.
Crypto investors are migrated to the newest unregulated speculative asset: the stock market.
I don’t know for certain but the amount of retail investing on vibes around AI companies and metals feels just like the crypto peaks. Just the other day Marvell jumped on the words of Jensen Huang and metal ETFs randomly lost tons of investment earlier this year.
Without a lot of the guardrails of the US regulatory apparatus that has been gutted by the current administration, the market is riff with manipulation. Truly another gilded age.
Bitcoin (and crypto at large) goes through these 4 year cycles repeatedly. Each time people claim its dead, "this time is different", etc etc. It peaked at the end of 2024 and now we're in mid 2026...traditionally near the bottom of the cycle. There IS someone in the White House now that seems hellbent on driving the global economy into the ground but until there's definitive evidence that this time really is different, I'm going to assume it's business as usual and people screaming about how its over is just the buy indicator it's been many times in the past.
Bitcoin doesn't really have any coherent reasoning behind it, that I can tell. Other investments I can have a theory (which may be wrong) and see it work. I can buy gold/silver to hedge weaker currency. I can believe a stock is going up (or the market in general). I can buy bonds. I can do Forex or Commodities based on whatever feeling if I really want to lose money. But Bitcoin doesn't really seem to correlate with anything.
I just finished the recently published The Alighty Dollar by Brendan Greeley [0]. It is a great story of the evolution of currency in general and the dollar specifically. It wraps up with a brief critique of crypto in general that I found interesting.
Here is a prediction about Bitcoin: there will be a financial crash at some point in the future, maybe it will be the AI bubble, maybe because of oil, shortages, something entirely unforeseen or some combination of those things, but if there is something to know about cycles is that crashes happens.
And because Bitcoin is now old enough that most people understand what it is, the hype has vanished, it won't survive the global fear or losing it all.
A financial bubble.. Like the one caused by the inflation of the dollar to unimaginable levels? 1/2 of all dollars in existance have been printed in the last 6 years.
I would much rather have hard asset like Bitcoin, that is backed by the biggest computer network that has ever existed, that has a hard cap of 200m, than Federal Reserve IOU notes that can be printed ad-infenitem with zero recourse from you and me other than being made more poor.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 46.4 ms ] threadIt fits my needs perfectly except for one critical issue --- it won't clean up food dropped on the floor.
Bitcoin is imaginary money. It works perfectly except for one critical issue --- it's not very good for purchasing stuff.
Bitcoin has about the same value as my imaginary dog.
It's still a store of value.. I guess?
I don’t know for certain but the amount of retail investing on vibes around AI companies and metals feels just like the crypto peaks. Just the other day Marvell jumped on the words of Jensen Huang and metal ETFs randomly lost tons of investment earlier this year.
Without a lot of the guardrails of the US regulatory apparatus that has been gutted by the current administration, the market is riff with manipulation. Truly another gilded age.
[0]https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634502/the-almighty...
And because Bitcoin is now old enough that most people understand what it is, the hype has vanished, it won't survive the global fear or losing it all.
I would much rather have hard asset like Bitcoin, that is backed by the biggest computer network that has ever existed, that has a hard cap of 200m, than Federal Reserve IOU notes that can be printed ad-infenitem with zero recourse from you and me other than being made more poor.