I like how 15 years on, we're not even pretending that blockchain has practical uses besides buying drugs and gambling.

There's a certain refreshing clarity in this current kleptocratic moment - everyone is just openly engaged in fraud. Okay, I guess that's better than pretending they weren't.

I disagreed with that as well. There is no technical content in a finance publication playing the price change horserace.

Do you think we could convince hypothetical AGIs to buy NFTs? Since they're not embodied (or at least not limited to one body), it might be the only way they could really properly indulge in fine art speculation.

"An AI can't smell a painting, but it can smell an NFT"

I would say the same thing about stories purely about AI company stock price changes, but I imagine that is a losing battle here.

I'm well aware it's not a guarantee of future returns but as I said in my original message, this is a well established pattern. Until there's definitive evidence that it has stopped acting according to that pattern I'm going to disregard the "it's dead for real this time" crowd.

"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes"

lets's come back to this one year from now and see if it bottoms around Oct 6

I'm not a TA nerd, but there is a very clear pattern that has been established. Crypto moves in cycles. You don't need to draw a ton of triangles and lines all over a chart to see the cycle this has gone through over and over.

The difference is that bitcoin is the purest form of fiat currency: it has no value beyond social consensus — nobody has aesthetic or industrial uses for random hash digests — whereas silver and gold have innate value. Even though precious metal prices are higher than could be supported based on industrial / jewelry demand alone, that provides a floor which Bitcoin simply does not have.

Gold/Silver tend to increase in price when cash loses value, and drops when cash gains value. I am not saying I believe they are inherently valuable, but there is some kind of cause and effect that is displayed in the market. I can find no cause and effect in bitcoin.

It's no more illogical, but it's also not much less illogical. Either is an unforgeable, limited token of arbitrary value.

Being digital, Bitcoin has some nice properties that precious metals don't, but we stopped using precious metals as the foundation of the economy decades ago. The idea remains popular with a certain set of ideologues who want to make their cash holdings the basis of the financial system, but that's much too inflexible to run a modern economy.

Economists overwhelmingly believe that they need currency control to manage irrational market speculation. Technologists frequently cite a small number of economists who disagree, and while truth is not a democracy, but it's wise to be suspicious when one's choice of experts just happens to affirm the things that benefit you personally.

tl;dr: There could be a place for blockchain, but BTC is based on a bunch of self-imagined revolutionaries who don't know how to manage an economy.

Is bitcoin a commodity? What’s driving the cyclical nature of the price discovery for entries on a global ledger?

You could look at only two niche blockchains, QRL and ABEL, and they are both affected. Algorand is the most established L1 with a quite developed migration plan (https://algorand.co/technology/post-quantum) but also not really thriving. I think for Bitcoin in the longterm it is a massive risk psychologically, because what to do with all of the locked in value, that cannot be migrated. My guess is that the market panics and security breaks down, because it is not worth it anymore to run that many nodes. Best time to buy would be then and hope it recovers. It is actually a big chance to move just to another L1 which migrates. Those risks are all priced in.

Another idea is big players pulling out of the crypto market and putting it into the LLM market.

How low will it go in this cycle by your estimates? In my estimate not much lower than that. Baring any catastrophic event, like a pandemic.

I use USD to pay for things several times a day. Sometimes many times a day. Something that in comparison works only "several times a month" fits the criteria of not being very good at it.

Are you paying Strait of Hormuz passage fees, perchance?

Value can only teleport if someone is willing to trade traditional currency in exchange on the other side. My no international fee bank account also teleports value across the globe instantly and more merchants are willing to accept it than Bitcoin.

> Your imaginary dog can’t teleport value across the globe instantly, but Bitcoin can.

"Someone can instantly and permanently steal your beloved dog and you'll never see it again" is a downside.

That's only because many people share the mental image of the imaginary dog.

Don't forget the flagrant use by politicians to grift their supporters and/or receive money that would otherwise be illegal to do so from foreign actors through it.

Truly amazing that the tech elite have replicated everything wrong with the existing financial system while not managing to get any of the actual good, useful parts.

Your sweatshirt was made in a factory by maybe 10 people.

Bitcoin has tens of thousands of people running nodes, mining, and is the largest collective CPU compute that has ever existed.

And will certainly outlive your sweatshirts

People will come up with whatever narrative for Bitcoin. Bears sound smart but in the end bulls make the money

That's what kevlar gloves are for.