he doesn't trade anything...at least I haven't read anything from him that has even the slightest bit of substance
Nah, that's the wrong take my friend. BTC will exist as long as it fulfills it's purpose. As long as you can transact on chain and the network is large enough, BTC will not go away. It has way too many advantages to for it to just go up in flames. The pandoras box has been opened and it cannot be closed anymore
This whole bubble episode has been fascinating to see in real time. One would think that instant access to unlimited information, and ample documentation of past financial manias, would have resulted in some kind of collective learning over time. Obviously this hasn't been the case, if anything just the opposite. It wasn't an entirely new paradigm, but hopefully everyone here enjoyed the ride and made some cash off the diamond hands crew.
I think you have to consider the actions of the FED here. They are raising rates like crazy, trying to undue the damage done since not only the March 2020 lows, but also since 2008. If the governments were going to stop printing and let the market decide everything, I could see a case for bitcoin being irrelevant. But we all know its only a matter of time until the FED is forced to help the markets yet again. If you consider the market was at 2200 in March 2020, and bitcoin was at 4k, those are important levels in my opinion. Neither will get that low I don't think, but only because of intervention. The fact of the matter is, the economy is toast without money printing. Government spending is a high percentage of the GDP, and debt servicing means they will have to keep printing. The only other option is default, or hyperinflation. Both are extremely bad, so its going to be gradual and sustained inflation. The inflation is at 1980 highs, and yet rates are 10% of what they were. There is no way for the current monetary system to ever get back to normal until you reset it to something else. This I am sure of. But the FED decided to be tough for now, so we see everything dropping. It does really suck to see bitcoin dropping, but honestly, when you consider everything else, its holding up quite well. When you see what happens with Luna, or Solana and outages, or even this Celcius yield farming fiasco, you see the power of self custody. Bitcoin will absolutely shine going forward, and the government through their reckless actions will make sure of this.
It's entirely possible that things will pick up again once the Fed starts re-inflating. After all, crypto is just a digital casino, and the bricks-and-mortar variety still see plenty of traffic.
I agree with you, the increasing value of Bitcoin is due to the continued adoption and network growth I gave a $ price target that I know BTC will never go to unless the network and adoption have completely collapsed, due to a Black Swan I cannot see or imagine today
A follow up to this is that one day, there will be a major piece of news that I think will instantly shoot the price of bitcoin very high. If I am to believe the data I read about how much bitcoin is going from exchanges to cold storage, and how many more wallets are always being added, you can see its not going away. The better the price gets, the more people get in. The best thing for bitcoin is for everyone to have a little piece. If all you have is thousands of whales with 1,000+ coins each, then mass adoption is limited. But the more and more people that have a little piece, the more and more it goes to being the world reserve asset. I don't see these numbers dropping. The only shitty thing about a 25k bitcoin is that I could have had twice as much instead of what I have from my average of maybe about 50k. All the selling is I think forced sellers, or people who are actively trading it. But like I say, one piece of news one day will shoot the price to the moon, and unless you chase it, which most won't do, it will only get more and more expensive. All of the crypto world outside of bitcoin going down hard will make the adoption for bitcoin just that much stronger.
I agree with that definition. But I wonder at what point mining isn't profitable. Once all the bitcoin is mined the miners will be paid in fees. With miners being paid less at the next halving is there a point that miners will quit. Any chanch of miners getting organized and holding the bitcoin community for ransom?