Why Bitcoin is the Furthest Thing from a Bubble
Every few months, someone declares Bitcoin dead. They call it a bubble. A tulip mania for the digital age. A speculative frenzy destined to collapse.
They are wrong. And here is why.
The Nature of Bubbles
A bubble occurs when the price of an asset becomes completely disconnected from its underlying value. Dutch tulips in the 1600s. Dot com stocks in the late 1990s. American real estate in 2008. In each case, speculation drove prices far beyond any rational assessment of worth.
But here is the critical question: What is the underlying value of a currency that is trustless, decentralized, resides on a public ledger, and whose record keeping is utterly immutable?
The answer is: potentially limitless.
Why Bitcoin is Different
Bitcoin is not a company that can go bankrupt. It is not a stock that depends on quarterly earnings. It is not a commodity that can be manufactured in greater quantities when prices rise.
Bitcoin is a protocol. A system. A new way of organizing trust in human society.
Consider what Bitcoin actually represents:
- Scarcity that cannot be manipulated. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. No central bank can print more. No government can inflate it away. This is mathematical certainty, not political promise.
- Transactions that cannot be reversed or censored. Once confirmed, a Bitcoin transaction is permanent. No authority can freeze your account, reverse your payment, or tell you who you can and cannot transact with.
- A ledger that cannot be falsified. Every Bitcoin transaction since 2009 is recorded on a public blockchain that anyone can verify. This is radical transparency on a scale never before possible.
- Value that cannot be confiscated. If you hold your own keys, your Bitcoin cannot be seized. You can carry a billion dollars in your head across any border on Earth.
The Real Question
The question is not whether Bitcoin is in a bubble. The question is whether these properties have value.
Ask someone in Venezuela watching their currency collapse. Ask someone in China who cannot move their wealth out of the country. Ask someone in Canada whose bank account was frozen for political reasons. Ask someone in Nigeria trying to receive money from family abroad.
For billions of people around the world, the ability to store and transfer value without permission from governments or banks is not a speculative novelty. It is a lifeline.
The Bambi and Godzilla Dynamic
Throughout the history of fiat currency, the relationship between individuals and central banks has been fundamentally unequal. We have been Bambi. They have been Godzilla.
When it comes to your wealth, do not be Bambi. Be Godzilla.
Central banks can print money at will, diluting the value of your savings. They can set interest rates that benefit borrowers at the expense of savers. They can implement policies that cause inflation, deflation, or currency collapse. And you have no say in any of it.
Bitcoin changes this dynamic. For the first time in human history, individuals have access to a form of money that no institution controls. This is not a bubble. This is a revolution.
The Volatility Misconception
Critics point to Bitcoin's price volatility as evidence of its bubble nature. But volatility is not the same as a bubble. Volatility is what happens when a new asset class is being discovered and priced by the market.
Amazon stock fell 95% from its peak during the dot com crash. Was e-commerce a bubble? Or was it a transformative technology going through painful price discovery?
Bitcoin's volatility will decrease over time as adoption increases and markets mature. But its fundamental properties will remain unchanged. The code does not care about the price.
What the Critics Miss
Every critique of Bitcoin ultimately comes down to a failure of imagination. Critics cannot conceive of a world where money is not controlled by governments. They cannot imagine billions of people choosing to opt out of traditional financial systems. They cannot see the inevitability of digital native money in a digital native world.
But the world is changing. The generation growing up today has never known a world without the internet, without smartphones, without social media. To them, the idea that money should also be digital, global, and permissionless is not radical. It is obvious.
The Long View
I discovered Bitcoin in 2014. I have watched it be declared dead hundreds of times. I have seen the price crash 80% or more on multiple occasions. And I have watched it recover, grow, and gain adoption each time.
Bitcoin is not going away. The genie is out of the bottle. The idea of decentralized, trustless money cannot be unlearned. Every day, more people around the world discover that they no longer need permission to participate in the global economy.
This is not a bubble. This is the future of money being built in real time.
And you have a choice: You can be Bambi, at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Or you can be Godzilla, sovereign over your own financial destiny.
Choose wisely.