But as they say, past history is no indication of future performance.
Current economic conditions are anything but "normal" by recent historical standards. A good indication of this is the fact that "real gold" has risen just as dramatically and at the same time as "digital gold" has fallen.
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.
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.
As others have pointed out, it also runs up less in percentage terms during the resurgence. If, as you posit, Bitcoin is becoming less volatile, then the question will be what the demand looks like when it is no longer a way of getting exposure to potential large upside. In other words, a lot of people have bought it in the hope that it will double or more. How many will buy it in the hope that it doesn't go down? Perhaps it will happen, but it's not obvious.
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.
The Bitcoin genesis is certainly unclear; a FLOSS project is proudly published by those who create it and certainly don't want to remain anonymous, but the super-value of BTC over time has been driven by substantial criminal activities, not exactly US nor pro-US. The first ones were indeed US "ally", the D-Company that sold drugs for BTC to arm Al-Qaeda by selling BTC for weapons and explosives, which the sellers were happy to accept because they could sell them for various nations' fiat currencies to D-Company customers, laundering it well and without having to carry around pallets of unmarked bills, which are easy to seize during travel. Yes, Al-Qaeda was pro-US kleptocracy, certainly not pro-American people, see https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/c...
But then China also used them to smuggle Fentanyl into the US, and this late revenge against the East India companies that invaded it with opium so long ago, on the wrong subject (since it was the UK that started the Opium War and the US helped and was largely helped by China, which paid for e.g. the development of the railway networks in the US, a history forgotten by most), it proved that BTC as a tool is neutral. Its use by Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea confirms this.
So I suspend judgment, I don't trust the genesis, I read and encounter various problems https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html but I am not completely convinced by your analysis and honestly, I am very much in favor of the end of the banking system and the current financial model for the development of humanity, and it matters little who brings about this event; they are the enemy of my enemy in any case.
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.
Unlike other goods with some real worth (like a tulip), you can apply your correct observation all the way to a cent if you exclude illicit uses of Bitcoin.
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
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?
I’m a crypto skeptic but the benefit of bitcoin over gold has never been ease of transaction. The benefit is that regulators and governments are generally unable to confiscate bitcoin. The same is not true of gold, particularly if you do not take final delivery.
Over the last ten years gold is up about 5x and bitcoin up about 200x. The fact it's has a wobble doesn't prove it's all over. See Bitcoin Obituaries for the other 400 odd times people have claimed that, the first being when it was 23 cents.
Having an app that tells you that you have a thing is not the same as physically having the thing. Owning gold in that sense is no different than owning bitcoin: They both rely on a societal fiction that you can actually get the value of the asset when you expect that you can. In other words: The presence of a reliable financial and legal system is what makes the myth real for both assets.
We forget that the idea that the gold could be “further away from”/“not actually in the physical possession of” the human who “owns” was not universally accepted at all points in history. In a weird way, bitcoin is more forthright in that it says out loud “trust me this is valuable because we all agree it just is” where non-custodial ownership of gold tries to imply that there’s less need for this trust because there’s an actual shiny rock on the planet somewhere and humans have a history of valuing shiny rocks.
Ultimately it seems like it’s the “trust” part that mostly matters. Bitcoin is certainly harder to trust at the moment. But gold is rallying because there is less trust overall. That’s not good for either asset.
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.
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!
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?
Well, it would depend greatly on which real estate you mean. There are empty cities in China which testify that real estate can, in fact, be very risky, but most real estate is not like that.
Lots of other places where it is certainly not safe, but in the end you can at least use it as a place to live (unlike the Chinese ghost cities), whereas Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic use (even T-bills can be used to pay government debt such as taxes).
> i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous?
You can look at past statistics and volatility. The answer is clearly that Bitcoin is far more risky on average. This is an objective question with an objective answer.
rugged doesn't seem the right word. A rug pull represents the person creating and controlling a thing deciding to reveal it to be a scam and cash in at the expense of the suckers. Things like that tend to be illegal in the analogs you talk about.
browningstreet|21 days ago
jqpabc123|21 days ago
But as they say, past history is no indication of future performance.
Current economic conditions are anything but "normal" by recent historical standards. A good indication of this is the fact that "real gold" has risen just as dramatically and at the same time as "digital gold" has fallen.
ekjhgkejhgk|21 days ago
zug_zug|20 days ago
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.
simmerup|21 days ago
You can’t pump bitcoin with monopoly money forever, because the liquidity becomes too small
joshuahedlund|21 days ago
2OEH8eoCRo0|21 days ago
throwa356262|21 days ago
(I dont own any bitcoin and believe the world would be a better place without cryptocurrencies)
webdevver|21 days ago
ArtTimeInvestor|21 days 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.
rossdavidh|21 days ago
throwaway1492|21 days ago
Brexit was a proof of concept, certainly it has spread.
kkfx|21 days ago
But then China also used them to smuggle Fentanyl into the US, and this late revenge against the East India companies that invaded it with opium so long ago, on the wrong subject (since it was the UK that started the Opium War and the US helped and was largely helped by China, which paid for e.g. the development of the railway networks in the US, a history forgotten by most), it proved that BTC as a tool is neutral. Its use by Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea confirms this.
So I suspend judgment, I don't trust the genesis, I read and encounter various problems https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html but I am not completely convinced by your analysis and honestly, I am very much in favor of the end of the banking system and the current financial model for the development of humanity, and it matters little who brings about this event; they are the enemy of my enemy in any case.
fallingfrog|21 days ago
glimshe|21 days ago
iamnothere|21 days ago
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.
npoc|20 days ago
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
jqpabc123|21 days ago
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?
derektank|21 days ago
seydor|21 days ago
tim333|21 days ago
mothballed|21 days ago
Not your vault, not your gold.
jt2190|21 days ago
We forget that the idea that the gold could be “further away from”/“not actually in the physical possession of” the human who “owns” was not universally accepted at all points in history. In a weird way, bitcoin is more forthright in that it says out loud “trust me this is valuable because we all agree it just is” where non-custodial ownership of gold tries to imply that there’s less need for this trust because there’s an actual shiny rock on the planet somewhere and humans have a history of valuing shiny rocks.
Ultimately it seems like it’s the “trust” part that mostly matters. Bitcoin is certainly harder to trust at the moment. But gold is rallying because there is less trust overall. That’s not good for either asset.
xnx|21 days ago
asciii|21 days ago
bryanlarsen|21 days ago
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.
D13Fd|21 days ago
ChrisArchitect|21 days ago
Bitcoin gets a zero price target in wake of Burry warning
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907794
ChrisArchitect|21 days ago
rich_sasha|21 days ago
saxin|15 days ago
monkeydust|21 days ago
oompydoompy74|21 days ago
webdevver|21 days ago
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?
rossdavidh|21 days ago
Lots of other places where it is certainly not safe, but in the end you can at least use it as a place to live (unlike the Chinese ghost cities), whereas Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic use (even T-bills can be used to pay government debt such as taxes).
crazygringo|21 days ago
You can look at past statistics and volatility. The answer is clearly that Bitcoin is far more risky on average. This is an objective question with an objective answer.
jezzamon|21 days ago
jsjohnst|21 days ago
Both can have wild swings in valuation, but at the end of the day, you still hold something by owning real estate.
fortranfiend|20 days ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0|21 days ago
skc|21 days ago