Weekly Blog #24
“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Mark Twain (paraphrased)
Every time crypto sells off hard, the same declaration gets dusted off: “This time it’s different. Crypto (or tech stocks, real estate, precious metals, etc.) is dead.” And yet here we are again, still talking about it.
Bitcoin has been declared dead more times than disco, yet it stubbornly refuses to stay buried. That alone should tell us something important—not that crypto is flawless or inevitable, but that it taps into deeper economic and technological forces that aren’t going away anytime soon.
To understand where crypto may be headed, it helps to start with where it came from. Bitcoin emerged in 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis. Trust in banks, governments, and central bankers was shattered—and for good reason. Against that backdrop, an anonymous developer (or group) known as Satoshi Nakamoto launched a peer-to-peer, decentralized digital asset with a fixed supply and no reliance on any sovereign authority.
That origin story matters. Bitcoin wasn’t designed to make people rich. It was built to solve a problem: how to transact and store value without trusting intermediaries that had proven themselves reckless.
But is Bitcoin actually money? Not yet. Economists generally agree that money must satisfy three basic criteria: it must function as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Bitcoin partially checks those boxes, but not cleanly.
As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin struggles. Transactions are slow, costly during periods of congestion, and impractical for everyday commerce/use. As a unit of account, it fails outright—prices are not denominated in bitcoin, and the volatility makes that impossible. As a store of value, the case is stronger, but still imperfect. Bitcoin’s price history looks less like gold and more like a leveraged tech stock. That doesn’t make Bitcoin useless. It just means it isn’t, at least today, a true currency in the classical sense.
So why does crypto attract investors and speculators in the first place? Some are drawn to the anti-establishment narrative: a financial system outside government control. Others are attracted to the technology itself—decentralized networks, programmable money, and censorship resistance. And many, if we’re being honest, are there for the same reason people chased dot-com stocks in the late 1990s: the possibility of outsized gains.
That speculative element can’t be ignored. Crypto markets are wildly volatile because they are thin, reflexive, sentiment-driven, and still dominated by retail flows. Leverage, momentum, and social media amplify both the booms and busts. When liquidity dries up, prices crater fast. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature of immature markets.
It’s also why most cryptocurrencies—especially meme coins—have little or no intrinsic value. They’re often little more than hype vehicles, fueled by narrative, tribalism, and the greater fool theory. When confidence fades, there’s nothing underneath to stop the fall.
Bitcoin, however, stands apart—though not magically. Its core/defining feature/strength is verifiable scarcity. The supply is mathematically capped at 21 million coins (not to mention that ~3 million coins have been irretrievably lost). No central bank can print more. No politician can vote themselves liquidity. That scarcity is real, verifiable, and unique in a world where nearly every fiat currency is being debased. That doesn’t make Bitcoin a perfect hedge or a guaranteed winner. But it does explain why it continues to resurface after every bust.
Still, Bitcoin won’t be the currency of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, or high-speed machine-to-machine commerce. AI systems require fast settlement, low fees, programmability, and massive scalability—traits better suited to newer blockchain architectures. If crypto has a future beyond speculation, it will likely be built on platforms few investors know or own today.
Zooming out, the broader macro backdrop matters even more. Traditional fiat currencies are quietly decaying under the weight of profligate spending/governments malfeasance, unsustainable sovereign debt, and central banks that inflate money supply faster than real economic output grows. This isn’t just a U.S. issue—it’s global.
In that context, it should surprise no one that alternative systems periodically attract capital—even if those systems are flawed, volatile, and incomplete.
Crypto has always been volatile. The current selloff is not an indictment; it’s the norm. Emerging technologies do not move in straight lines. They move in manias, crashes, consolidations, and occasional breakthroughs.
History offers a clear parallel. In March 2000, at the peak of the tech bubble, you could buy shares of Amazon for roughly $3 (split-adjusted). You could also buy shares of Pets.com for about $11. Today, Amazon trades north of $200. Pets.com is worth exactly zero.
Same environment, same hype cycle, very different outcomes. The lesson isn’t that new technologies are scams. The lesson is that markets are Darwinian. Most participants don’t survive. A few do—and they dominate everything that follows.
Crypto will be no different. Most tokens will fail. Many projects will vanish. Capital will be destroyed. But a small handful of technologies, networks, and applications will survive, evolve, and quietly integrate into the financial and technological infrastructure of the future.
So is crypto dead? No. But much of it deserves to be. And that’s exactly how innovation is supposed to work.
Mark Lazar, MBA
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™
