You can't withdraw BNK (yet). But you can withdraw the ETH that has been paid out over the past few months.

I keep hearing the same analogies - tulips, dotcom stocks, etc.

I think that the best comparison for crypto is the railroad boom of the 1800's.

Some cool and critical infrastructure got built (Trans-continential RR, Liverpool-Manchester etc.), some scrappy infrastructure got built (tracks to nowhere) and some crooks made a bunch of inflated promises and ran off with investors' money.

When we look back on BTC and other crypto, I think that we will see a similar outcome. It's hard to assess right now when we are right in the middle of it.

Just a quick note to introduce myself to the topic:

Inflation - i.e. the price of goods goes up in money terms - is perceived (in the Academy) as a good thing because it encourages spending. Keynes' "animal spirits" are a description of the expectation that times will be good in the future, so I don't need to hoard money now.

If people and businesses spend, then businesses (and people) earn money by selling.

If you believe that the $$ in your pocket today will buy you more goods than in the future (because you expect some inflation) then you have an incentive to spend now. If you expect prices to go down, then you defer your spending.

We've seen this with bitcoin over the past couple of years. When a bitcoin can increase in value from $10 to $1,000 to $10,000, then why would you spend a bitcoin on a $10 pizza (or on anything else)?

It's all great to talk about "Statists" and inflation as a tool to reduce the value of government and business debt. But a world where prices go down (think Japan in the past 30 years) is a world where people and businesses prefer saving over spending to an unhealthy degree.

Not because saving is bad, particularly when saving builds value for people, but because if everyone decides to emphasise saving at the same time, we risk ending up in another Great Depression scenario.

This is the challenge for any token/coin. How do you create value that is exciting for hodlers? But not such a steep rise in value that no-one will ever spend the token/coin for its intended purpose?