I recently read an article citing research into consumer Bitcoin buyers and apparently it is getting significant competition from other forms of betting, including sports betting apps.
In short, young people are finding that betting on games they can watch on TV is far more interesting than just watching a number go up and down on their iPhone screen.
Also, Bitcoin is running into a crisis of "shelf space": the place where most consumers buy Bitcoin--apps like CoinBase and Robinhood--also present hundreds of other products alongside Bitcoin, and many of those products are more advantageous to the platform if their users buy them so they pump those products instead.
Bitcoin has no technical advantages over its competitors, and in fact has significant disadvantages in terms of speed and cost. It is in no way "a better product". It just happens to be the most popular one right this moment. Indeed, as a product not backed by a corporation, it has significant DISadvantages in the marketplace since its appreciation doesn't profit them as much as it does other products.
Finally, all of the old "religion" around Bitcoin disappeared when the crypto industry bought the 2024 US elections, with the sole purpose of that political push focused around making the price of Bitcoin go up. Bitcoin used to have a counter-culture mystique, but that no longer exists when the US president owns and pumps (and dumps
) Bitcoin. Today it's just a mainstream popular meme, not some sort of cause.
Hence the only question you need to ask about Bitcoin is, are there still enough low-information buyers out there who can pump money into the Bitcoin market and make it go up in price? That's the question the Bitcoin Whales (i.e. the 10-20 people who own most of Bitcoin) ask themselves every day. At some point the human tendency to learn and expand will dry all of those new buyers up. (And once the Whales see there's no more new money in the system to buy their bags... look out below
).
Maybe it's already happened, or maybe there are a few million more buyers out there who will push the price up with their new purchases, but that's the only question here.
It doesn't surprise me. Most people haven't read enough about bitcoin to truly understand it. Most people still pull the 'bitcoin has no intrinsic value' card, and when someone tells them that this is true for the US dollar, they respond with 'but the US dollar is backed by the military'.
There are certain topics in life where most people just suck to. That's precisely where the system relies on.
A consumer doesn't have to believe Bitcoin is "worthless" in order to pass on it as an investment, they just need to believe it's not worth as much as the current price point. Probably lots of consumers believe its worthless, but probably a lot more believe they missed the boat and should have bought it when it was $100 per coin, and now they are looking for another elevator to riches instead.
(And yes, the US Dollar is basically the tracking stock of the United States writ large. It's "market cap" is the sum total enterprise value of the USA, which includes all of the land, assets and enterprises the USA has within its dominion. [Also, don't confuse "secondary stock offerings"--i.e. expansion of the monetary base--with the value of the enterprise as whole. Apple could issue millions more shares tomorrow, and their stock share price would go down, but that doesn't mean Apple itself has diminished in value]).
