Many people, even within crypto-community, failed to recognize that speculation is one of fundamental factors which bring real value to cryptocurrencies. To un

Many people, even within crypto-community, failed to recognize that speculation is one of fundamental factors which bring real value to cryptocurrencies. To understand that you have to think about a concept called self-fulfilling prophesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy Bitcoin started as a fixed-supply currency. Fixed-supply attracted early speculators who are willing to put their fiat into gamble about future utility of Bitcoin. As speculators started to trade, guys who sell drugs over internet got idea that they can use these new unknown strange tokens for transactions because they could dump these weird tokens on speculators in exchange of fiats. So gamble about unknown future became reality which attracted even more speculators (https://www.wired.com/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/ https://www.wired.com/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/). This in turn attracted wealthy people in countries like China because they wanted to move money out of their country. Do you see here a loop? If Bitcoin wouldn't have huge financial incentive for early adopters, then nobody would give a shit about these weird p2p internet tokens! So key factors of early cryptocurrency value: speculation, war on drugs, excessive cross-border transfer regulation. Since most people are politically left-wing, they can't get rid of negative bias towards words like speculation and bubble. There are good bubbles and bad bubbles. Every bubble eventually burst but it doesn't automaticaly make them bad. Dot-com bubble was good as it was wealth transfer towards programmers with lack of social skills. Some one them created something cool and interesting, some of them are don't. 2005-2008 housing bubble was bad as it was wealth transfer towards snobbish conservative bankers who live in their exclusive Wall-Street club protected from competitors by excessive regulation ironically supported by left-wing voters. Cryptocurrency bubble is very good. It's not just wealth transfer towards programmers. It's wealth transfer towards open-source protocol creators. Of course, there will be clowns in the space but come on, it's life, nothing is perfect. It's way better bubble since in the center of this bubble some random nerds, not snobby privileged Harvard-type Lehman Brothers top managers.