I disagree. I think Bitcoin is in its last bubble and will end up lower than where it is today, because the 'store of value' idea of Bitcoin is unsustainable without transactional utility, and Bitcoin has reached the peak of its transactional utility (where any more transactions mean higher fees and longer wait times). We have allowed Bitcoin to become the Ponzi scheme its early critics said it was.
The "solutions" aren't coming, except in the form of altcoins.
People may see Bitcoin as a safe haven in a crisis. If so, those people will unfortunately be ruined.
Do you think all the money invested in bitcoin via miners, payment gateway providers, exchanges which use BTC as the base currency, etc will just watch as their value goes to nothing? Open source software can and will be changed when the motivational pressure is high enough to do so.
The great thing about this is we don't have to speculate or argue, we can just sit back and watch. I'd be very surprised if those highly invested in bitcoin just watch it falter without acting rationally to improve the protocol with any of the suggestions which have already been proposed and are being tested.
Yes, people let things fall apart and do nothing all the time. That is what they did for over 2 years between 2014 and 2016. By the time it genuinely goes to 0, another coin such as Ethereum will already have a superior network effect. They may finally fix things, but they'll have lost the dominant position. Without the dominant position Bitcoin has literally 0 advantage over alts.
Think about it this way. Do you think Nokia/MySpace/Kodak will sit back and do nothing as their company falls apart while a competitor takes the lead? Every one of those was bogged down by internal politics similar to Bitcoin at present, and they all failed to adapt when the crisis hit.
I guess you're betting against all these people then. I held between 2014-2016 because I understand the nature of new, volatile technologies. It didn't got to zero. Much of the 2014 run up was due to fraudulent, internal Mt Gox bot trading which spooked a lot of people. Time will tell though. I certainly think it's worthwhile to diversify in other cryptocurrencies which continues to add pressure to improve Bitcoin.
Betting against the prevailing wisdom is often the right way to go.
The Mt. Gox problem was a failure of Mt. Gox. This is the first time ever that the problem is the actual Bitcoin protocol failing, rather than just a periphery service.
That's a valid point, but "failing" will have to be defined. Many (myself included) don't view stats like this as failing: https://blockchain.info/stats
The user experience is failing. The mempool is perpetually full. Fees are perpetually rising.
It's in a bubble when we ignore the biggest problems and rationalize them away.
I agree, it has some very real problems that have to be addressed and solved. I think we disagree on if / when those solutions will emerge and on $0.06 to $0.60 being a full failure. It's certainly a problem, as is having to watch the unconfirmed transactions count to get an idea for how long your transaction will take to clear. Let's give it a watch and see what happens. If Bitcoin doesn't make structural improvements, I will gladly accept that my hunch about the future was wrong.