Only if you'd held on to it while it went from 17k to 3k a month later, and the many ups and downs since. That's not necessarily a sound investment strategy without hindsight
Remember what HN kept parroting in 2017? "bItCoIn is sCaM".
So much of a scam that buying that coveted Tesla Model S in 2017 would sure have held its value much better than Bitcoin did and by now in 2025, Bitcoin should be worthless. Right?
Not even close.
If Bitcoin was a scam, was it supposed to "crash" from $10k to $100k+ and that Tesla Model S "skyrocketed" from $100k+ to around $40k from its retail price.
Sounds like buying a Tesla Model S in 2017 was a scam.
I'm confused. Who would think buying a car (any car) is an investment that would increase in value?
And just because the value of Bitcoin has gone up, doesn't mean it's not a scam. "Market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
Bitcoin continues to fail at its stated goal of being a currency - it's more like digital gold that, unlike actual gold, would be worthless in a real global crisis. A lot of bitcoin-adjacent stuff has also collapsed since 2017 (NFTs, FTX). The idea of putting everything "on the blockchain" also seems to have died.
Bitcoin is still a criminal ecosystem in 2025. Its only real use case still is enabling illegal transactions and evading financial regulations, and that maintains its speculative value; but that's still a scam not a true investment just like a business used as a front for Mafia appears stable until it inevitably comes crashing down.
But I don't think anyone claimed criminality is not profitable. It can literally make you President.
People are generally not interested in discussing assets in depth. Or any other topic for that matter.
It would be so awesome to have a forum where intelligent, grown up people discuss the possible futures of Bitcoin. Or any other asset. But I have not found one yet. If anybody knows some place, please please post a link!
We had that, it was bitcointalk, between 2011 and 2016 it was a great place to do business, meet other people interested in bitcoin and to make and create new things.
Then it slowly drifted into scammers and low quality begging posts.
Honestly, no. When people seek for forums to connect with other humans, LLMs aren't a good alternative for that. And I say that as someone who generally find LLMs useful, I'm not a "AI is impeding doom" person, but their use shouldn't replace the human connection and human conversations.
Is there update for 2025? This is a general rule of all media. After 4 cycles you can pretty much feel at which stage the BTC bubble is just by the amount of coverage there is. The current one feels sluggish.
A bubble or two ago I hypothesised that the period is defined by how long the media feels is necessary to justify the narrative. It has to be just long enough that people op don't notice that they are saying the opposite of a previous story.
They run all the stories about how BTC lost 80% of its value without acknowledging that the top measurement was at the peak of spikiest part of the bubble where only half a dozen trades occured.
Then, after stories of how much value has been lost cease to be interesting enough to warrant further stories and noone is clinking on the stories that they do write. That's when it's time to start running the "It looked like bitcoin was dead, but it's coming back again, and this time it's stronger than ever!". Which promotes the next bubble that they can report on when it crashes.
There may be underlying value there, but the oscillations are driven by short term sentiment. I can't help but feel that their are news organisations that are happy to provide self forefilling prophecies as long as it provides more easy to write news.
Of all the things, people calling Bitcoin a bubble would have to be the most reasonable in hindsight of any group who got a prediction wrong. It is hard to argue with the reasoning and the observations. Goes to show, the economy is a funny thing.
I remember when bitcoin post appeared first on HN. It was trending and lot of people were curious about technical details and people joking about viability as currency.
I even started mining for a brief time on work desktop which I had to uninstall immediately of course.
Yeah I remember the white paper being posted in 2009, took another 2 years before I got into bitcoin.
The reason I know bitcoin has hit the mainstream and isn't going anywhere is in sort due to HN. This bubble has spurred zero posts as far as I can tell, or zero that gained any traction.
In part this is because there is nothing new to discuss. But in the past there was nothing new either, but it gained traction because of the numbers of comments.
Now I guess the naysayers have moved on the criticism of AI and the defenders don't feel like it needs defending anymore.
For how long does a "bubble" need to be in "the bubble" for it to not be considered a "bubble" anymore? I'm guessing there is a time limit involved here somewhere?
What you're saying is that the claim "it's a bubble" is not falsifiable (people move price and time targets) and therefore a belief and not scientifically grounded, just like a religion.
So any discussion with BTC bubble people is futile unless they are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Economic downturn that motivates holders to liquidate. The house of cards would collapse very quickly if one whale cashed out. Everyone holding is facing a bad version of the prisoner's dilemma.
Ironically, it's the banks that drive the price of Bitcoin these days. Along with the "Bitcoin whales": hedge funds, investment firms, and billionaires, they're all in on the speculation.
Readit News
So much of a scam that buying that coveted Tesla Model S in 2017 would sure have held its value much better than Bitcoin did and by now in 2025, Bitcoin should be worthless. Right?
Not even close.
If Bitcoin was a scam, was it supposed to "crash" from $10k to $100k+ and that Tesla Model S "skyrocketed" from $100k+ to around $40k from its retail price.
Sounds like buying a Tesla Model S in 2017 was a scam.
And just because the value of Bitcoin has gone up, doesn't mean it's not a scam. "Market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
Bitcoin continues to fail at its stated goal of being a currency - it's more like digital gold that, unlike actual gold, would be worthless in a real global crisis. A lot of bitcoin-adjacent stuff has also collapsed since 2017 (NFTs, FTX). The idea of putting everything "on the blockchain" also seems to have died.
But I don't think anyone claimed criminality is not profitable. It can literally make you President.
Honestly, no.
It would be so awesome to have a forum where intelligent, grown up people discuss the possible futures of Bitcoin. Or any other asset. But I have not found one yet. If anybody knows some place, please please post a link!
Then it slowly drifted into scammers and low quality begging posts.
They run all the stories about how BTC lost 80% of its value without acknowledging that the top measurement was at the peak of spikiest part of the bubble where only half a dozen trades occured.
Then, after stories of how much value has been lost cease to be interesting enough to warrant further stories and noone is clinking on the stories that they do write. That's when it's time to start running the "It looked like bitcoin was dead, but it's coming back again, and this time it's stronger than ever!". Which promotes the next bubble that they can report on when it crashes.
There may be underlying value there, but the oscillations are driven by short term sentiment. I can't help but feel that their are news organisations that are happy to provide self forefilling prophecies as long as it provides more easy to write news.
In any case, when I said "low", I was referring to early Bitcoin days when 1 BTC cost'd a loaf of bread.
I even started mining for a brief time on work desktop which I had to uninstall immediately of course.
The reason I know bitcoin has hit the mainstream and isn't going anywhere is in sort due to HN. This bubble has spurred zero posts as far as I can tell, or zero that gained any traction.
In part this is because there is nothing new to discuss. But in the past there was nothing new either, but it gained traction because of the numbers of comments.
Now I guess the naysayers have moved on the criticism of AI and the defenders don't feel like it needs defending anymore.
Welcome to the new asset class.
... Did you look? Quick search turns up a bunch of stories that were on the frontpage: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
> But in the past there was nothing new either, but it gained traction because of the numbers of comments.
That's the opposite of how things are ranked on HN. Submissions with more comments than votes are being pushed down the frontpage, not up.
Wasn't it supposed to be a currency people would buy stuff with that would eventually replace "fiat"? What happened to that?
The BTC holders trying to rebrand to a value storage instead of a currency is proof of this.
So any discussion with BTC bubble people is futile unless they are willing to put their money where their mouth is.