It’s been quite a big week in cryptocurrency markets. The price of Bitcoin has fallen close to $4000, down from a peak of nearly $20 000.
As a longstanding sceptic of cryptocurrencies, it might be thought that I would be taking a victory lap. After all, I have previously written that “Bitcoins will attain their true value of zero sooner or later, but it is impossible to say when.” With the Bitcoin price having fallen by 75 per cent, it might seem that my prediction is well on the way to being justified.
Unfortunately, the second part of my statement, about the impossibility of predicting timing has been proved definitively correct.. I wrote this in 2013 when Bitcoins were valued at around $100, and the total market capitalization was a mere billion dollars. A single wealthy individual could have driven the price to zero by short-selling.
Five years later, and despite the price collapse of the past few months, Bitcoins are selling at nearly 50 times the price I criticized as excessive. Moreover, as cryptocurrencies have proliferated, Bitcoin now constitutes only a fraction of the total market. The capitalization of the cryptocurrency market as a whole is fluctuating still close to $100 billion.
Yet this massive valuation is built on nothing. The idea that Bitcoin, or any of its competitors will provide a new and superior means for buying and selling goods and services has been tested to destruction. Nearly a decade after the currency was launched, the use of Bitcoin in purchases is modest, and rapidly declining.