Only the lazy or the dead one didn’t compare the explosion in the value of the cryptocurrency for the last year with tulipmania in the Netherlands in the 1630s. At that time, the aristocracy’s interest in the new varieties of this motley flower, coupled with the speculative activity of traders and stockbrokers, increased the price of rare bulbs by hundreds of times. Tulips very quickly became a symbol of prosperity and prestige among burghers, the most enterpreneurial of which very quickly managed to make a fortune. It was exactly that time, when the first exchange futures — the legal obligation to buy bulbs of certain varieties at the end of the season at a certain price — gained unprecedented distribution. In 1636, one bulb of the variety “Viceroy” could be exchanged for 4 tons of wheat, 8 tons of rye, 4 bulls, 8 pigs, 150 barrels of wine, 4 tons of beer or 2 tons of butter. In fact, one bulb of a rare variety cost more than the average Dutchman could earn for life. And we aren’t talking about the most expensive bulb. In 1637, the number of sellers who sold almost all of their property to buy coveted tulips flooded the market and prices collapsed.
Do we want to compare the growth of the rate of cryptocurrencies with the tulip fever of the 17th century? Unfortunately, yes. Now crypto-enthusiasts will start to grin and someone will simply stop reading the text further, however, it is in crypto-enthusiasts power to do everything so that the speculative Dutch history doesn’t happen to cryptocurrencies.
The value of blockchain technology is beyond criticism — it is a progressive trend, comparable in scale with the appearance and spread of the Internet. However, isn’t a bitcoin just a symbol or flag of a new era that has risen sharply in value just after the inclusion of global speculators in the game? Like the tulip bulb of the “viceroy” variety, bitcoin today is a symbol of prestige and the general equivalent of the value of any other cryptocurrencies. But when the market volumes of trade in bitcoin fall, others fall too, even the most innovative and prospective cryptocurrencies.
Unlike gold, whose value, for example, as a superconductor, doesn’t change from the presence of interest in it speculators, bitcoin can be replaced by any other cryptocurrency at any time. Someone even compares the popularity of bitcoin with the mental virus from the meme “Mom, there is no time to explain, urgently buy bitcoin.” And what will happen to the popularity of Ethereum, when it rise in price so much that any transactions on its network become “gold” because of the price of gas?
The collapse of the bitcoin bubble, which is increasingly predicted by nostradamuses from the economy, doesn’t mean the collapse of the era of cryptocurrency at all. On the contrary, it will allow the market to get through the recovery and to separate the wheat from the chaff, to separate the really useful one from the promoted.
Then the first positions of coinmarketcap will take cryptocurrencies and technologies that can bring more tangible benefits, such as IZX https://izx.io/, potentially ready to radically change the Internet advertising market and the B2C philosophy.
Nevertheless, no matter what they say and whatever shocking happens, tulips are still beautiful, and there will always be a sufficient number of their lovers.