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Comment by fwdslash | Hacker News Reader

It's the network affect. More people using it, the price rises, more people buy, the price rises more, and on and on.

That doesn't really explain it. BTC's popularity skyrocketed in the last 4 months at an extremely rapid rate that doesn't correspond to any long term trend line.

The price was actually comparatively low as of Q1 2017

It could be but whats the network effect about? Like I can see a network effect coming out of Facebook for connecting friends, what would bitcoin do thats so powerful, that more people use that the price would rise? Transfer money internationally in a fast and cheap manner?

The more people that are willing to accept Bitcoin in exchange for goods and services, the more valuable Bitcoin is.

That's been less and less, though.

Mainly because of fees. I'd say crypto (as a whole) has had a huge increase in acceptance overall, and with Bitcoin being the easiest to purchase and usually the favored currency to trade alts with, it's natural that it's only grown in popularity.

"acceptance" is a weasel word. It's an asset bubble, where the "acceptance" is for the purpose of speculation in the hope of getting rich for free.

Note the actual comment I'm responding to:

> The more people that are willing to accept Bitcoin in exchange for goods and services, the more valuable Bitcoin is.

Approximately nobody accepts Bitcoin in exchange for goods and services except to buy drugs. Which does count as a use case, but it's a trivial one compared to the speculation; and even drug buyers and sellers are endlessly frustrated by the transaction clogs.

More people accept it and recognize it as a valid form of exchange and means of storing value. The belief networks that BTC is valuable have increased, increasing demand and thus price.

The price increase brings in more people that invest in it (buy it) so the price rises even more - rinse and repeat.

More people using it? Any proof of that?

https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

Wallet activity continues to grow

The number of wallets does not equate the number of users.

There pretty much is no way for you or I (a.k.a: people without mass surveillance) to get # of users accurately. The best metrics we can go off of are # of transactions[1] and # of unique addresses[2].

[1]:https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all

[2]:https://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses?timespan=a...

The correct word here is "effect".

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