The question is: can you double the pool of people that pay in (the base of the pyramid) one more time? And for the longest time you could, but the end of the line might be reached soon. (Think about how much marketing crypto firms are throwing at people - the stadiums, commercials, ...)

My theory. There was substantial DeFI loans being taken out to invest in Luna/UST. When UST de-pegged, you had these DeFI loans get margin called putting further pressure. This then caused a bank run with significant sell pressure. This caused roughly 40Billion of assets lost. Some exchanges and DeFI lending platforms had user funds either through loans or by the exchange itself invested into UST/Luna and suffered losses. This caused a broader bank-run to many interest baring platforms out of fear. Celcius just recently had a bank-run leading to a liquidity crises and pausing withdrawals. Celcius started selling it's assets to cover withdrawal pressure, further pushing the price down. Binance paused withdrawls for a bit further causing fear and continuing the bank run, leading to sell pressure.

Personally, there's many Crytpo platforms which do not have enough funds to cover user deposits. As the bank run continues fraud will be exposed and continue driving more sell pressure, in a positive feedback loop. By the end of this large players who survive will come out much stronger.

It does seem people struggle to learn from their mistakes. The last year has been marked by the institutionalisation of irrational exuberance.

Just look at that whole GME saga. A mob of people attempted to short squeeze a bunch of hedge funds, but got carried away and kept pumping up the price long after all the short sellers had closed out their positions.

GME is still riding at 24x the price prior to the short squeeze began (and about double its all-time-high prior to the Reddit intervention). Who are they squeezing now?

It has crashed many times but don’t forget; the last real recession was 2008; that’s 14 years ago; we have not had a financial crash since so we don’t know (well we do but the pundits say we don’t) how it will hold up. I think if ‘22 turns into a recession like I think it will, crypto might collapse; if not collapse, then at least fall further than believers would ever think. I would say btc will be a few k or less if a recession happens.

Because this time the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates and reducing the money supply, which has never happened before since Bitcoin was invented. Low interest rates/quantitative easing/increased money supply (all same thing) is what fuels asset bubbles, including crypto. Take it away and the asset bubble deflates.

Crypto has had worse crashes in the last 14 years. What do you mean by you are right this time?