Why would you use anything but a logarithmic scale to understand an asset over long periods of time?
In 2013 it crashed 83% ($260 -> $45)
In 2015 it crashed 87% ($1,140 -> $150)
In 2017 it crashed 82% ($19,900 -> $3,540)
In 2022 it crashed 76% ($66,938 -> $15,853) - so far..
As we can see, 80% crash for Bitcoin has not been that scary.
Even if you fully believe crypto is the future, it's very hard to convincingly explain why BTC is the future and not one of the other coins which implement more features. Someone 20 years ago could have been right about the internet being the future but picked the wrong companies that would win.
I’m not. Most of the demand for crypto is only because it is going up. If it stops going up then speculators will look at alternatives, and it crash again.
Once it’s low enough that small gains represent a higher rate of return then investors will return and the cycle begins again.
This sawtooth pattern is probably inevitable, and will probably continue indefinitely.
We still don't. Assets have value.
The main downside of bitcoin is that because it has no cashflow, no one knows how to price it. I agree that in some sense, this democratizes investment in bitcoin, but resistance to any rational investment thesis sure seems a lot like gambling.
> In 2011 it crashed 94% ($35 -> $2)
In 2011 Bitcoin's market cap was 23.6 million
> In 2022 it crashed 76% ($66,938 -> $15,853) - so far..
In 2022 Bitcoin's starting market cap was $891B.
In this context, I understand "scary" to mean "destructive economic impact", and from that perspective a 76% crash is very scary.
An example. A thousand people pay $1 for a coin. Then two people pay $1000 for a coin. The market cap is now about a million even though only about $3k USD were traded for the coins. A massive reduction in market cap would give the misleading idea the better part of 1M was destroyed, when in fact there can't be more than $3k in realized losses.
That goes out the window the moment that the current "market cap" value of the coin is used as collateral for transactions involving "real" money and assets.