My current theory for what happened is that everyone bought into this delusion about the value of bitcoin, but that unlike other bubbles it didn’t burst because Bitcoin has a limited supply and there is literally nothing to anchor its value. So there’s no point where investors give up and sell because there is literally no point at which it’s overpriced.
This actually sounds pretty close to what you might call the “bubble theory of money”: that money is a bubble that doesn’t pop, that certain (relatively) useless commodities can become money if enough people think of them that way, and when that happens their price is inflated, relative to their use value.
This isn’t something that will happen to every commodity. Whether it happens depends both on the properties of the commodity, and also on things like memes and Schelling points.
Bitcoin has enough useful properties (it’s like gold, but digital), and, because of its first-mover advantage, is the Schelling point for digital store-of-value (not that it couldn’t be replaced, but it’s a very up-hill battle), so it has become money, in this sense.
This actually sounds pretty close to what you might call the “bubble theory of money”: that money is a bubble that doesn’t pop, that certain (relatively) useless commodities can become money if enough people think of them that way, and when that happens their price is inflated, relative to their use value.
This isn’t something that will happen to every commodity. Whether it happens depends both on the properties of the commodity, and also on things like memes and Schelling points.
Bitcoin has enough useful properties (it’s like gold, but digital), and, because of its first-mover advantage, is the Schelling point for digital store-of-value (not that it couldn’t be replaced, but it’s a very up-hill battle), so it has become money, in this sense.
(On the memes-and-Schelling-points thing, see also: The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy, by Vitalik Buterin.)