except ... so far they have been right, for 3 years we have had exponential growth in both network adoption and correlated pricing. So at this point it is not so much mad, irrational 'passion' but purely past performance and expected growth rates ... although such radical mathematical realities can be otherwise sane people sound crazy and 'passionate' I accept.
thinking that bitcoin has long-term growth potential is not the issue. it's just the people who have wildly unreasonable expectations. the kind of people that think bitcoin will take over fiat currencies as THE world payment system.
the end point has always been the hard question ... the exponential growth indicates we'll know soon enough what that will be, if the current growth rate were to be sustained for another 5-10 yrs it would indeed easily 'take over' all fiat currencies with total money stock in the 5-10 trillion usd equivalent range, i.e. <10^13