Fair enough, it has some bubble characteristics. But surely you can agree that there are more facets and depth to BTC than most other bubbles (tulips especially)? I assume youre talking about BTC as an investment (the 'buy coins just to sell them, lets get rich quick' side). Id agree that is the aspect of BTC that is most at risk of 'popping' long term imo, but just cos the price is falling hard now its far from likely to be a 'popped bubble' failure - even at 10$ per coin people can get a good return with good trading strategy - as they do with other commodities & currencies.
In the broader sense,(at the very least) BTC as a technology is very unlikely to 'fail', even if it just ends up being a back end system supporting transactions where the banks/money transmitters 'rent' the use of system from miners.
Maybe you shouldve pick something from the 90's .com bubble that flopped to compare it to :p
As you said, lets see what history has to say:)
A bubble is a bubble, people buy in to it on the hope of it will be worth more in the future. I don't see a great deal of re-use in the technology behind btc either, yes its decentralised but it takes a lot of energy to maintain the block chain. Is this really the best way to have a global currency?
Well, I dont think another form of global currency would take less energy really. Id imagine that having multiple currencies takes more energy because of all the proprietary 'template' systems to maintain individual aspects.
also all the fiat the world uses today still requires huge amounts of energy - not just computing power used by banks and traders to maintain networks and payment infrastructure, but factories printing on dead trees, trucks moving money from merchants to banks, etc... honestly if i had to imagine a world currency it wouldnt be much different to btc. maybe thats my lack of imagination, so lets hear something better :p
for BTC's re-use, I assume you mean reuse after buying btc... not sure if you count all the merchants gradually adopting it but you can get most things with btc now which was not possible not so long ago.
Also think of all the new services and systems that have popped up in last months from the tech, like changetip and other micro-payment systems or the smart contracts aspect that is coming soon - its pretty early in terms of exploring the potential of the tech and we've already got some revolutionary stuff.
and a bubble is a bubble until people realise true value. Tulips were exposed as being false future appreciating asset, but btc industry is still growing and becoming more widespread and new industries developing new tools and features around it all the time - even in the face of price fall. again, the 'internet' had a bubble too with the '.com bubble' but in the long term the internet and subsequent tech and companies did just fine in the long run. Tulips not so much. So some bubbles pop to real value some pop then grow back to its high real value.
