All people calling bitcoin a tulip craze don't realize that one of the main differences between both phenomenons is that the tulip craze was not supported by a worldwide digital platform called the internet. I mean the internet seems to be causing a qualitative effect on several phenomenons once they reach a quantitative peak thanks to the ease of interaction the internet provides. Look at the Arab spring, what seemed like a regular discontent or protest that wouldn't achieve much managed to topple whole governments. In my opinion this day and age we are witnessing very nice examples on how quantitative changes lead to qualitative ones thanks to the internet. So trying to predict what will happen to bitcoin using a phenomenon which happened centuries ago without having something like the internet to support it is not very accurate IMO.
Don't overcomplicate things. Tulips are useless.
Tulips are not useless, they might not be a good currency but they can be a store of value, nobody has control over your Tulips but you
They are not useless. They have an "inherent value"* which will always act to stabilize the price against a price rise (hence the bubble) and it is not difficult to increase the supply.
Bitcoin has no "inherent value" (or what it does have contributes trivially) and is of limited supply. Thus there is nothing which provides a downward price pressure other than sentiment. What many claim as a weakness is actually a strength (As is the case with the many things that people often criticize about Bitcoin)
*I don't believe in inherent value but am using it here as a shorthand which I hope we all understand.
Look, I get that argument. But, it's worth expanding passed the ostensible case. The ledger of Bitcoin *does* have inherent value. Maybe it doesn't seem to, because no one is using it that way. But, as a securities ledger or track of ownership, those *books*, if you will, have inherent value, as
data record of ownership-- or, once they start getting used, they will.
) 
