Bitcoin below $67K, future of Crypto

In my view, Bitcoin no longer has the potential to increase in value by 1,000x, 100x, or even 10x. Fifteen years ago, it emerged as a new asset at the perfect moment right after the 2008 financial crisis, when trust in governments, the banking system, and fiat currencies was at historic lows. Movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party reflected deep public dissatisfaction. Bitcoin offered an alternative narrative: decentralized, scarce, and outside the traditional financial system.

Its extreme volatility 70% to 90% drawdowns multiple times was tolerated because it was often followed by 5x, 10x, or even 100x rallies. Much of this growth was driven by waves of new, highly leveraged investors attracted by the promise of extraordinary returns unavailable in traditional assets.

Today, however, Bitcoin is widely known. Nearly everyone has at least heard of it and formed an opinion. That dramatically reduces the likelihood of massive new inflows purely from discovery. At the same time, investors seeking speculative upside have alternatives such as gold, silver, tech stocks (Tesla:), or other high-risk assets that may offer more stability while satisfying the same appetite for outsized gains.

Bitcoin long relied on the expectation that one day it would gain mainstream institutional and governmental acceptance. That day has largely arrived: ETFs exist, banks offer exposure, and regulators have frameworks in place. Yet this acceptance has not translated into widespread use as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Instead, financialization has deepened, allowing large institutions to trade “paper Bitcoin,” potentially expanding synthetic supply through derivatives and short selling. As a result, the original scarcity narrative may be diluted within the modern financial system. I struggle to see a clear path forward for Bitcoin under its current trajectory. Its explosive growth phase was fueled by novelty, distrust in traditional systems, and repeated cycles of extreme volatility that attracted speculative capital. Now that it is widely known, institutionalized, and deeply integrated into mainstream finance, the asymmetric upside that defined its early years appears structurally harder to repeat.

One potential catalyst would be genuine, large scale adoption as a unit of account and medium of exchange for globally traded commodities such as oil, gas, or other strategic resources. If major exporters began pricing and settling contracts in Bitcoin, demand would shift from speculative to transactional. That would represent a structural transformation rather than another hype cycle. However, such a shift would likely require geopolitical realignment, sovereign-level coordination, and acceptance of Bitcoin’s price stability conditions that are difficult to imagine under its current volatility profile.

Paradoxically, if Bitcoin were to achieve that level of real-economy integration, investors might have to say goodbye to the very volatility that historically drove outsized returns. A currency used for large-scale commodity settlement cannot swing 20–30% in a week without creating systemic risk. Stability would become a feature, not a bug. And while stability could validate Bitcoin as infrastructure, it would also diminish its appeal as a high-beta speculative asset. In that scenario, Bitcoin might mature into a low-volatility settlement layer valuable, but unlikely to deliver the exponential gains that early adopters experienced.

In short, the path to legitimacy and the path to extraordinary returns may no longer be the same path and as a result I am not sure what purpose if any bitcoin and crypto serve today