Last year Alexis O’hanion predicted BTC would be 20k and ETH 1.5k by this time too. Many executives seem over enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies to me.
Many crypto communities have been trying very hard to disconnect the two (price from success) in the public’s conscious. Which has some legitimate arguments in it’s favour. My view, and I don’t have much of a horse in this race, is that price may be one contributing metric but it’s a weak one to use as the only metric.
There’s tons of work involved in getting adoption for the tech happening in the background that is disconnected from the price. Especially considering how many people are speculating with it using vague public indicators (like media hype) without much direct connection to the value it’s producing.
Not to mention the unpredictablity of it’s long term value of an entire tech is far harder to predict than it is a companies value via stock price.
I am still long term somewhat bullish on the tech but I can't see any of the current generation working beyond niche use. Its not just efficiency but also economics. They are significantly more deflationary than gold, meaning there is never any incentive to do anything but speculate on them. If they gain any utility they will "moon" again and the resulting price instability will once again drive off everyone except speculators.
Lots of people refuse to trade land because they think it will be worth more in the future. Look at the housing markets of major cities. And that is when you have a highly localized set of potential buyers.
Whether it's deflationary or inflationary in the long term doesn't really matter for the purposes of whether it's useful as a short-term transaction medium for conversion into fiat on both ends, which is presumably the use-case for the Cash app.