It historically has grown reliably overall at the market level, but individual equities are not that at all. BTC specifically was supposed to be that, and it isn't.
There is no cryptocurrency in the top 10 pretending to be low-risk. There are probably way more financial advisors claiming that US equity is low-risk than there are people claiming the same for any cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin isn't pretending to be any of those (which is essentially what the claim is). Do you see any of that on bitcoin.org, anywhere in Bitcoin Core, or in the Bitcoin Whitepaper? Or in any of the top cryptoassets by market cap?
Don't conflate people talking about something with the thing itself.
Bitcoin proponents have been semi-continuously yammering about all of those for over a decade. If anyone seriously disagreed, there'd be a disclaimer on bitcoin.org.
Although obviously not as dramatic as crypto, gold has had huge drops and multi year bear markets, but it's still considered an inflation hedge. The housing market has had huge dips too.
Neither is as volatile as crypto, but my point is no asset has a guarantee that its value won't "drop randomly", simply not possible. Inflation was positive during the real estate crash of '08 and during multiple gold bear markets. If your time horizon is long enough, a volatile asset can still be a good inflation hedge.
2008 was a period of deflation. Of course inflation hedges would drop, when inflation was negative.
Oil, housing, car prices all dropped at that time. Prices dropped so low that companies like General Motors went bankrupt.
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We face an opposite problem today. Prices are going up. Old established companies love this, they can sell their stuff at higher prices. Aka, inflation. Turns out crypto was terrible at hedging this scenario.