[mouzogu]

i still don't really understand why BTC is worth 20k, and ETH 1.5k (today) aside from the idea that this is how much people are willing to pay.

what was really the catalyst for this, my gut feeling is circa 2018 tether money printing and chinese money flight

[yieldcrv]

ELI5: they are databases where writing costs a payment in that database’s token

people write to it

ELI16: they are public utility state machines that people pay to use, there are other metrics sites that show what people are willing to pay for. in many cases, the payments themselves make the token more scarce permanently, and anyone needing to make payments in the future has to buy it as a higher price from someone else. There is a lot of activity on the Ethereum network.

so despite the more familiarity with speculation, there are many users that acquire the cryptocurrencies as short term inventory when needed to perform state operations