[dehrmann]

It used to be that you buy crypto because you're either a true believer, you want to do something illegal and don't realize the blockchain is forever, or you think there's a greater fool.

Between recent sanctions and protectionist policies springing up, I wonder if there's more merit to crypto being a viable way to move large amounts of money outside the traditional financial system. Gold prices spent the 90's in decline, arguably as a peace dividend from the end of the Cold War and economic liberalization.

Maybe crypto is now a bet that there will be more need to facilitate gray market transactions as trade gets harder.

[idiotsecant]

Is that not the same thing as being a true believer? I am a true believer (although the title is reductive to the point that you might as well just say cryptobro, it has the same connotations) partly because crypto enables transactions that governments need not approve of. A belief that a permissionless financial system is a positive thing is a big part of what makes someone a crypto 'true believer' I would think.

[dehrmann]

There's a true belief in crypto ultimately being how transactions are conducted, and there's a speculation hypothesis that more isolation means more extragovernmental transactions. That may or may not mean a higher price for tokens. So many people are hodling right now that it's more like an asset than a currency, so it's hard to say what its value would be if it were actually used as a currency.

As long as people have an appreciation mindset, it'll never actually be used as a currency since there's a disincentive to spend it. The price might just do what it does, and people use it for international transactions that are quickly converted to local currency.