[bodiekane]

Seems like the main reason it's gone up all these years is "Early adopters successfully evangelized to get more mainstream bigger-fools to buy from them at elevated prices".

At this point, Bitcoin is fully mainstream and the biggest fools have bought in. People hoped that the Trump election would mean a new giant pot of dumb money (government/tax dollars) would buy bitcoin, but now that they've realized Trump will just issue his own crypto memecoins that bet is unwinding.

I don't see where the buying is going to come from in the future. Every cab driver and retiree and stay-at-home-mom already knows about bitcoin. Maybe Tether prints another imaginary 10 billion dollars to buy bitcoin and prop up the price though, so it could still maintain for a while.

[acdha]

The other thing I see is that only existing holders have much loyalty to that particular blockchain. Nobody else has a vested interest in using their funds to re-inflate the net worth of people who bought Bitcoin before them, and it’s easy to create a new blockchain where you’re not buying at a disadvantage.

[sph]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage

Sure, you can create a new blockchain, but you probably won't overtake the first and most popular, however good your tech is. Also, your comment suggests, as it is often the case, that new blockchains are created not because they are better than all other cryptocurrencies, but rather as a pump-and-dump scheme, and that's the primary reason the whole field has such a terrible reputation.

In any case, first-mover advantage is another reason why it's highly likely Bitcoin will remain the cryptocurrency with the largest market cap.

[acdha]

First mover advantage still requires some reason to stick, especially when it costs more. Almost nobody _needs_ Bitcoin – most people don’t use it at all so they have no reason to pay more for it and there’s almost no situation where that would be the only option. The only reason to buy in is hoping that there will be more demand in the future, and that can evaporate quickly as we’ve seen because a fiat currency like Bitcoin is valued on the strength of its backers and it doesn’t have anything like a country or large industry driving demand.