You can say the same thing about stocks, gold, bonds, commodities depending on what year you are in. Everything goes up and eventually down again. Oil futures even went below zero not that long ago, now the cash price is over $100 a barrel. I saw the crash in 1987 and yet here we are, at all time highs recently. Crypto of course has less economic meaning as it's just bits, but anything that is traded goes up and down in value, even pointless things like baseball cards. Value is whatever people will pay today for something hoping it either goes up in value or provides them with some benefit (like a house).
Complaining that crypto is stupid is fine, but lots of things in history were stupidly valued (tulips, beanie babies, bored apes) and eventually the market did or will change. Crypto is worth whatever people will pay for it. It's not inherently evil.
> but lots of things in history were stupidly valued (tulips, beanie babies, bored apes) and eventually the market did or will change
Only one of those things requires enough energy input to drive a massive V8 Landrover for a week every single time you try to exchange it, and it's not tulips or beanie babies.
> down in value, even pointless things like baseball cards
Baseball cards that have any value aren't pointless. They are kind of historical artifact, and are traded like artifacts or antiques. They have value as long as enough people place value on baseball history.
Newly created baseball cards are effectively worthless, and a vanishingly small percentage will ever have any value.
Crypto has no cultural value like that. There is no sentimental value attached to it.
Eventually in the future when nobody cares about it remembers what baseball is, the cards will have no value, but the fact is that value today comes from both their scarcity and the ownership of a piece of history.
At least with commodities someone somewhere eventually is actually consuming them - this acts as a stabilizing force eventually even if bubbles and crashes can occur.
Complaining that crypto is stupid is fine, but lots of things in history were stupidly valued (tulips, beanie babies, bored apes) and eventually the market did or will change. Crypto is worth whatever people will pay for it. It's not inherently evil.