If you follow the link guneydas provided you can read about a historical event known as tulip mania. In the Dutch republic of the seventeenth century the prices of tulip bulbs kept going up for a couple of years. At the height of this madness a single bulb of a novel species of tulip could even buy you a house in Amsterdam. But a tulip has very little value beyond looking pretty, so the prices were based purely on hype and speculation. Then one day the bubble popped, and tulip bulbs were once again pretty much worthless.

This was one of the first economic bubbles in known history, so it is considered an archetype, and people refer to it to make a point about the volatility of a commodity (such as housing or Bitcoin). It has become an idiomatic expression in several languages.

Whenever someone refers to something as 'tulip bulbs', that person wants to draw a parallel between that historical event and whatever commodity they are comparing it to. It is a way of saying that something is being invested in simply because everyone is doing it, and because the value of the item keeps going up. And they believe that it is very likely a bubble, because they consider the commodity vastly overpriced.

That's a delightfully clear explanation of the origin of that phrase.

However just using the word 'tulip' usually makes the writer's prejudices crystal clear. But if anybody also wants an explanation why the famous 'Tulip Mania' is 90% a myth and is therefore not a useful analogy for understanding 'Bitcoin Mania', then I will politely suggest this essay: https://stratechery.com/2017/tulips-myths-and-cryptocurrenci...

The very fact that an influential figure like Jamie Dimon is opposed to cryptocurrencies IS significant. However, Dimon's actual arguments against cryptocurrencies, which have remained unchanged for the past 4 years, seem very weak, (as least as long as he continues to base his objections on ill-informed slurs such as 'tulips')

>Compare cryptocurrencies to, say, the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar is worth, well, a dollar because…well, because the United States government says it is. And because currency traders have established it as such, relative to other currencies. And the worth of those currencies is based on…well, like the dollar, they are based on a mutual agreement of everyone that they are worth whatever they are worth. The dollar is a myth.

The dollar is not a myth. The dollar is backed by the largest economy in the world. The dollar is controlled for stability. People are required to pay taxes in dollars to participate in the largest economy in the world. That is value in my opinion.

Bitcoin does not have this value or backing. Its price comes from speculation with no underlying justification. The online drug trade is not that big, and Bitcoin's extremely deflationary nature means it will not be adopted a base currency.

The people buying it right now are banking on it becoming a mainstream currency and them having a lot of control over that economy. I see no reasonable path to this happening. Even the fact that people are doing this means that it won't be adopted (and thus, spent) by average users, as the majority of participants are hoarding it or mining it for profit.

I think it's unfair to BTC to say that its price comes entirely from speculation on its future value. It's certainly a major component, but BTC also has value in its own right, derived from its special properties. So it's not quite like tulips, which were pure speculation.

Tulips can be grown and look pretty too...