- Tulip bulbs are perishable items that you have to repurchase when they go bad so they cannot store value.
- Tulip bulbs have an infinite supply since you can always grow more, Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million and there will never be another.
- Anyone can plant seeds to grow a tulip bulb whereas mining a bitcoin has real costs associated with it ($800 to $2,000).
- Tulip bulbs cannot cure poverty and starvation in the world. Bitcoin has already been very useful in countries like Venezuela where inflation of their own currency is causing poverty. See https://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/12/13/world/america...
Also tulip mania itself is a poor comparison since it has spread like a game of telephone over the years. None of us were alive in the 1600s, and the actual events that unfolded were probably much less grand than the media plays it out to be: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
The increase in dollar value of a bitcoin does not bear any resemblance with an increase in use of bitcoin as a currency.
If anything, there seem to be less hype about using BTC to pay for things these days than a few years back.
Bubble concerns not worth listening to talk about lack of transparency, the fact that not backed by anything, hacks, and of course tulips.
Since I can't view the WSJ Economist Survey crosstabs and filter on valid opinion vs hot take, I feel safe ignoring this result. While they're probably right, they're also probably right for the wrong reasons.