Well yeah, I think that most transactions will behave the purpose of active trading, because hodlers aren’t making transactions.

However if you look at the volume traded, versus the total market, I think you get a different picture.

HODLing is also speculation. I'm saying that crypto isn't driving useful economic activity like investing in startups or small businesses can do. It's all just people trying to make money by finding a greater fool. Even speculation in a normal market can drive /some/ innovation through capital allocation.

Defining a multi-year buy & hold strategy as speculation doesn’t sound like something I can get behind. I get what you’re saying, but I think you’re making sweeping generalizations here. There’s plenty of people that invest in useful economic activity, but also save some money in other assets like gold and bitcoin. You are just calling these people speculators hoping for a greater fool?

Or is it possible that these people have grown to trust bitcoin, seeing it as a savings vehicle outside of the usual currencies?

I'm glad you understand what I'm trying to say, even if "speculation" isn't quite the right term for it.

I think scams are an obvious harm, but the highly financialised and speculative nature of crypto is a more subtle harm: most investment produces positive material side effects like products or services, but because the main selling point of crypto is to continually pass it around in a circle, a lot of money, time, and expertise is wasted on something that is completely unproductive. To be fair, I think this criticism mostly applies to Wall Street too, but most people no longer try to argue that Wall Street is a source of meaningful innovation. To say nothing of the proof of work model leading to ever increasing energy consumption during climate change.

I just don't see much real upside to the crypto industry, and quite a lot of downside.