Crypto collapses when demand for it collapses, not in the sense that it becomes inoperable, but in the sense that anyone who was trying to store value will lose it once the fad abates.

I mean the prices are public, and are basically unaffected by the daily exchange drama: https://coinmarketcap.com/

It's fine to have a theory, but it's kind of silly when the theory is so easily disproven by where people are willing to put their money.

It's possible if the money isn't actually there anymore, like what happened with FTX.

The one redeeming quality of crypto is that you can only lose your holdings if you give them to someone else.

Sure, or if your wallet gets stolen, or you forget your password.

But even if you can keep your holdings forever, they won't be worth anything if there isn't a market for them. All it takes is enough people freaking out and dumping their investments to make yours worthless too. You'll still own everything you bought but it could be worth zero.

>All it takes is enough people freaking out and dumping their investments to make yours worthless too. You'll still own everything you bought but it could be worth zero

Every speculative asset ever

Zero is vanishingly unlikely given that there’s at least a sizeable minority of people, myself included that believe that a form of digital money/value storage that cannot be taken from me without my cooperation and is outside the control of any state (and, ideally, private) is not only a right but unbelievably important.

If the VC backed token projects all fail, the gambling sites shut down, and the only way to trade it for real money is to swap cash in person (this is also how it started), it’s still important like Tor, strong encryption, open source.

The business case for crypto is an interesting aside, as it was/is for Linux, PGP, etc. The long run human and social case for the underlying tech (ignoring what happens to be flavour of the month for scammers) is what’s interesting.

And yet people shared your opinion when bitcoin was under a dollar, so that alone isn't enough to get to the valuations we have today.