Every time Bitcoin takes a breather after a monster rally, the same tired phrase crawls out of the woodwork: “It’s just tulip mania 2.0.” I’ve heard it since 2011, and honestly, it’s starting to feel like that one relative who still thinks the internet is a fad. But something shifted this cycle—some of the sharpest minds tracking institutional flows are finally pushing back hard, and their reasoning is pretty difficult to dismiss.
The Tulip Comparison Is Lazy—Here’s Why It Falls Apart
Let’s be brutally honest. The Dutch tulip bubble of 1636-1637 was wild. Rare bulb contracts reportedly traded for the price of an Amsterdam canal house. Then, practically overnight, the market vanished. Poof. People were left holding rotting flowers. Game over in roughly three years.
Bitcoin? We just clicked past year seventeen. Seventeen trips around the sun, multiple supposed “deaths,” and it’s still here—bigger, more liquid, and frankly more boringly resilient than most of us ever expected back when a single pizza cost 10,000 BTC.
“Tulips rose and collapsed in a few years, punched once and knocked out. Bitcoin has come back from multiple massive shocks to reach new highs and has survived 17 years.”
– Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst
Bitcoin Has Already Survived More Crashes Than Most Assets Ever See
Let’s actually list them out, because the sheer number is absurd:
- 2011: -93% drawdown
- 2013: -83% after the first big bubble
- 2017-2018: -84% during the ICO winter
- 2022: -77% from FTX collapse and rate-hike panic
- Multiple 50%+ corrections inside bull markets
Each time the eulogies were written. Each time Bitcoin shrugged, consolidated, and eventually printed a new all-time high. Tulips never did that. Beanie Babies never did that. Even dot-com stocks that survived 2000 mostly limped along as shadows of their former selves.
Bitcoin keeps climbing its own wall of worry like it’s got something to prove.
Non-Productive Doesn’t Mean Worthless
One of the favorite gotchas is that Bitcoin doesn’t “produce” anything—no dividends, no earnings, no cash flow. Guess what? Neither does gold. Neither do most Picassos hanging in museums. Neither do rare stamps or vintage watches.
Yet somehow we’ve collectively decided these things hold value across centuries. Why? Scarcity plus unwavering demand. That’s literally it.
In my view, the fascinating part is that Bitcoin might actually be better than gold at the “store of value” game on several metrics—perfectly divisible, instantly transferable globally, impossible to confiscate if you hold your keys, and with a supply schedule set in mathematical stone.
The Halving: A Built-In Scarcity Machine Gold Can Only Dream Of
Gold gets mined every year—about 1.5-2% new supply added forever. Bitcoin? Every four years the new issuance gets cut in half. We just went through the fourth halving in 2024, dropping daily new supply to roughly 450 BTC. That’s less than $40 million at current prices entering the market each day.
Meanwhile spot Bitcoin ETFs alone were absorbing multiple billions some weeks. Basic supply-demand math starts looking extremely lopsided.
Institutional Adoption Changed Everything
Remember when Bitcoin was “rat poison squared”? Funny how quickly narratives flip when BlackRock, Fidelity, and half the Wirehouse platforms launch ETFs that are now top-10 revenue generators.
These aren’t retail speculators borrowing margin on shady offshore exchanges anymore. This is regulated, custodial, pension-fund-eligible product. The game board is fundamentally different.
And the flows keep coming. Even during the recent 27% pullback from the mid-90k area, ETF numbers barely blinked. That’s new behavior.
On-Chain Data Tells a Very Different Story Than Headlines
While CNBC runs “Bitcoin Bloodbath” chyrons, the actual chain shows:
- Long-term holders refusing to sell (coins unmoved 1y+ at all-time highs)
- Exchange balances at multi-year lows
- Accumulation by 1,000+ BTC wallets during the dip
- Realized profit-taking far below previous cycle peaks
This doesn’t look like capitulation. It looks like smart money positioning.
2024-2025 Performance in Perspective
Yes, Bitcoin is down roughly 27% from its local top near $108,000. But zoom out even slightly:
- Still up 122% in 2024
- Up roughly 250% over three years
- Up over 100x in ten years
Giving back some “excess froth,” as the analysts like to call it, is healthy. Every single asset class does it. Stocks do it constantly. Real estate does it. The difference is most assets don’t have Bitcoin’s asymmetry on the upside after each consolidation.
What Would Actually Kill Bitcoin?
Seriously—think about it. A global coordinated ban? Quantum computing breaking SHA-256 tomorrow? A credible better version replacing it overnight? Seventeen years in, none of those feel particularly close.
Meanwhile network effects compound. Hash rate at all-time highs. Developer activity robust. Nation-states and corporates adding it to balance sheets. The flywheel is spinning faster, not slower.
Final Thought: Maybe the Real Bubble Is Short-Term Thinking
Every cycle we get the same predictions of imminent collapse, usually from people who have been wrong for a decade or more. At some point you have to ask—who’s really detached from reality here?
Bitcoin isn’t asking for your permission or your approval. It’s simply following its own internal logic: fixed supply, growing adoption, periodic volatility, higher highs. The tulip comparison was always intellectually lazy. At this point, it’s just noise.
Zoom out far enough and the pattern becomes crystal clear. Bitcoin doesn’t care about your analogies. It just keeps doing what it’s done for seventeen years—surviving, adapting, and eventually making the doubters look silly.
Maybe it’s time we retire the tulip argument for good.
