#深度创作营 Everyone says Bitcoin is a tulip, but why isn't it actually the one that died?

Whether it's a bubble or a scam, fundamentally it's because the underlying asset didn't provide the expected value to people. What value does Bitcoin actually offer? What value did tulips provide back then? Why are they often compared? Why do bubbles burst or prices rise to $100,000 in the future? Essentially, it's all about "mean reversion around value."
1. The Birth of Bitcoin
Let's go back to 2008. That year, Lehman Brothers collapsed, stock markets plummeted, and central banks around the world flooded the markets with liquidity, gradually diluting fiat currency purchasing power. Ordinary people's hard-earned savings slowly shrank in value like being boiled in warm water. More importantly, the modern financial system is highly centralized: you think the money in your bank is yours, but in reality, it's just the bank owing you a "digital" amount. You don't truly own the "ownership" of that money. Over the years, people have experienced restrictions and inquiries when withdrawing large sums from banks. In the same year, October 2008, a person using the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" published a paper in a cryptography mailing list: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."
A few months later, in January 2009, the first Bitcoin was "mined," called the "Genesis Block."
From that moment, humanity achieved something for the first time technically: without relying on any bank, company, or government, money could be transferred directly and securely from one person to another over the internet. To borrow a phrase from Li Xiaolai: Bitcoin is the first time in human history that private property has been protected through technological means.
2. What exactly is Bitcoin?
Here's a brief overview of Bitcoin's features:
- Fixed supply: 21 million coins, hardcoded into the rules, unchangeable, no new issuance, with the smallest unit being Satoshi (satoshi), 1 BTC = 100 million Satoshis. Ordinary people can hold fractions like 0.1 or 0.00001 BTC without needing to own a whole coin.
- Decentralized ledger: maintained by a large number of nodes worldwide, which collectively uphold a "public ledger," known as the blockchain. All transaction records are transparent and almost tamper-proof.
- Proof of Work (PoW) mining: miners compete with computational power to solve puzzles; whoever solves it gets to add the next block and receive new BTC as a reward. This is also Bitcoin's issuance mechanism—contribute computing power, earn new coins.
- Security and ownership: as long as you control your private key, no one can freeze, confiscate, or prevent you from transferring your assets (unless your private key is stolen). This means you are fully responsible for your assets, and how to securely store your private keys is another topic.
3. What is Bitcoin's value?
The most important value of Bitcoin is that it provides a peer-to-peer, decentralized, censorship-resistant system with a limited total supply that cannot be arbitrarily increased. This means you can create a Bitcoin address to send and receive funds without anyone's approval, without relying on banks or governments to guarantee your assets. Imagine when you want to transfer money, especially large amounts—it's likely to attract inquiries, but Bitcoin doesn't have this issue. Compared to gold, Bitcoin is much easier to transfer. If you carry large amounts of gold around, it's very risky. As more people experience this freedom firsthand, they will naturally become Bitcoin evangelists. The stronger the consensus, the more people willing to store value in it, and the higher the price ceiling it can support.
4. Tulip Bubble
Many people, when mentioning Bitcoin, can't help but think of the tulip bubble, which is natural—human nature. People tend to use familiar stories to understand new things, and tulips are the most widely circulated example of a bubble burst. In the 1630s, some rare, patterned, multicolored tulip varieties became symbols of status and taste among the upper class. At that time, the Dutch economy was doing well, everyone had money, and they loved collecting these tulips, turning them from flowers into a tradable "asset." Initially, wealthy individuals and horticulture enthusiasts bought in, but later ordinary people also rushed to buy, hoping to get rich quickly by flipping them. By early 1637, some auctions had no bidders, tulip bulbs couldn't be sold, market confidence evaporated instantly, prices plummeted, and a classic asset bubble burst scenario unfolded.
5. Mean Reversion
The reason people often compare tulips to Bitcoin is because, in its early stages, Bitcoin's price behavior was very similar to tulips—highly speculative and emotional, with rapid rises and falls. But there are huge differences: from its limited supply, technological innovation, global consensus, and the decentralized system it provides, Bitcoin's intrinsic value far exceeds that of luxury tulips. Tulips are just rare flowers; they can't change the world or improve social efficiency. The logic is simple: tulip prices have no intrinsic value support, and bubbles are bound to burst sooner or later. In fact, true bubble games usually die out after the bubble bursts, with no more attractive narratives. Bitcoin has gone through multiple cycles, been heavily attacked many times, but it hasn't died; instead, consensus has expanded. The US is even continuously launching regulations, ETFs, and other financial products related to Bitcoin. If it were just a tulip-level scam, it wouldn't withstand so many cycles and scrutiny.
6. The Greatest Significance of Bitcoin
The biggest significance of Bitcoin is that it has carved out a piece of "property rights" from the highly centralized financial system and returned it to individuals. Whether you recognize its value is another matter. But it has already provided an unprecedented option for modern society:
- You can continue to rely entirely on the traditional banking system;
- Or you can choose to put part of your assets into a network that no one can freeze or alter the rules.
How to choose? I believe everyone has the answer!