It only takes a quick glance at recent news to know Bitcoin is volatile; its fluctuations in price have made headlines for months now. But exactly how volatile is it relative to commonly used currencies, and how does that affect this cryptocurrency’s ability to actually be a usable medium of exchange?

While the nature of the news events does not necessarily explain the magnitude of Bitcoin’s price changes or its daily volatility, it does suggest that the market is not being driven entirely by manipulation or the behavior of small numbers of traders.

Is there a bubble in the ICO/blockchain startup space? Short answer: yes. Long answer: still yes, but it involves very little of the irrationality most people associate with such things, and shows just how important the underlying blockchain technology truly is.

The bursting of bubbles can make insutries stronger.

Think about how many brilliant ideas may have been squashed because a would-be inventor was either turned down by traditional gatekeepers of funding, or because they lacked the network or social capital to even initiate the process.

A few years ago, Bernie Sanders uttered a passing comment that elicited howls of laughter among believers in competitive markets. “You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants," he said. Today, many people are saying the same thing about cryptocurrencies. Why so many? What's the point? Why not one only or, actually, what not just stick with the dollar? The point is that we need a rivalrous process with free entry to discover the better way to do money. And we need this process to run forever. 

Nobody should celebrate a system of money and finance in which government controls the on-ramps and off-ramps based on political loyalties. That’s proven to be a very dangerous system. What we need is a censor-proof technology that can make prosperity possible for ever larger swaths of humanity. That’s not “evil”; it’s gloriously good.

We place our trust in financial intermediaries because they have made costly investments over time to engender that trust. Processing payments on a blockchain essentially avoids these costs.

There are many intermediate cases where Bitcoin has value for specific applications, without “replacing” the dollar, gold, or any other major underpinning of the global financial system.