 James asks, store a value in a volatile market. My smart friend says that the biggest barrier to mass adoption is price volatility, which limits Bitcoin's use as a store of value. It's most convincing use case to date. It's a lousy store of value if the price keeps changing. Is this right? Are there other obstacles to mass adoption? What are they in your opinion? James, your friend may be smart, but I don't think they understand some of the basic economics of play here. First of all, I don't think price volatility really affects Bitcoin's use as a store of value. Store of value is definitely a long-term perspective. It certainly affects Bitcoin's use as a medium of exchange. But as a store of value, if you are buying and investing in Bitcoin and using it as a store of value, then you have a long-term perspective, certainly more than a year. How is Bitcoin doing in the last year? It's up about 600%. Sounds like a pretty good store of value to me. Over the last three years, definitely a pretty good store of value. If you look at it over three months, it's probably not a good store of value. But that's not what store of value means. Store of value is definitely a long-term perspective. The other thing about this is that it's a bit of a circular argument, because volatility really is an expression of size. For example, in a follow-up question, James said, we tend to harbor an expectation that this volatility, a key obstacle to Bitcoin's wider success, will eventually calm down. But Bitcoin's resistance to regulation is a feature, not a bug. So where will the stability come from? Absent of mass adoption and absent of regulation. I think there's a broad misunderstanding about how volatility is dealt with in capital markets and currency markets. The idea that regulators control volatility in a currency is an illusion. Regulation doesn't control volatility. If anything, regulated markets that don't have enough flexibility and liquidity are more volatile. I would say the biggest contributor to volatility is the small size of a currency. You've got to understand that Bitcoin is currently traded on a global basis. Unlike most other national currencies that have primarily domestic markets, Bitcoin is a global market. For a global market, it's tiny. It really is absolutely tiny. $100 billion is nothing in currencies, even for a currency that's only domestic, let alone for a currency that's traded globally. This kind of sounds like a circular argument, basically saying the biggest barrier to mass adoption is the lack of mass adoption. If only there was more mass adoption, then there'd be more mass adoption. The biggest barrier to Bitcoin being big is that Bitcoin is small. If only Bitcoin was bigger, then it could be bigger. That's what price volatility is. It's that this currency is small. If the fact that it's small is a barrier to it becoming big, that's kind of circular logic. As Bitcoin gets bigger, volatility goes down. As the market becomes more liquid, as it is traded more and used for different purposes, and not just speculation, I think that reduces volatility. The more companies depend on Bitcoin as an input, or use it for payments to contractors or providers, or hold inventory and purchase things based on Bitcoin, or sell things based on Bitcoin, the more the price volatility is reduced. Right now, it's mostly used for speculation. It's mostly dealt with as a short-term basis. It's traded globally in a wide-open market, and as a result, it's quite volatile. So, yes, Bitcoin will become less volatile as it grows, or at least I certainly hope it will. I think the economics would argue that. Ash asks, do you believe there are cartels in the crypto space? There is lots of noise about Bitcoin being manipulated in such things. What do you think? I think the Ladydoth protests too much. What I would say is, I wasn't hearing a lot of complaining about Bitcoin being manipulated when it increased 5%, 6%, 8%, 100%, 1,000% in six months. There wasn't much complaining about manipulation, pumping, and all of that, when the price was going up by a factor of 10%. Now that the price is going down for obvious reasons, anything that goes up, 1,000% in six months is bound to have a correction. I had started calling for a correction in October of last year, saying that these prices are unsustainable, and I got quite roundly bashed for that, for being a naysayer and a negative Nelly and all of that. The point is that anything that goes up 1,000% is likely to have a correction at some point. If it goes up too fast, it's going to come down even faster. As they say in trading, what goes up on an escalator comes down on an elevator. In this particular case, now we have a lot of people going on about how Bitcoin is being manipulated by whales, by the futures market, by world governments trying to dump crypto holdings in order to tank the market, etc. But the truth is that if you look at the broader market, it's not just Bitcoin. There's been a massive correction in tech stocks. There's been massive corrections in stock markets around the world. There have been massive corrections in currencies. Now there are also massive corrections happening in crypto. This is a natural response to a market that got overexuberant, with too much excitement. Too many people bought Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, not because they believed in or understood the value of the technology. Not because they thought this technology was going to have a great potential for future returns, but they thought they would get rich in a matter of months simply by buying into a fad. That is a great to fool theory. That is not a good basis to invest in. When people were asking me, should I buy Bitcoin $16,000 now? I honestly told people your strategy should be based on dollar cost averaging and figuring out what you're comfortable with and understanding the technology. The more you understand the technology, the more comfortable you should be about your investment decisions. If you're asking me, and I'm not an investment advisor, then you shouldn't be buying this stuff. I don't believe there are cartels in the crypto space. Do I believe there's manipulation? Sure, absolutely. Do I believe there are various pump-and-dump schemes and whales trying to manipulate the price? Completely irrational buying, completely irrational selling that's pushing the price around? Absolutely. All of that is happening, but that's not the reason the price is crashing. I think trying to find causation in these markets is a fool's game. It's like reading T-leaves or predicting stock prices based on the alignment of the Zodiac.