Pinned straw:
Thanks @Karmast - that is a good summary.
Re the lost coins:
Other estimates put the number much higher, even as much as 3.7M! It’s because of this that I personally stopped using a cold storage wallet and transferred all holdings into the EBTC ETF when the product was released. In Australia, there’s practically zero chance of Bitcoin being confiscated, and it’s fair to say that many, many more coins have been lost forever due to forgotten keys (through accident, bad practices, folks passing away, etc) than have ever been confiscated by governments.
I acknowledge there are multi-sig wallets and all sorts of options these days, but again, I personally don’t see the benefit. Even if Australian policy were to change, it wouldn’t happen overnight - there’d be plenty of red flags to change approach. While unlikely, I accept there’s a non-zero chance of that happening, and I’d adjust if needed. So for now, and the foreseeable future, I’ll continue using the ETFs.
BTW: Don’t confuse using ETFs with holding coins on an exchange! That’s high risk and should be avoided. Like, just don’t do it.
If we lived in a country without the rule of law and the property rights we’re privileged to have, I’d most likely have a different view.
DISC: Bitcoin is my highest IRL holding, so my views on this topic are always biased and full of self-interest.
Re the Bitcoin price it's interesting to look at Google Trend's chart over the last 12 months - interest in Bitcoin (based on Google searches) has apparently been steadily declining for nearly eight months now:
@BigStrawbs70 said “I lean toward the view that Google Trends analysis means very little. Why? Well, as you highlight, the Google search trends are declining, yet Bitcoin is up ~84% over the past 12 months alone! That suggests there’s still a massive amount of interest.”
I think it’s more relevant to look at what Google Trends was showing before the last crash (which started in late 2021.) :
and BTC price over the same period:
(The charts don't align perfectly - the date of the highest peak in Google Trends is just before BTC starts to plunge in late May 2021.)
You can see from the above that during the last crash in BTC, which began in late 2021, interest as monitored by Google Trends had already slumped from the peak for a period of about six months. It managed to make a second rally (as we are possibly doing right now - the charts are VERY similar) in spite of the plunge in Google Trends interest.
Now if you compare the charts above to the current charts of BTC and Google Trends, you will find that they are eerily similar, except that it's been about eight months since Google Trends hit peak interest in BTC.
As to current levels of interest, this is one journo’s view:
“I saw the excitement firsthand at a crypto event in Brooklyn last week. The bar was packed. People were animated. It felt like a flashback to 2020 and 2021, when crypto fever gripped everyone from twenty-something retail traders to grandparents. “
https://gizmodo.com/is-crypto-in-a-bubble-again-2000621921
(Bitcoin began its previous crash in Nov 2021, and cascaded down for about a year until it had lost 75% of its value.)