Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas argues Bitcoin can no longer be compared to tulip mania, pointing to its 17 years of persistence and recovery. He noted that tulips surged and crashed within roughly three years, essentially collapsing after a single euphoric boom, whereas Bitcoin has bounced back from multiple severe drawdowns and kept evolving over nearly two decades.
Balchunas highlighted Bitcoin’s recent performance, including roughly 250% gains over the past three years and about 122% higher last year, and said critics who liken BTC to tulips often miss that assets can cool off after extreme runs and that temporary pullbacks are frequently overanalyzed. He also challenged the argument that Bitcoin is ‘non-productive’, noting that many valued stores of wealth such as gold, famous artworks and rare stamps are likewise non-productive yet retain value.
By contrast, tulip mania in the Netherlands rapidly escalated from 1634 and peaked in 1636, with some rare bulbs fetching prices higher than Amsterdam houses, before collapsing in 1637 when prices plunged more than 90% in weeks. That brief, euphoric rise and swift crash is the basis for the tulip analogy.
Balchunas and others say the analogy breaks down because Bitcoin has survived multiple market cycles, regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical stress, scheduled protocol halvings and high-profile exchange failures, repeatedly returning to new highs. High-profile skeptics have used the tulip comparison before: Michael Burry recently called Bitcoin the ‘tulip bulb of our time’, and in 2017 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon labeled it worse than tulip bulbs and a fraud. Supporters including Garry Krug, head of strategy at German Bitcoin treasury firm Aifinyo, counter that true bubbles do not survive multiple cycles and major shocks and still reach fresh highs.