Bearish long-term thesis on generational consensus loss

Over the past five years, BTC has underperformed even government bonds. Many people fail to realize the severity of this issue. As an asset driven by consensus and narrative, BTC is losing an extremely important form of scarcity: novelty. In the 2010s, one of BTC's strongest competitive advantages was its freshness, mystery, and boundless imaginative potential. Young people at the time believed that BTC might transform the traditional financial system or enable ordinary individuals to achieve financial freedom. At that time, few knew about BTC, and even fewer dared to buy it. Countless shocking stories of overnight wealth attracted more young people to join in. But by 2026, BTC will have been around for 17 years. Wall Street, ETFs, and traditional financial giants have all entered the market; even aunties at the wet market have heard of BTC. That mysterious, rebellious, opportunity-filled new thing has now become household knowledge. BTC is losing one of its most crucial competitive advantages from the past decade-plus: its cultural appeal to the next generation of young people. Today, new fields such as AI, robotics, and space technology are competing for young people's attention. For those born in the 2000s, 2010s, and beyond, BTC increasingly resembles a wealth story of previous generations. The most shocking opportunities for rapid wealth accumulation were already seized by earlier generations. Why should today's young people be as狂热 (fanatical) about BTC as the post-80s and post-90s generations were back then? From the perspective of scarcity, there lies a very important question here. There will only ever be 21 million BTC, but the number of people willing to pay high prices to buy it does not automatically increase just because supply is limited. This reminds me of collectibles like stamps, phone cards, and sports trading cards that were popular over the past few decades. Many of these items are indeed scarce, but their value often rests on the shared memories, interests, and passion of a particular generation. Items that post-80s and post-90s generations were willing to pay high prices to collect may not interest those born in the 2000s or 2010s. As one generation ages and the next refuses to take up the mantle, even if the quantity of collectibles does not increase, their market value may continue to decline. A major long-term risk facing BTC over the next decade is this erosion of intergenerational consensus. BTC certainly possesses technological and financial attributes distinct from ordinary collectibles. But if it becomes increasingly reliant on people's belief in future price appreciation, then whether that belief can be passed down to the next generation becomes critically important. For the past decade-plus, BTC has enjoyed the dividends of new technologies, narratives, and capital inflows. However, no asset can remain fresh forever, nor can it rely indefinitely on the overnight wealth stories of previous generations to attract the next. It is highly unlikely that BTC will replicate the wealth growth myth of the past decade-plus. The 21 million limit of BTC represents permanent scarcity, but human interest and faith in it are not. Scarcity ensures that something is rare, but it does not guarantee that many people will always like it. Nor does it ensure that the next generation will be willing to pay for the wealth beliefs of the previous one.