Bitcoin’s price history often gets used as a warning label. Big run-ups, ugly crashes, long quiet stretches, then another surge. To critics, it looks familiar, almost suspiciously familiar.
The comparison that keeps coming up is tulip mania.
On the surface, it sounds neat. A speculative asset with wild price moves, public obsession, and then collapse. Case closed.
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The problem is that this comparison only works if you stop thinking halfway through.
What tulip mania really was
Tulip mania played out in the Dutch Republic in the early 1600s, mostly between 1634 and 1637.
Tulips had arrived from the Ottoman Empire and quickly turned into a status symbol among wealthy merchants.
How can a tulip become a status symbol? Some bulbs were rare, some had strange color patterns caused by a virus, and owning them meant something.
Speculation followed fast, with contracts changing hands before bulbs ever touched soil.
At the peak, prices went wild, and I mean wild. A single bulb could cost as much as a skilled worker earned in a year. Then buyers stopped showing up.
Auctions failed, contracts became worthless, and the market disappeared. Tulips stayed flowers.
They’re nice to look at, — I even have some in my own garden — but they’re no longer worth betting your future on.
That’s why tulip mania still stands in for collective excess.
Why Bitcoin gets pulled into the same story
Bitcoin’s chart makes the comparison tempting. Huge rallies, deep drawdowns, media hype at the top, doubt at the bottom.
Each cycle brings fresh converts and louder critics. There’s also the status angle. Early ownership meant something, and rising prices made it louder. From a distance, it looks like a bubble on repeat.
That’s usually where the argument ends. It shouldn’t.
What the cycles actually tell you
Tulip mania happened once. Bitcoin’s cycle has repeated several times, and that difference matters.
Tulips collapsed after people realized there was nothing under the price. Tulips are beautiful and serve as great decoration in gardens or parks, but that’s true for thousands of other, similarly attractive flowers or plants.
So confidence broke and demand never returned. The object stayed the same, interest didn’t. Tulips aren’t scams. They’re real things, living beings.
Tulips remain a national symbol of the Netherlands even today, hundreds of years later, next to windmills and canal routes.
Bitcoin is no tulip. Bitcoin behaves differently. After each crash, the market reset. Infrastructure improved, liquidity returned, more people showed up, and then it happened again.
An asset that keeps rebuilding after brutal drawdowns starts to look less like a craze and more like a volatile, early market. Tulips faded, because the tulip price premium was a psychological, emotional factor.
Bitcoin keeps coming back, because Bitcoin’s long term price action is an economic, market cycle characteristic.
A better comparison: supercars and hypercars
A more useful analogy comes from expensive cars. Supercars or hypercars make no sense if all you want is transport. No one needs 300 km/h to buy milk, and still, these markets exist.
Why?
Because they offer something real to a small group. Performance, engineering, scarcity, identity. Exclusivity.
The use case is narrow, but it scales with price for those who care. Tulips hit a ceiling. Decoration couldn’t support speculation.
Bitcoin clears that bar.
Utility draws the line
Tulips had a use. They still do. You could plant them and admire them, and that works today too, but that use didn’t grow with price.
Expensive cars have a use too. Inefficient from an economic viewpoint, sure, but still real. Bitcoin does as well. It works as a bearer asset.
It moves value without intermediaries and crosses borders without asking. You might not need that, but plenty of people do.
That’s infrastructure.
So where does that leave the tulip argument?
Bitcoin is volatile. The crashes hurt, and the cycles are rough. But volatility alone doesn’t make something a tulip.
If this were just speculation, repeated collapses would have ended the story. They didn’t.
That doesn’t guarantee success. Risk stays real. But it does mean that “just tulips” explains less than it sounds like it does.
History repeats. And sometimes it levels up.
Crypto market researcher and external contributor at Kriptoworld
Wheel. Steam engine. Bitcoin.
📅 Published: February 4, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: February 4, 2026
✉️ Contact: [email protected]
Cryptocurrency and Web3 expert, founder of Kriptoworld
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With years of experience covering the blockchain space, András delivers insightful reporting on DeFi, tokenization, altcoins, and crypto regulations shaping the digital economy.
📅 Published: February 4, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: February 4, 2026
✉️ Contact: [email protected]
