Does Bitcoin possess a similar long-term value evolution compared to the early dot-com bubble?

That's an excellent question, and one many people have. I'll try to explain it in simple terms; it's quite fascinating.

You can think of Bitcoin and the dot-com bubble as the same play, just with a different cast of characters.

Where are their similarities?

1. Both were 'new species' that told a story of world-changing disruption. In the late 90s, everyone was saying 'the internet will change everything.' All you had to do was register a '.com' domain, and you could get huge investments, sending stock prices soaring. And now? Everyone is saying 'blockchain (the underlying technology of Bitcoin) will disrupt finance.' All sorts of new coins are emerging, each claiming to be the next '100x coin.' The beginning of the story is identical: a revolutionary technology is coming; get on board quickly, or you'll miss out on an entire era.

2. Both were filled with bubbles and speculation. During the dot-com bubble, a company might not even know how to make money, but as long as it was associated with the internet, its valuation would be ridiculously high. People weren't buying company performance; they were buying 'future imagination.' Doesn't that sound a lot like the current crypto craze? Many people buy Bitcoin not because they used it to buy a coffee today, but because they're betting it will be worth more tomorrow. Prices fluctuate wildly, up 20% today, down 30% tomorrow – these are typical characteristics of a bubble.

3. Most participants will eventually 'die off.' After the bubble burst in 2000, thousands of internet companies collapsed, such as the once-popular Pets.com (an online pet supply retailer). The same is true for today's cryptocurrency world; out of tens of thousands of coins, 99% will likely eventually go to zero, becoming worthless lines of code. It's a process of sifting through the sand, and there's always far more sand than gold.

So, what about the most crucial aspect: the potential for long-term value?

This is their most fundamental similarity, and also where the greatest uncertainty lies.

Although the internet bubble burst, what did it leave behind? It left behind the internet itself. More importantly, it filtered out a group of true giants, such as Amazon and Google. These companies survived and fundamentally changed our lives with tangible services (online shopping, information search, online social networking). The bubble burst, but the value remained and grew even larger than during the bubble era.

Now let's pose the same question to Bitcoin:

If the cryptocurrency bubble also bursts, what will it leave behind?

• Possibility One: Bitcoin becomes 'digital gold.' Just as Amazon became the king of e-commerce, Bitcoin could become the 'gold' of the digital world. It has a limited supply, is difficult to counterfeit, and is not controlled by any single nation. When people lose trust in traditional currencies (like the US dollar), they might choose to store a portion of their wealth in Bitcoin for value preservation. If this path proves viable, its long-term value would be immense.

• Possibility Two: Bitcoin becomes the 'surviving infrastructure.' Just as the internet bubble left behind invisible but indispensable network protocols like HTTP and TCP/IP, Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology could also become the foundational architecture for future financial systems. Perhaps we won't directly use Bitcoin to buy things in the future, but our transfers, contract signing, and identity verification might all rely on it or similar technologies.

What's the conclusion?

So, to answer your question: Bitcoin possesses long-term value evolution potential similar to the early internet.

This process is very likely to replicate the path of the internet bubble: frenzied speculation -> bubble burst -> value correction -> filtering out true winners -> integration into daily life.

However, the key difference is that we have personally witnessed and use the value of the internet (information transfer, e-commerce) every day. Bitcoin's ultimate value (whether it's 'digital gold' or 'future financial infrastructure,' or both) has not yet been fully validated.

We are currently in the 'bubble burst and value correction' phase, where the market is betting trillions of dollars and countless people's expectations on this massive social experiment. It might succeed, giving birth to the next 'Amazon'; it might also fail, or succeed in ways we can't yet imagine.

Therefore, viewing Bitcoin as the internet of 2000 is an apt analogy. But whether it will ultimately become an 'Amazon' or a 'Pets.com' is one of the biggest unknowns of our era.