Bitcoin crash: opportunity or the end game?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
01:00 Fri, 06 Feb 2026
In recent days, there have been big drops in the prices of gold and silver bullion and at the same time, we've seen a big drop in the price of Bitcoin. Are these falls related?
When gold and silver bullion have a crash, they never fall to zero. For thousands of years humans have put trust in these metals.
Cryptocurrencies have some similarities to gold and silver bullion but they have some big differences too.
Bitcoin needs electricity, it needs a network connection and it needs a bit of faith.
If people lose faith in a bank, the share price drops and after the share price fall passes the point of no return, the bank is usually taken over by another bank. That is what happened to Credit Suisse in 2023.
If the price of Bitcoin falls too much, there is no bank to take it over because that was never part of the design. When the price drop passes a point of no return, faith will be lost. As with any other failed bank or failed currency, when the faith is lost, it doesn't come back. People move on to other investments.
All the cryptocurrencies have some similarities to a ponzi scheme: for existing investors to profit, they require some new first time investors to keep arriving. In times of economic confidence, people are willing to take small risks and put some of their savings in something like Bitcoin. In the current era, if people have some money leftover, they put it in gold and silver bullion.
The lower prices for gold and silver bullion this week provide a bigger incentive for people to go straight to the coin shop. For people who really want to sell some of their Bitcoins in this climate, there are less people to buy them so they have to accept a lower price for them.
At the same time, the recent crisis in Iran reminded the whole world how easy it is for a government to cut the Internet. Bitcoin doesn't work when the Internet is disconnected.
When new players completely stop joining Bitcoin, it becomes impossible for existing participants to sell their Bitcoins and get out.
That is what the end game will look like for Bitcoin. Is that what we are seeing today?
Personally, I do not have any Bitcoin investments so I am simply an observer. █