*Just a disclaimer up front that I’m not trying to sell anyone on crypto*.
I do hold some that as I mentioned above I have zero cost basis in and I have no plans to buy any more, just to continue mining ETH as long as it is profitable. I just found it funny you’d dismiss all of it so quickly with your statement. In my mind it reminded me of the issue you take with people not believing real sale values (though private) of certain Pokemon cards. Not the same thing at all I know, but that is what it made me think of as the similarity in both cases is that the sales are really happening whether or not someone is aware or believes in/agrees with them.
To your question ETH is #2-3 in market cap lately so yeah it is one of the more established ones though it too is relatively new. Released in July of 2015 we are only a few years into it. Was it in a bubble late last year? Yeah it was obviously over inflated as it has currently lost about 85% of it’s value from peak. BTC has a history of cycles where it goes up orders of magnitude only to fall 80% or more before making its next peak. Obviously that is no indicator of future prices and it can’t and won’t do that indefinitely but it’s hard to say where it will end up. BTC is “only” down about 2/3 from it’s peak. Both 85% and 67% losses are not unheard of in other prices at various points in history all the way from gold, silver to an entire broad market loss of 54% in 2008. Surely several of those companies lost 70% and still are around today much higher than pre crash.
Just wanted to throw in my own quote from that “litecoin” thread from DEC 2017.