Thanks for your comment. Yes, the Bitcoin price has historically been determined by the examples you mention as market manipulation, and also by supply, demand, Central Bank activity, Elon Musk’s tweets, etc. Similar factors played a role and caused volatility in the early days of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Nothing is spurious about modeling the last 13 years of Bitcoin price evolution and predicting the price into the future. The Bitcoin market cap is currently 1/28 of that of gold, https://8marketcap.com/ , and it has been around 1/10 of that of gold. The argument for predicting that the Bitcoin market cap will approach that of gold asymptotically, or exceed that of gold if a higher Bitcoin carrying capacity is assumed in the model, follows straightforwardly from the model. The model has proved valid for the last 13 years. Of course, as we know, models may be false, but can be useful. The truth may be found in the intersection of multiple models. See e.g. Nagy et al. (2007) who suggest that truth is the intersection of independent lies: Laura Nagy, Anne Fairbrother, Matthew Etterson & Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, (2007) The Intersection of Independent Lies: Increasing Realism in Ecological Risk Assessment, Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, 13:2, 355-369, DOI: 10.1080/10807030701226814 . Alternative models will be developed in future years. Yes, gold has industrial, ornamental, and all kinds of intrinsic value. Peter Schiff and others present that argument, countered by e.g. Michael Saylor. The intrinsic value of Bitcoin is the network of miners, users, traders, holders, etc. Of course one may discuss the definition of “intrinsic value” philosophically. This intrinsic value for Bitcoin is not tangible, and differs of course from the intrinsic value of gold. See e.g. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/why-do-bitcoins-have-value.asp . Money is usually perceived to have four functions, i.e. medium of exchange, store of value, standard of deferred payment, unit of account; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money . History has shown that e.g. fiat money does not have to have intrinsic value; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money . Yes, the Yorke et al. (1993) reference is not present in the Notebook, but is present in the published article in section 1.3.3 on page 5. The Notebook excludes the literature review, so this may also be the case for other references in the reference list.

Nothing is circular about that sentence. But we do introduce an external assumption about the Bitcoin carrying capacity. One may of course disagree with that assumption. External assumptions are present as axioms in the philosophy of mathematics, economics, finance, etc. Yes, our external assumption is empirical. It is possible to make external empirical assumptions. One possible alternative is to somehow determine the Bitcoin carrying capacity from the last 13 years, using e.g. regression, or by driving by looking out the back window. That can be done in future research. Yes, it would be nice to predict the Mt. Gox collapse caused by hacking based on the available information prior to the collapse, which in principle can be done prior to the collapse or retroactively. That is also left for future research.