There is already another BTC thread if you want to argue about the utility of cryptocurrency:
viewtopic.php?t=7848
In terms of the dotcom boom comparison, I think there's a lot of truth in that. However, as I understand it the dotcom boom was not exacerbated by fiscal and monetary policy, which play a large role in the dynamic today. Further, you didn't have the level of debt (to include gov't) and leverage across the entire system that we have today. The Fed raised the federal funds rate to ~6% in order to prick the dotcom bubble. The current fed funds rate is 25 basis points.
Additionally, you didn't have the TINA dynamic for everyone from retail to institutional and enormous monthly "dumb money" inflows into indexes like you do now, which tend to increase volatility due to little price sensitivity.
So it's not so much of a question of whether this is a bubble, more so the questions are:
1. Can/will the Fed attempt to accelerate tapering and reduce rates? Powell talked big game about accelerating tapering recently (perhaps in an attempt to slow markets without having to actually risk causing a recession), but the Fed is still backstopping a variety of credit markets to include mortgage-back securities. Right now the political trade off is reduce inflation or slow the economy.
2. Will fiscal policy play a large role in the next few years like it did at the beginning of the pandemic? Political gridlock seems like the default recently, but things are difficult to predict especially as we move into midterms in 2022. The government could easily blast out another round of stimulus in the next economic "crisis" whether that be COVID-related, energy-related, etc. I'm trying to avoid political discussions about what gov't
should do and just frame some of the possibilities.
3. How long can the current system continue? This is the hardest to predict and the answer is probably "until it can't." We can go back over the past 5+ years and see all sorts of comments about how sentiment is ridiculously high and assets are overvalued, yet the party continued on.