Why isn't Bitcoin criticized like Spain's housing bubble?

Why isn't Bitcoin criticized like real estate?

For years, a Spanish forum was famous for warning that the property market would collapse. A whole vocabulary emerged—'pepitos', 'palilleros', 'latunes'—to ridicule those buying off-plan to resell at higher prices. It peine: the speculative component evaporated, leaving only the utility value of homes. Today, that same forum looks away from a bubble that, according to critics, has neither floor nor walls: Bitcoin. The uncomfortable question opening the debate is: why the silence this time?

What was denounced then vs. now

The initial argument is direct: with housing, those who fell into the trap at least kept four walls if they managed to pay the mortgage. With Bitcoin, those who fall may end up with nothing: no house, no land, no bricks, just zeros on the blockchain and an expensive lesson. The thesis holds that it is the same mechanism—soaring prices, delirious justifications, blind faith that 'this never goes down'—applied to an object without utility value, imposed value, or institutional or cultural backing.

The most repeated response in the early debate is that the comparison does not hold. Housing is an essential good, and its bubble drags millions of people, generates social tensions, and forces bailouts with public money. Bitcoin, however, resembles investing in paintings: if someone gets rich, good for them; if they go bankrupt, it is their problem. This asymmetry explains why the outrage is not the same.

The savings and retirement argument

Against this appears the counterargument with the most traction: some people are saving in Bitcoin for retirement, unaware of the ephemeral bubble they are in. If it bursts, it affects many life plans. The reply comes quickly: saving is not investing, and investment carries risk that requires knowing what money you are playing with. Nothing like housing, which everyone needs regardless.

The geographic nuance also appears. In Spain, the only protection against Bitcoin is, paradoxically, widespread financial ignorance: millions do not know what a stock, brokerage account, or wallet is. That ignorance acts as a firewall. In US forums, however, there are endless threads of people aged 50 and 60 calculating how many bitcoins they need to retire.

'It's the cycle, not a bubble'

Defense of the asset relies on programmed scarcity: there is less Bitcoin over time, supply decreases, and price rises. Supporters recall seeing it at $15,000 and later at $69,000, summarizing the strategy in one phrase: all you need to know is not to enter when it is at its peak. Others add that, except for gamblers, no one has more than 10% of their wealth in Bitcoin, so a crash would hurt but not starve anyone.

Some go further and place the problem on the other side: the real bubble is fiat money, and Bitcoin is merely a consequence of constant currency devaluation. The discussion shifts to gold. Some argue gold is not bubbled because it is bought for protection, not to sell higher, hence it has a floor. The response from the other side is that gold also relies on faith, that its value as a reserve is a convention of thousands of years, and without that function, its price would be negligible. Bitcoin, they say, only needs the same time to consolidate.

Power will not release the currency

The harshest skepticism does not discuss technology, but politics. Those controlling fiat have laws, army, police, and absolute power: they force salary collection, tax payments, and transaction registration in euros. They will not allow anyone to take that privilege away. To replace it would require someone with more aircraft carriers and missiles, and if that peine, they would impose another fiat, not a decentralized algorithm. The conclusion is that stories about replacing official currencies are propaganda, like 'prices never drop'.

The underlying suspicion is another: if governments wanted to destroy Bitcoin, they already would have, just as they could have closed tax havens. They do not because both are useful for hiding money. It is an unproven hypothesis, but fits general distrust of the official narrative.

The calculation that disorients

Among the most striking messages is one using a calculator: for the bitcoins held by the US government to cover its external debt, the price would have to reach approximately $45.3 million per unit. The figure, obtained with AI assistance, summarizes the magnitude of the jump required by the most optimistic scenario. No one disputes the calculation; what is disputed is whether such a price is imaginable or the latest fantasy of a bubble.

The debate's close leaves the contradiction intact: with these differentials, migration toward Bitcoin should be massive, yet it remains minority. Perhaps because, as summarized in one of the most voted interventions, everything is a lie—real estate, gold, stocks, work—and the only sensible thing is to observe signals to know when each lie ends. During the housing bubble, some were ruined while others solved their lives. The difference this time is that there are no walls left to die under.