Ulrich Bindseil, director general of market infrastructure and payments, and Jürgen Schaaf, an advisor to the central bank, claim in a blog post published by the European Central Bank that for bitcoin lobbyists, the formal approval by the SEC validates that Bitcoin investments are safe and the previous rally is evidence of an unstoppable victory.

The narrative started to shift towards the expectation that bitcoin's value would increase to unavoidably ever-higher levels in the middle of the 2010s. However, the site makes the case that bitcoin is not a good choice for investments or even as a practical form of payment.

Lower interest rates and the SEC's approval, according to Bindseil and Schaff, have let Wall Street see bitcoin as "the only effective fuel in a speculative bubble" and have promised huge cash inflows.

"While in the short run the inflowing money can have a large impact on prices irrespective of fundamentals, prices will eventually return to their fundamental values in the long run," says the article. Furthermore, an asset's fair value is zero in the absence of any cash flow or other returns. Every price is equally (im)plausible when it is disconnected from economic fundamentals, which is ideal for snake oil merchants."

Bindseil and Schaaf urged lawmakers to hold off on taking regulatory action in a previous blog post from November of last year. They did this by pointing out that large bitcoin investors have the greatest incentive to maintain the hype and have enlisted legions of lobbyists to help them make their case to legislators and regulators.

In their most recent piece on the topic, the authors state: "While the current rally is fuelled by temporary factors, there are three structural reasons that may explain its seeming resilience: the ongoing manipulation of the 'price' in an unregulated market without oversight and without fair value, the growing demand for the 'currency of crime', and shortcomings in the authorities’ judgments and measures."

They contend that rather than addressing Bitcoin's excessive energy consumption or its role in funding crimes like money laundering and ransomware, the SEC's approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the EU's Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation have only succeeded in persuading uninformed outsiders that bitcoin is a sound and safe investment.
 

Finally, they contend: "The price of Bitcoin does not necessarily indicate its long-term viability. There are no fair values or economic fundamentals available to make meaningful forecasts. 'Proof of pricing' does not exist in speculative bubbles. Rather, the success of the Bitcoin lobby is demonstrated by the reflation of the speculative bubble. The total societal harm that will result from the collapse of the house of cards is quantified by the'market' capitalization."