Bitcoin obviously offers some value to some people, but I think bitcoin's greatest innovations were social.

The bitcoin community has innovated all sorts of social tools for advocating causes and pumping assets. Could $TSLA have reached $850 post-split without these techniques? Maybe. Could $GME have reached around $350 without an army of "diamond hands" and "to the moon" (read: crypto memes)? Definitely not.

This may feel like a stupid point, but I mean it. Goldbugs have been a thing for forever, but the sort of digital advocacy that bitcoin sees puts them to shame by comparison. Not only is there a hoard of crypto fanatics ready to tell you why sitting out of bitcoin is the worst decision you've been making your entire life, but you can even get several entirely disjoint explanations for why bitcoin is something you should invest in (some at a glance: it's going to make digital payments easy, it's a scarce asset like gold and will only increase in price, it will replace fiat as a global currency, it's a revolutionary technology and nothing else like it has been seen before, etc). Similarly, if you try to critique any one of these, another supporter will instantly take up the fight by moving the goalposts to their preferred explanation on why bitcoin is great. (Oh sure it can't do many transactions, but it's not actually for payments it's digital gold...)

This isn't meant to be derogatory against bitcoin supporters, but rather an expression of wonder. It's clearly not a fluke: bitcoin drops off the radar for most people and comes back every couple of years, clearly whatever the supporters and investors are doing to advocate for it is working.