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The epicentre of the meltdown was South Korea, which reiterated earlier threats to ban cryptocurrency trading. Meanwhile, China — which has already banned mainland coin exchanges and made life harder for Bitcoin mining operations — is reportedly ready to take further steps to crack down on cryptocurrencies.

Regulatory intervention is a key vulnerability to the Bitcoin rally, and there might be more to come: the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and European regulators have voiced concerns over the Bitcoin markets’ high risk and rampant speculation. Still, it’s not clear what the long-term price impact will be.

Faced with outrage from crypto-crazy citizens outraged at the government for destroying their “happy dream” (as one put it), Seoul could well put its threats on the backburner. Even if it does make good, other jurisdictions could take up the slack. When China passed its first wave of anti-crypto rules last year, much of the market action simply shifted to Japan; some mining operations just moved elsewhere, including Canada.

So who knows if this is the end to the cryptocurrency rally. Yet there are other factors that could undermine it. And the biggest is this: the recent rally and correction have demonstrated that Bitcoin, as either a currency or a “store of value,” just doesn’t work very well.

What, after all, is the value-holding capacity of Bitcoin? Crypto-evangelists often cite gold as a similar asset class, in that it has no value beyond marginal industrial uses; its value is what people say it is. Maybe that’s a good comparison, but I’d apply it differently, by noting that the base value of gold is not just in those industrial uses, but also in the hundreds of millions of people around the world who believe that it looks good or can bestow prestige. Granted, this is a historical/cultural value, yet it’s proven pretty reliable over the past, oh, 5,000 years or so. And it comprises at least part of the price of gold, one that should persist no matter how other factors fare.