There is no evidence-based way to say cryptocurrencies as a group are “right where they should be” without first defining the yardstick. Bitcoin’s 2017 peak and 2018 crash tell us about one asset’s price history; household surveys describe how people use crypto; financial-stability assessments examine whether losses can spill into the wider economy. None establishes what crypto should be worth in October 2026.
What happened to Bitcoin in the 2018 crash?
Bitcoin’s rise and fall is the clearest price story in the evidence here, but it is not a proxy for every cryptocurrency. A May 2018 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reported that Bitcoin stayed below $4,000 through mid-2017, surged to nearly $20,000, and then began a rapid decline after reaching $19,511 on December 17, 2017. The European Central Bank’s May 2018 Financial Stability Review reported that Bitcoin lost 65% of its value in the early-2018 crash.
The San Francisco Fed authors proposed that the introduction of CME Bitcoin futures, which coincided with Bitcoin’s peak, may have helped reverse the rally. Futures gave pessimistic traders a way to take positions against Bitcoin, whereas the market had previously been dominated by optimistic buyers. The authors said the price pattern was “consistent with” that explanation; they did not establish that futures alone caused the broader crypto crash.
Does a recovery from a crash show where an asset should be priced?
No. A price can recover, fall further, or move sideways without proving that it is at a fair or appropriate value. “Should be worth” is a valuation claim, and answering it requires a specified asset, a date, and a model with assumptions that can be examined. A comparison with an earlier peak answers a narrower question—how far the price has moved—not whether that price is justified.
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The San Francisco Fed authors explicitly declined to forecast Bitcoin’s price. They wrote, “we do not pretend to be able to forecast bitcoin prices, nor will we offer any guesses,” adding that their understanding of Bitcoin’s transactional benefits was too imprecise to quantify a long-run price. The evidence summarized here also contains no October 2026 market-price series, so it cannot establish how Bitcoin or a representative crypto basket compares with its 2018 level now.
Are people using crypto for payments or mainly as an investment?
The Federal Reserve’s 2025 report on U.S. household economic well-being provides a usage measure, not a valuation or investment-return measure. Its survey found that 8% of U.S. adults reported any cryptocurrency use in 2024, down from 12% in 2021. In 2024, 7% said they bought or held cryptocurrency as an investment, while 2% said they used it to buy something or make a payment.
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| Reported cryptocurrency use | 2021 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Any use | 12% of U.S. adults | 8% of U.S. adults |
| Bought or held as an investment | Not stated in the cited Federal Reserve figures | 7% of U.S. adults |
| Used to buy something or make a payment | Not stated in the cited Federal Reserve figures | 2% of U.S. adults |
These are self-reported U.S. household figures; they are not a global estimate, a measure of transaction volume, or evidence of what any asset should be worth. Investment holding and payment use are distinct behaviors, and the 2024 figures should not be added together as though they were mutually exclusive categories.
Do crypto losses threaten the wider financial system?
A market crash can be severe for holders without necessarily destabilizing the whole financial system. In May 2018, the ECB judged that crypto-assets did not then pose a material risk to euro-area financial stability: exposure was modest, correlations with other markets were very low, and links to finance and the real economy remained limited. That was a contemporaneous assessment of the euro area, not a finding about crypto’s present-day market structure.
By July 2022, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard described crypto-assets as volatile and said their losses were correlated with riskier equities and broader risk appetite. She also pointed to leverage, fire sales, contagion, runs on stablecoins, and frozen customer withdrawals as vulnerabilities revealed by market turbulence. Her warning was that “New technology and financial engineering cannot by themselves convert risky assets into safe ones.” Together, the 2018 and 2022 assessments illustrate why asset-holder losses and systemic risk should be judged separately—and why a historical finding should not be treated as permanent.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does “right where they should be” actually mean?
The phrase can describe several different claims, and they do not answer one another:
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- Near a past price peak: this requires naming the asset and comparing prices at specific dates. The available historical figures establish Bitcoin’s December 2017 peak and its early-2018 loss, but not its price in October 2026.
- Useful to households: the U.S. survey shows reported investment holding was more common than reported purchase or payment use in 2024. It does not measure whether those uses justify a particular market price.
- Safe for the financial system: the ECB’s 2018 euro-area assessment and Brainard’s 2022 remarks address exposure and vulnerabilities at different moments. Neither determines a fair price.
- At fair value: this requires a defined valuation model and assumptions. The cited San Francisco Fed authors did not offer a long-run price estimate.
So the title’s claim cannot be verified as a universal verdict about cryptocurrencies. The record supports a narrower conclusion: Bitcoin experienced a major boom and crash, household use has distinct investment and payment dimensions, and financial-system exposure depends on the market structure and period being assessed. Without a named asset, valuation yardstick, and current price comparison, “where they should be” remains an opinion rather than an established finding.
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