The late 2013 Mt.Gox/Karpeles fueled pump and dump is directly responsible for the current malaise plaguing the bitcoin space and the primary reason why the bitcoin price is unable to sustain any rally.

Contrary to popular belief among the crypto crowd, price bubbles do major harm to all but a few. Andreas Antonopolous even boasts of future pumps and dumps while totally ignoring the negative side effects. The larger the pump the more devastating the hangover.

1) The human loss factor.

The deranged libertarian gospel of selfishness is used to justify and ignore real financial and psychological damage being inflicted onto people in this space.

Due to the concentrated nature of bitcoin ownership, every price bubble is followed by an ever greater amount of actual people with real financial losses.

Suppose early adopter Ver sold 100k BTC at an average price of $1k. Where did the $100 million dollars he received come from? More than likely it was pooled together from numerous bidders. Suppose 100k users each bought 1 of Ver's coins @ $1k and hodled them to the moon.

1 year later those 100,000 people have 'lost', ie gave a combined 80 million to Ver. In our example each of them is sitting on an $800 loss. Will they have a positive opinion of bitcoin or a negative one? Will they likely recommend Bitcoin to friends? What type of desperation would they resort to to get the price back up?

For 1 early adopter to have financially gained, potentially hundreds of thousands of people lost. The network effect from a pump and dump works in reverse.

Bagholders with substantial losses want to puke when they hear the word 'Bitcoin'.

2) Startup overconfidence and miner malinvestment.

The artificially induced price rally led to major consequences for bitcoin startups. Instead of figuring out how to generate future revenue by providing sustainable services, startups began squandering the VC capital that poured into them due to the price rise. VC capital in the bitcoin space has turned out to have a negative effect. Why? Simple because startups built on literally nothing but buzzwords were suddenly flush with cash. This created the delusion that they were doing something right. The end result wasn't 'disruption', but low brow entertainment. The bitcoin bowl added no value other than exposing the mistake VC's made financing startups in the space.

The most ardent damage came from the miners themselves. The price pump sent signals to participants that major demand for security was present. Tens if not hundreds of millions were spent setting up miners. The reality quickly began to set in, namely miners were securing a network that barely had participants. Facing huge initial costs on top of monthly electricity bills, miners were forced to sell no matter the price. This relentless sell pressure led to an 80%+ value decline as real wealth was burned up by the powerplants supplying rivers of electricity towards no purposeful use. Pumps lead to capital destruction.

The psychological toll of 11 billion in paper value being wiped out from such a small community is evident everywhere. The supposed pragmatic development team now spends its time bickering over nothing. The consequence of the moral bankruptcy of the crypto community is available for all to see. Failed scheme after scheme just to get the price back up. Tyrannical behavior including censorship is now rampant.

The lack of practical reason amongst the developers makes them completely oblivious to the philosophical problems freezing the bitcoin ecosystem up. Instead they seek out solutions in 'computer code' and debate irrelevant technical issues.

Sorry Andreas, you can't build any sustainable monetary system on pumps and dumps. There can be no progress outside the moral order.