There are 2 things going for cryptocurrency. First it potentially is a more efficient way to eschange money between currencies, or to move money between places. But I don't think that has worked out so far.
The second thing is there may be value in scarcity. Bitcoin, for example, will max at somewhere around 21 million. Mathematically apparently. Not sure about other crypto currencies - they may not have that feature, not sure. But for the bitcoin example the limited number and scarcity may give them some value. In that sense it is like gold. Gold has very little intrinsic value, most of its value is in its scarcity, combined with the idea that people think it has value.
Having said all that I'm not buying bitcoin anytime soon.
As for patterns in its past changes in value...good luck with that. People see faces in the moon too. We're great at finding patterns, but much of the time they are random noise. Bitcoin has only been around for just over 10 years, so a 4 year or whatever pattern is noise.
The second thing is there may be value in scarcity. Bitcoin, for example, will max at somewhere around 21 million. Mathematically apparently. Not sure about other crypto currencies - they may not have that feature, not sure. But for the bitcoin example the limited number and scarcity may give them some value. In that sense it is like gold. Gold has very little intrinsic value, most of its value is in its scarcity, combined with the idea that people think it has value.
Having said all that I'm not buying bitcoin anytime soon.
As for patterns in its past changes in value...good luck with that. People see faces in the moon too. We're great at finding patterns, but much of the time they are random noise. Bitcoin has only been around for just over 10 years, so a 4 year or whatever pattern is noise.