In a Cointelegraph interview, Ran Neuner ponders Bitcoin’s identity crisis, market risks and the growing impact of macro trends.
In this Cointelegraph interview, Ran Neuner, a longtime voice in the crypto space, openly questions Bitcoin’s core narrative— as he admits he struggles to answer one simple question: why should people buy it?
“I don’t know how to answer that question. That’s the problem.”
Once pitched as peer-to-peer money and later reframed as digital gold, Bitcoin’s identity has become harder to define in practice, he argues, especially after failing to move in tandem with traditional store-of-value assets like gold in the last cycle.
“And so the biggest crisis that I have at the moment,” he said, “is justifying to myself what Bitcoin is and where Bitcoin derives its value from.”
That fundamental uncertainty feeds into a much broader conversation about where the crypto market is heading in 2026.
Rather than offering bold price predictions, Neuner pushes back against the idea entirely. He said investors should stop trying to guess market direction and instead focus on building data-driven theses while protecting themselves from downside risk.
From there, the discussion expands into macro territory.
The Iran war, oil prices, and inflation are actively shaping market behavior. Neuner sees capital flows, not headlines, as the only reliable signal in an increasingly distorted information environment.
At the same time, he outlines a radically different future, one where AI agents transact autonomously, potentially creating a new digital economy driven by crypto infrastructure.
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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.