I agree with you in saying that we need to wait for bitcoin to go through a few more economic cycles to make an accurate assessment of it. And if we evaluate it fairly, it is clear that bitcoin still cannot compare to gold in terms of inflation hedge or safe haven. But is it fair to look at its growth over the last 15 years and what it has done during the Covid pandemic and say that it is not a hedge against inflation? 15 years is not too long for the world economy, but in the past 15 years, has any asset had such incredible growth as bitcoin?
It's not as good as gold but at least it deserves to be considered another option besides gold.
Inflation hedge is different, because we consider relatively mature assets primarily. It simply doesn’t make sense for us to compare crypto because much of the growth is propelled by the information gap.
When comparing against a class of inflation hedge, looking at performance is the wrong metric. We are looking for assets which can consistently do so. In the inflation shock of 2021, Bitcoin actually didn’t serve as a good inflation hedge.
Similarly, Bitcoins fluctuation also doesn’t fit under the definition of safe haven. There are different macro aspects and traits that an asset class should have in both the categories that you’ve mentioned.