Shares in Square Inc (NYSE:SQ) have been on a wild ride lately, thanks to Bitcoin.

Shares rose after the company announced it would accept Bitcoin in its Cash App, a mobile payment service that competes with Venmo from Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL).

This reinforced the company’s image as the bad boys of the payment space, and brought in speculators who will buy anything with the name of a cryptocurrency attached.

But the move wasn’t really that big. It quickly drew jeers from Bitcoin-holders on Wall Street, and Square’s stock price fell. It opened for trade December 11 at about $38 per share, close to where it was before the hype cycle began.

The question now becomes: Is Square itself more hype than meets the eye, or is this really the fintech revolution we were promised?

The answer may surprise you.

Is Square Overpriced?

Assuming it meets its earnings “whisper number” when it next reports earnings February 7, Square should do about $2.2 billion in business for the year, losing about $60 million or 16 cents per share in the process. That’s a growth rate of almost 30% justifying the loss, in an industry where people pay big for earnings, if growth is real.

At a market cap of $14.8 billion, Square’s price is not out of line with its peers. Paypal has a valuation of $87.6 billion while doing almost $11 billion in business.

What excited people like me about Square was its ancillary services. Square offers accounting and loans to small merchants, many of whom need those services badly when they are in their early growth phase. Square gets them with its ease of use and one-size-fits-most pricing, then tries to grow share of wallet for merchants who may be starting with a fair kiosk or food truck.

This has analysts like our Chris Tyler excited, recommending options strategies to capture the action. Bulls at Jefferies insist that Square is fully buzzword-compliant – “fintech” and “Bitcoin” being among the hottest terms in today’s market. Matt McCall agrees, saying investors should buy the dip and profit.

Square’s Group Is Pricey

I am a big fan of Square’s technology, and wrote just last month that a big bank could easily buy it for that technology. 

But the present pricing of stocks within the space has me wondering. When you’re paying 8 times sales for anything, you’re betting that the business model is sound, and that continued growth is certain.

In payments, nothing is certain. While there is great excitement about Bitcoin, the underlying technology of blockchain is an existential threat to most payment companies, which often use IBM mainframes to move hundreds of transactions each second, each with its own set of business conditions, among merchants, customers and banks.

Square Still Has Momentum

You can say these kinds of things about many companies in today’s market. Investors are paying big bucks for tech stories of all kinds.

To buy Square today, you need to believe it can keep a 30% per year growth rate going indefinitely.  That is a big ask, as our Vince Martin has written in urging investors not to buy it. 

If you believe in the present market, and many do, then the Square story, and valuation, make perfect sense. But demographics and the addition of capital to a world short of opportunity have me questioning the whole market, especially tech, and especially companies like Square.

I continue to have money in this market, in tech, and in this space. But I’m growing increasingly cautious as prices keep moving higher. I’m more inclined to be a seller than a buyer at this point.

But I’ve got mine. If you don’t, Square still has momentum and could, like Bitcoin, rise further before the fall.

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of the historical mystery romance The Reluctant Detective Travels in Time, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this article.