Bitcoin, as surely you must know by now, blasted above $100,000 yesterday evening. It had tried late last month to cross the magical Big Round Number (red oval) but failed to do so rather spectacularly. This time, is strapped on its rocket boosters and ripped thousands of dollars higher within minutes.
For me, personally, this means nothing. I haven’t traded crypto since 2021. I don’t own any, and God knows I don’t have any short positions related to it. Still, I was fascinated to roam around social media to get a sense of the zeitgeist. Unsurprisingly, it was along the following lines:
- In your FACE, losers!
- This was the hard part. Getting to $1 million will be the easy part (this was often accompanied by a progress bar, showing the path to one million was 10% “loaded” already)
- What color Lambo should I get?
And on and on, as you would expect from a collective crowd of crypto fans, which tends to be mired in the mentality of angry middle schoolers.
This nastiness was particularly directed toward Peter Schiff, the precious metals maven, who for years has decried how silly the whole damned thing is. Mr. Schiff must have a remarkably thick skin, because he just won’t let up, so it seems that most of x.com was pissing in his face last night.
I realized long ago that the crypto crowd was pretty much unhinged, so I just tend to keep my fat mouth shut about the entire topic. The only thing I’ve said, and I’ll say it again without reservation, is that crypto has one and only one meaningful utility: it’s a gambling token. Period. It isn’t some game changer for governments. It isn’t a new reserve currency. It’s. A. Gambling. Token. And quite a good one, particularly in these days of unchecked avarice and financial naivete.
The whole “big round number” thing is a bit psycho as well. Let me trot out an asset that I own which has ascended mightily in value over the years to point out just how stupid this is: my house.
I bought my home in 1991. It is worth fifteen times what I paid for it back then, so although it’s no Bitcoin, it certainly has had a big price bump. And let’s say I was very hung up on it going from $7.9 million in value to $8 million, because $8,000,000 is a big round number.
So…….the happy day comes. I checked Zillow, and lo and behold, the market price starts with an 8 instead of a 7. And I hustled over to x.com and declared:
- In your FACE, non-Palo-Alto homeowners!
- This was the hard part. Getting to $10 million is the easy part!
- I wonder what color Lambo I should get?
You would probably think to yourself, “Gosh, what an asshole“, except probably without the gosh part. I would hasten to add that my home, incidentally, has a tremendous amount of utility which will last me the rest of my life. Unlike, oh, let’s say, a bunch of 0s and 1s floating out in the vapor somewhere.
It’s all just so dumb, folks.
Well, Tim, you’re a chartist. What do you actually think of the chart? Ah, there’s nothing particularly bearish about it at all. I think it’ll challenge its $100,000 breakout soon – – maybe even in the next few hours – – but there’s nothing I can point to that would suggest this sucker is doomed or anything.
I would hasten to add, however, as dependent upon mob psychology as crypto is, there never IS anything to indicate it’s about to fall to pieces. After all, the chart below was SCREAMINGLY bullish for years, until it wasn’t. Without any warning at all, it lost about 80% of its value. It won’t be the last time. Bitcoin began collapsing immediately to the right of where this chart ends.
I mean, look, I’ll level with you. I would LOVE to see Bitcoin get blown to smithereens and watch the crypto crowd absolutely screech in agony (actually, they’d be screeching for a government bailout, because, believe me, they could not care LESS about changing the government; they just want their BTC to keep going up). I think it would be a fitting and delicious intermission to this sickening lunacy we’re all going through.
In the meantime, though, they’re going to keep high fiving each other and giggling uncontrollably, encouraged by permabull websites like Zerohedge, which are offering them up endless reasons to just keep holding on:
As George Carlin said, when you’re born into this world, you get a ticket to the circus, and when you’re born in the United States, you get a front row seat.
