For those that have been living inside caves, on desert islands, or under the sway of power sedatives – the price of Bitcoin has just exploded in the face of crypto sceptics like a crate of homemade firecrackers. The homemade variety of incendiary devices is always preferable due to its exciting random nature, and Bitcoin prices follow a similar wildly swinging trajectory.
Many ‘traditional’ economists, financiers, and investors – let’s call them suits, have completely failed to grasp the nature of cryptocurrency. Warren Buffet and his acolytes are sceptical of Bitcoin because they are unable to comprehend its purpose. Is it a store of value like gold, or a new form of currency that might one day rival fiat, or a means of hiding and possibly laundering wealth? How is it housed? Are the digital vaults secure? Won’t hackers simply sneak into an owner’s computer and steal the mysterious entity? The suits have spent a great deal of effort deriding Bitcoin and other new fangled technologies, boldly predicting their decline and ultimate disappearance.
But here we are. Bitcoin is presently trading around 60k Aud. Its popularity has soared in line with its ability to fight off the naysayers and appreciate like no other asset. As the GameStop episode demonstrated, the suits are a hated class, and if buying $100 worth of GME stock or a tiny slice of Bitcoin weakens the financial establishment, then retail or peasant investors stand ready with their pitchforks.
The king of the peasants is Elon Musk, a crypto believer who just lit a match under the Bitcoin firecracker by purchasing $1.5 billion worth of the stuff. This is another step toward the type of mainstream acceptance that will propel the price of crypto even higher.
So how do the suits possibly fight back? Is there anything they can do to crash the Bitcoin price? The decentralised nature of blockchain makes it almost impossible to stamp out. Some countries have toyed with Bitcoin bans, but it exists to take power away from centralised governments and is therefore almost impossible to eradicate. India is the latest country to ban Bitcoin, and we will watch their failure closely. There is much talk from the IMF, WEF, Great Reset, Davos crowd about implementing an all-pervasive digital world currency that would crush gold and Bitcoin into worthless junk.
Such a scheme would hand these unelected elites almost total global control. Their currency would be tied to a Social Credit System, and anyone who was seen to challenge or obstruct the wishes of the IMF or its many branches could have their wealth erased at the stroke of a keyboard.
The tyrants in China have trialled such a system extensively, and proven its ruthless effectiveness. International travel can be banned from those that hold certain political ideas for example. Personal online activity can determine who posed a threat to the Davos agenda. Dissenting voices can be crushed like George Orwell’s boot stamping on a human face, for ever. And that’s the appeal of Bitcoin. It requires no central bank approval. It moves freely around the market exactly like a free economy should operate. Nobody can restrict or curtail it.
It cannot be printed out of thin air like fiat currencies.
It is finite and the supply cannot be manipulated or even accelerated like almost every other asset.
As companies such as Tesla and PayPal drive mainstream acceptance and usage, the price of Bitcoin appears destined to rise. Apple currently sits atop an enormous pile of USD, an asset susceptible to massive devaluation. There is speculation they may follow Tesla’s lead and shift a portion of this reserve into Bitcoin. This will send prices stratospheric, and if other S&P500 companies adopt a similar policy of fiat divestment, the moon boys that appeared delusional not so long ago might be proven correct.
Such an eventuality will drive the suits mad as they are left holding purely dollar-denominated assets at a time of massive central bank money printing. If corporate survival dictates that a portion of assets be stored in decentralised blockchain supported cryptocurrencies, then 60k AUD Bitcoin might appear a bargain with the benefit of a little hindsight.
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Invest your fiat wisely. Please do not consider the above to be financial advice, and so forth.
Play safe with homemade firecrackers.
Jackson Byrne – Business Editor @ A Man’s Guide