I thought about making this another edition in The Latest in the Fall of the Republic, but 1) we aren’t there yet and 2) I just talked about bitcoin a bit.
But, no, couldn’t leave it at that. Ol Incel Memes decided to take it upon himself to pump up BOTH bitcoin’s and dogecoin’s value.
I had a FRESH round of people asking for quality preaching about this shit. So, here we go.
I think Cryptocurrency by and large is a bunch of trash hype that is a stepping stone on the way to something else. What that something else will be, I do not know, but this is the holding pattern.
But lets talk about why I think crypto is trash. And its simple. Its shitty at every single thing people claim that its good at.
1. Crypto is going to free us of the financial system!
No it fucking wont.
Take a step back and think about this for a second. Over the past 100 years we have developed a system of protection for the consumer. Yeah, it fails. Yeah, the banks are shitty. But at the end of the day, there is still the FDIC. You will get made whole if the bank shits the bed.
In order to abandon the financial system, people, more people than voted in this election, more people than drink bud light, more people than exist in North and South America would have to switch EVERYTHING to bitcoin or another crypto. Home purchases, grocery stores, business to business transactions….farmers in Iowa would have to pay John Deere in crypto. I am sure some of them do, but not nearly as much as you think.
That’s that fresh shit (at least at the time of this writing). People are not going to fucking Wal-Mart to buy Fritos with bitcoin. They aren’t going to their local gas station to buy High Life.
The vast majority of people don’t fucking understand bitcoin, don’t trust it, or fucking never heard of it. This is a big big world we live in, and no matter what Ol Incel Memes thinks, people aren’t dumping their USD. He’s moving to Texas, maybe he should head to east Texas to see some shit. Which brings me to my next point.
2. Crypto means we don’t need the government!
This is my favorite one. I DONT NEED DA GUMBERNMENT TELLIN ME HOW TO BUY PORN WITH MY MONEES.
Dumb motherfuckers, if the goddamn government fails, how you gunna mine a single coin? Whose going to buy it? You think the internet is just going to stay chugging. What you going to pay the linemen who have to keep the lines up, the ISPs?
The first fucking thing that goes if things go to shit is the internet infrastructure. You can see it in real time. The revolution is not going to be the fucking party that you all think it is.
Plus, for as much as we have budlight drinkers stomping up in the capitol, people want their socialism. They want social security. They want medicare. They want the benefits of government. Don’t believe me? The GOP is going to pivot their whole strategy on it. As long as you DONT call your socialism socialism, people are happy having their socialism-lite with lime.
In summation, no one is going to overthrow the government for your fucking digital meme revolution.
3. Crypto is the best currency on planet earth!
If that’s cryptocurrency’s fucking goal, it is dogshit at it. A tale in two charts.
Currencies have to define stability. If you are buying anything that isn’t instantaneous. A building. A backhoe. You are subject to the whims of currency changes. This is why the exchange rate hedges were invented. To stall out currency fluctuations. Typically, a currency will shift by 5%-8% in any given half year to full year period. So, businesses even hedge for that.
Why the fuck would you exchange ANY long term goods if the fucking value is going to go up (OR DOWN) by multiple hundreds or thousands of percent.
Businesses cannot operate in the land of complete stupidity. Now, if your goal is to destroy capitalism and get everyone back to rural farm living, convince everyone to mortgage their house and put it in bitcoin (like someone tried to do to my brother two weeks ago). However, I will take these bitcoin acolytes at their word.
Bottom line, bitcoin is shitty as a currency
4. Bitcoin is a great investment!
No it fucking isn’t. All cryptocurrencies haven’t gotten over the fundamental fight. Their nature vs. Reality. They are, on purpose, unauditable and untethered to the world. If you buy stock, cash, or gold, you still HAVE those things if something goes wrong. If you buy crypto, its gone. Look at these fucking schlubs who lost their bitcoin through dumb reasons. If you buy gold and bury it in your backyard, the fucking gold is still there.
Like yes, we are in a time period of crazy growth. Where the upper bounds of reality itself are unhinged. So, it may seem like a good idea.
But its the ultimate risky investment. There is 0 downside protection. None. No one to even sue. You cant complain to the CFPB.
I want to be clear here. I don’t think blockchain/crypto is bad technology. I just think as it currently stands, cryptocurrencies are only good for one thing: a method of exchange at a point in time.
In the crypto nerd land, that’s basically as close to a slur as you can get. But its true.
Will someone eventually find a “killer app” for it? I am sure someone will. Plenty of people are looking into it. But I don’t expect it anytime soon.
To put it another way, until such time as words like “crypto” and “blockchain” go the way of TCP/IP or RFID, where its a thing everyone uses but the normies don’t have to know a damn thing about how it works, it will be relegated to the hype train corners of the internet. Regardless if Coinbase is going public or the federal government is looking into crypto. Until we move past the hype, we aren’t going to actually use the technology to advance anything.
So, I leave you with the words of Harry Allen from long long ago.