On Tuesday, December 17th, Bitcoin quietly reached the 100,000€ mark, which made its value spiral into free fall ever since.
As someone who once engaged with this bubble from a different perspective, I still understand the mythical value this value holds.
Not only does this swift rise and even swifter drop demonstrate the classic “bag holding” and “whale” behavior of scams, but also does it show how cryptocurrencies are an asset and should be treated as such. The main context I've ever heard people talk about Bitcoin, is for investments, not the usability of a decentralized coin.
There's no real world application for a currency in which a singular unit equals to 100,000€. That's a meaningless value only having a purpose for the previous bagholders of this grift. The people who were told that Bitcoin were to skyrocket to a different mark, such as 150,000€, are now left holding the bag, having created the fortune of those who helped create the fortune for those of the previous iteration of this never ending cycle. Everyone who's now in the negative will have to spend the coming years propagating the advance of this coin once more, to everyone and their mother, in order to ever see hope of making their money back.
The question is: how long can this continue? Every cycle creates a larger share of bag holders and a smaller share of winners, at what point is the mathematical limit for those who can be engrained in this scam reached? I have no doubt that Bitcoin can reach a laughably high value, from one million to ten million dollar. It's no surprise that such “bullish” turns always occur amidst the largest economic crisis globally; the last time Bitcoin surged in value like this was during the pandemic. Economic instability makes people turn to even more riskier investments, as they seem like the easiest individual ticket out of our societal struggles. Yet, as we always see, the majority of those dreamers is left holding the bag.
My criticism of Bitcoin always ends with the same mantra: the world of finance works surprisingly similar to these cryptocurrencies. If you were to criticise these digital tokens, you'd quickly find yourself criticizing the inner workings of the financial system underlying our global economy. The key difference is that Bitcoin abstracts its inner workings in such a way that it cannot be regulated, or at least it hasn't been attempted yet. The scam happens across multiple layers of abstractions, spread between a multitude of legal entities, private equity firms, individuals with no regard for local laws or borders, as long as it means they can escape law enforcement through such schemes. A system both so complex and obvious as a scam to the naked eye, that we no longer regard the victims of it as such, but rather as bad investors who should've known better. If regarded differently, we may be able to push forward government legislation, finally doing what we've already realized should be done for the real economy centuries ago: regulate or prevent the grift.
As such, Bitcoin represents our world filled with the atomized individuals left over in he rubble of neoliberalism, from every perspective, both in those who participate, and those who criticize.
Under an economic system in which your only chance of peace and happiness is to individually stand above the rest, to remove yourself of the consequences of the modern human's disasters, both in climate and society, we must not wonder why many choose to do so, for they are not selfish when they are only taught selfishness.
The real tragedy is not those individual people's actions, but the loss of a common dream, in which not only you yourself are lifted above the rubble, but your kind is as well. As the chance of becoming a millionaire when participating in this grift is less likely than being hit by a lightning strike ten times in a row, we can deduct that the common man regards this common dream as even less plausible. Buying Bitcoin to become a millionaire, as laughable as it sounds, represents the bright man's idea if seen in comparison to the foolish plan to build solidarity civil rights movements that exist beyond, and can outlast, capitalism.
@ErikUden there is a possibility that this loss is irretrievable. I mean how many years have we been fighting against the tide, trying to build mass movements in an age hostile to them?
That doesn't mean "buy bitcoin" or stand above others.
But it does mean we have to wonder just what the hell are we doing and is it accomplishing that desired goal.
@ErikUden in my research...i often find the recollections of a commonly held dream are more rooted in nostalgia than in actual fact.
Being of my tendency, it is not selfishness that bothers me. It is shortsighted selfishness.
@FinalOverdrive I for one believe that every other system is unstable. While I find your notion, of trying to find out whether our actions will achieve our desired goal or are even meaningful, good to think about, I also see no other alternative. The course we are going at the moment will lead to disaster. A different system may have flaws, but I'd rather deal with those than the current (climate) crisis.
@FinalOverdrive Will we achieve? Is our movement meaningful? Are we crushed in every sector both ideologically and physically? Possibly, but at least we will did not make the seizure of power by fascism as easy as they thought. Best case scenario, we win.
@ErikUden Believe me when I say I agree with your assessment about the current system. I am no partisan of it. No individualist can be. A right wing individualist is like a right wing populist: a contradiction.
@ErikUden Capitalism is built on many things, but individualism is not one of them.
@FinalOverdrive what?
Individuals own capital. Individualism might be a singular foundation of capitalism.
@volkris @ErikUden That is a meaningless statement if I ever read one. No, it is wage labor that characterizes capitalism.
Are you really going to sit here and tell me the self-employed artisan who owns their own workshop and tools (by any definition, capital), and does all the work themself without hiring others...a capitalist?
Really?
This is the kind of shit I said when I was an Objectivist. You're literally repeating right wing propertarian ideology.
YES! That artisan is putting the capital in capitalism.
That is exactly what I'm telling you.
Doesn't matter if you like it or not, but yes, that is capitalism at its purist. That person with capital holding capital controlling capital and applying capital to their own personal benefit, driving value from the capital that they have used to capitalize their shop, yes that is a capitalist operating in a capitalist system.
@volkris then you are a fool @ErikUden