I spent 30 years on Wall Street in Capital Markets and I would say you’ve nailed it. As I used to tell people, probably the most important investment book ever written was “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” published in 1841 by Charles MacKay.
I don’t think you missed a thing. Great expose of the grandest pyramid scheme of all time. Those in the flock will be fleeced. The con men at the top will be enriched beyond their wildest dreams. Step away from the pipe of delusion people.
I'm glad you compared crypto to the tulip bulb mania. When crypto first became well known the first thing I thought of was tulip mania and I've never seen anything to change my mind. And if Trump is involved then you definitely know it's a scam. Great article. Thanks.
In a rational world, even gold would be defined as 'a soft yellow metal occasionally useful to the electronics industry. ' As i put it once to a crypto bro i actually met in real life: "i totally get that there is a sense in which all money is imaginary. But crypto? Crypt is even more imaginary than that. "
“Speechless”” really, but your analysis makes so much sense - I have to keep hoping that more people will understand and accept your message than reject it - stay strong
I’m no financial whizz, but the final nail in crypto’s coffin for me was a couple of years ago when I was driving to work and I spotted a homeless guy with a handwritten sign plugging a specific cryptocurrency.
Also: god help us if Trump ever gets the notion to use crypto to influence and manipulate the Sovereign Citizen movement.
Another great one from Finnegan, our modern day Jeremiah, bringing Babylon to mind. Vanished now, Babylon was once huge, a powerful and glorious empire with great reach. As mighty states are want, it amused itself by conquering its smaller neighbors and turning them into useful vassals. One of those vassal states was a little place called Israel.
Israel had its own dramas. It had been created by the One True God, who demanded that his people, who were called Jews, follow His rules and worship only Him. Unfortunately, the people angered God by worshipping idols and behaving badly in general.
So God inspired a small number of priestly men to act as His messengers, prophets like Jeremiah, who tried to warn their fellow Jews that, unless they did a 180, ditched the idols and repented of their many sins, the One True God was going to destroy everything the Jews knew or cared about.
Predictably, the people discounted the message. Why would the One True God destroy this land and its people? It made no sense. Everybody knew the Lord loved this place. And the people? They were his Chosen! They had a Covenant with the One True God!
The king of the Jews at that time was a guy named Zedekiah. The only reason he had the job was because Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty ruler of Babylon, had found the previous king a nuisance and replaced him. If Zedekiah could keep it in the middle of the road, Nebuchadnezzar promised to protect Israel from its local enemies, people like the Chaldeans and the Edomites.
One day new King Zedekiah ordered this noisy prophet Jeremiah to meet with him secretly and brief him. Jeremiah told the king that the Lord intended to send the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem, burn down the famous temple built by King Solomon, and carry the Jews off to Babylon as slaves. The whole thing was the Lord’s idea, Jeremiah said, and Nebuchadnezzar was merely a tool in the Lord’s hands.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Zedekiah might have said. “First, The Lord loves this place. It won't be ransacked. And anyhow, I've got a protection deal with Nebuchadnezzar. Look, if the Lord is angry, I’ll clean the place up, get rid of the idols, have the people tone it down.”
“Yeah, no,” Jeremiah might have said. “God has already made up his mind. It’s not just your sins. The place has been going downhill for generations and it’s payback time.”
“Man, that seems hopeless,” the king said. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
Jeremiah leaned in. “Sure. The Lord says that if you surrender right now to Nebuchadnezzar, he won’t burn the place down.”
“Surrender? That ain’t gonna happen,” the king said. “And don’t tell anybody we had this chat.” Foolish and incompetent, Zedekiah decided to change nothing, and the less said about it, the better.
Not that he wasn’t worried. Zedekiah became paranoid about the true intentions of his so-called buddy Nebuchadnezzar. Instead of prayerfully asking the One True God for guidance, he reached out and cut a side deal with the Egyptians to protect him from the Babylonians, when and if.
But you know the Middle East. None of those people can keep a secret. Somebody whispered in Nebuchadnezzar’s ear, and he was, how you say, aroused by Zedekiah’s betrayal.
The Babylonian Army promptly besieged Jerusalem. The Jews starved. Those who fled were captured and killed. When the walls finally fell, thousands were slaughtered. Jerusalem and the temple were burned to the ground. Jeremiah's depiction of the Lord's will came to pass, word for word.
As the city burned, inept Zedekiah gathered up his family and his political ministers and tried to slip out the back way. But the Babylonians had the place surrounded. They caught him on the road near Jericho and put him in chains. They made him watch while they murdered his sons and all his staff. Then they blinded him. He lived long enough to reach Babylon, no longer a king, but a slave. The Jews would remain in exile for seventy years.
Given what they had just survived, you would think that the Jews in exile would straighten up. But most didn’t. They went back to lives filled with things we call sins—murder, adultery, infidelity, lying, stealing, usury, marrying infidels, not eating kosher—but a handful of the Jews, often at great sacrifice, lived righteous and upright lives while in captivity.
It was this minority, the Faithful Remnant, who were allowed to go back and start over in Israel when the Jews were finally freed.
If one looks to 586 BC for a reflection on our present difficulties, it is hard to find durable one-to-one comparisons. With one exception.
The Jews had an all-important Covenant. They trashed it and suffered a total collapse.
Great piece, as usual. So, knowing what we know about the likely collapse of the dollar and the system as we know it, what would you invest in? If you were gifted one bitcoin (today worth about $100k), presumably you’d sell it immediately for the reasons you cited. What would you do with the money? Seems like any currency at the current moment is at risk, no?
If you handed me 100K right now... and I could convert it to something immediately with no transaction costs? I'd buy either gold or water. :P Probably gold.
You’re so close to getting it right here. Yes, Crypto is generally a grift, but the same can’t be said for Bitcoin. There is no “Blockchain“ or “crypto” industry. Only Bitcoin is relevant and real money.
Bitcoin will not become a legitimate currency as long as early adopters have a financial advantage over late adopters. It won’t be legit until it can be used to make purchases at Walmart and Aldi. It must prove it is no longer a ponzi scheme in order to become legitimate.
1. Early adopters do not have any advantage. The price is set on the free and open market. Early adopters took on greater risk, which has largely now been removed, so they got a lower entry price. People get bitcoin at the price they deserve.
2..Bitcoin does not share the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. There are no guaranteed returns as in Ponzi schemes. There is no hidden Shell game with anyone’s money, everything is out in the open and transparent. There is real value being provided in high security, transparent, instantaneous ability to transfer value between people that has never been possible before.
It doesn’t much matter to me or anyone else whether you understand this. It took me a long time to get over the misconceptions and do my own research as well. You also will get Bitcoin at the price you deserve.
Thanks for commenting. But let’s be clear: you didn’t refute the argument—I don’t think you even read it closely. You just restated crypto dogma, repackaged as benevolent correction, and ended with a smug moral koan about “getting Bitcoin at the price you deserve.” That’s not analysis. That’s ideology wearing a hoodie.
Let’s unpack a few things:
1. “Early adopters took risk, so they deserve the rewards.”
No. Early adopters designed the system, mined it before it had utility, and evangelized it while holding asymmetric bags. That’s not “risk”—that’s pre-mined arbitrage. Hal Finney didn’t bravely invest—he spun up a laptop and minted tokens in a system with no liquidity. The reward wasn’t for bravery—it was for proximity.
You’re describing a meritocracy. What we have is a hierarchy—disguised as one.
2. “There’s no Ponzi because there’s no payout promise.”
Technically true. Structurally irrelevant.
Bitcoin only holds value because someone else agrees to buy in at a higher price. That’s not a productive system—it’s memetic financial theater. It’s a recursive belief loop propped up by scarcity narratives, cult branding, and influencer evangelism. That’s not “out in the open”—that’s marketing with religious overtones.
No criminal intent is required. A speculative pyramid built on nothing but code, hype, and historical amnesia is still a pyramid.
3. “Transparency = Trustworthy.”
The blockchain is open. The narrative isn’t.
The real action isn’t in the ledger—it’s in Discord servers, Telegram groups, private wallets, and hype cycles engineered by people with media leverage. You’re mistaking auditability for accountability. It’s the same mistake people made with Facebook’s algorithm: just because you can “see” it doesn’t mean it’s fair—or safe.
4. “You’ll get Bitcoin at the price you deserve.”
That line is not just arrogant—it’s theological. It implies that market outcomes are moral outcomes. That’s a crypto-calvinist worldview in which people who question the system deserve to suffer.
It’s not economics. It’s prosperity gospel, protocol edition.
So look—believe in Bitcoin all you want. Trade it. HODL it. Meme it into the next bull run. Get down and pray to the digital God you love. But don’t condescend to those of us who analyze it as a system of power, distribution, and narrative control rather than a magical talisman of freedom.
You didn’t refute the post. You just changed the subject.
At the risk of asking a dumb question: - "Bitcoin only holds value because someone else agrees to buy in at a higher price." Isn't that just as true for lots of things we attach value to? Gold for example? "Crypto never produced anything" to quote Buffett - but neither does gold. WF, not trying to pick on your argument, just to understand how Bitcoin, for example, is really that different in the subjective value that we put on it.
I want to respond directly to your question because it cuts to the heart of the issue — not from tribalism or hype, but from first principles. What is money? What is speculation? And what happens when we confuse the two?
No one buys money at a higher price expecting to resell it. By definition, money is a medium of exchange — not a speculative asset.
Gold ceased being money when it could no longer be used as direct tender. When gold functioned as money, it wasn’t bought hoping someone else would pay more — it was used to settle accounts. That’s a functional distinction, not just a subjective one.
Bitcoin is not used as money — not in any meaningful way. It is not a widely accepted medium of exchange, unit of account, or stable store of value. Its primary use case is speculative appreciation — buy it because someone else will pay more.
This is what Warren Buffett meant when he said Bitcoin “never produced anything.” It’s not a productive asset, and it doesn’t fulfill the core functions of money. That doesn’t make it evil — it makes it speculative.
And yes, that speculation depends on what economists call the “greater fool theory.” You’re betting that someone else will come along and buy the asset from you at a higher price, not because of intrinsic value, but because of narrative velocity — memes, momentum, belief.
Now, Goward’s sleight of hand is a classic one:
He wants to argue that Bitcoin is distinct from crypto.
That the technology is neutral.
That network effects explain everything.
But the tech isn’t the point. The critique isn’t about whether blockchain is “clever” — it’s about how it’s being used, and who benefits.
If you separate the ideology from the incentives, Bitcoin stops being a revolution — and starts looking like a digitized version of the same scarcity-extractive logic that dominates every other financial scheme of the past 40 years.
It is not a sovereign escape from fiat.
It is fiat without a central bank.
It is volatility as religion.
That’s the point I’m making. It’s not an attack on intelligence. It’s a structural critique of what happens when trust collapses and speculation becomes identity.
I suppose you do get the Bitcoin price you deserve, there is the maxim of a fool and his money are soon parted. But I suspect that's not the maxim that Goward intends for readers to appreciate in its glory.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. This is all pretty academic but your piece prompted some interesting ideas. I don’t think the distinction between “money” and “speculation” is necessarily as clear and stable as you suggest. My point stands that gold is no different from bitcoin as it is today (except it’s physical and bitcoin is digital)- it’s speculative, doesn’t depend on government stability, and worth holding because someone else will pay more. As you said, it WAS “money” but it isn’t now. Unless we think someday it will come back into functionality as money? Who’s to say whether bitcoin could eventually be used more widely as money, the way gold has been?
And I suppose that in a post-apocalyptic world, gold still exists, whereas a digital asset maybe doesn’t. But we’ll have lots of other problems in that event.
Again, it’s all pretty academic, and as you noted, what it money? what is a “store of value” and can that definition change with technology?
To clarify, I am not a religious Bitcoiner so your ad hominem attack is empty.
Again, I did not have to refute most of the article because I agree with most of it. The one error you made is conflating Bitcoin with your “crypto/blockchain/web3” rant.
1. “pre-mined arbitrage” This is true for crypto coins, other than Bitcoin, where promoters create a coin, pre-mine it, then rug the world. Just like the $TRUMP scam. And, unlike centralized coins, Bitcoin has a hard capped supply of 21 million.
Interesting that you mention Hal Finney. He invested many years innovating and researching to try to create a new cash system for the digital world. That’s why he understood the potential for Bitcoin as soon as it was released by Satoshi. Back then, it had no value because it had no adoption or validation, but the visionaries were working in the space to create a solution to the fiat money problem.
The value increases with adoption due to network effects and scarcity, just like gold. But with Bitcoin, the world is experiencing the adoption phase, which is why its value continues to increase.
There is no hierarchy in Bitcoin. Anyone can buy it from anyone else for whatever they’ll part with it for. Just like every free market.
2. “Bitcoin only holds value because someone else agrees to buy in at a higher price.”
This is what a free market does. Have you seen the price of gold lately? How about the S&P 500?
Bitcoin’s value over years goes up because its value is being recognized as its use cases and security are proven out.
3. “The real action isn’t in the ledger—it’s in Discord servers, Telegram groups, private wallets, and hype cycles engineered by people with media leverage. ”
Again, you seem to be referring to crypto pump & dumps. This is not a characteristic of Bitcoin for the most part.
Yes, I will agree with you that there are also Bitcoin religious zealots. But there are similar over enthusiastic messiahs within any revolutionary cultural change. Importantly, that does not have anything to do with the actual value inherent in Bitcoin, positively or negatively.
4.
“That line is not just arrogant”
That’s a valid opinion but your overall lack of rigorous analysis here smacks of sour grapes and emotional rant rather than careful analysis.
Sadly, Bitcoin is one of the most important pillars for creating a sovereign life and you’re discouraging people from learning about it.
I would encourage you and your readers to do more research.
I spent 30 years on Wall Street in Capital Markets and I would say you’ve nailed it. As I used to tell people, probably the most important investment book ever written was “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” published in 1841 by Charles MacKay.
I have a copy. I need to go back and read it again. It's been a long time.
I don’t think you missed a thing. Great expose of the grandest pyramid scheme of all time. Those in the flock will be fleeced. The con men at the top will be enriched beyond their wildest dreams. Step away from the pipe of delusion people.
I'm glad you compared crypto to the tulip bulb mania. When crypto first became well known the first thing I thought of was tulip mania and I've never seen anything to change my mind. And if Trump is involved then you definitely know it's a scam. Great article. Thanks.
In a rational world, even gold would be defined as 'a soft yellow metal occasionally useful to the electronics industry. ' As i put it once to a crypto bro i actually met in real life: "i totally get that there is a sense in which all money is imaginary. But crypto? Crypt is even more imaginary than that. "
“Speechless”” really, but your analysis makes so much sense - I have to keep hoping that more people will understand and accept your message than reject it - stay strong
I’m no financial whizz, but the final nail in crypto’s coffin for me was a couple of years ago when I was driving to work and I spotted a homeless guy with a handwritten sign plugging a specific cryptocurrency.
Also: god help us if Trump ever gets the notion to use crypto to influence and manipulate the Sovereign Citizen movement.
I'll have a hit of whatever you're smoking.
I recommend Molly White to anyone looking for clear, no jargon reporting on the crypto grift machine.
Grift counter:
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/charts/top
News: https://www.citationneeded.news/
Yikes!
Another great one from Finnegan, our modern day Jeremiah, bringing Babylon to mind. Vanished now, Babylon was once huge, a powerful and glorious empire with great reach. As mighty states are want, it amused itself by conquering its smaller neighbors and turning them into useful vassals. One of those vassal states was a little place called Israel.
Israel had its own dramas. It had been created by the One True God, who demanded that his people, who were called Jews, follow His rules and worship only Him. Unfortunately, the people angered God by worshipping idols and behaving badly in general.
So God inspired a small number of priestly men to act as His messengers, prophets like Jeremiah, who tried to warn their fellow Jews that, unless they did a 180, ditched the idols and repented of their many sins, the One True God was going to destroy everything the Jews knew or cared about.
Predictably, the people discounted the message. Why would the One True God destroy this land and its people? It made no sense. Everybody knew the Lord loved this place. And the people? They were his Chosen! They had a Covenant with the One True God!
The king of the Jews at that time was a guy named Zedekiah. The only reason he had the job was because Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty ruler of Babylon, had found the previous king a nuisance and replaced him. If Zedekiah could keep it in the middle of the road, Nebuchadnezzar promised to protect Israel from its local enemies, people like the Chaldeans and the Edomites.
One day new King Zedekiah ordered this noisy prophet Jeremiah to meet with him secretly and brief him. Jeremiah told the king that the Lord intended to send the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem, burn down the famous temple built by King Solomon, and carry the Jews off to Babylon as slaves. The whole thing was the Lord’s idea, Jeremiah said, and Nebuchadnezzar was merely a tool in the Lord’s hands.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Zedekiah might have said. “First, The Lord loves this place. It won't be ransacked. And anyhow, I've got a protection deal with Nebuchadnezzar. Look, if the Lord is angry, I’ll clean the place up, get rid of the idols, have the people tone it down.”
“Yeah, no,” Jeremiah might have said. “God has already made up his mind. It’s not just your sins. The place has been going downhill for generations and it’s payback time.”
“Man, that seems hopeless,” the king said. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
Jeremiah leaned in. “Sure. The Lord says that if you surrender right now to Nebuchadnezzar, he won’t burn the place down.”
“Surrender? That ain’t gonna happen,” the king said. “And don’t tell anybody we had this chat.” Foolish and incompetent, Zedekiah decided to change nothing, and the less said about it, the better.
Not that he wasn’t worried. Zedekiah became paranoid about the true intentions of his so-called buddy Nebuchadnezzar. Instead of prayerfully asking the One True God for guidance, he reached out and cut a side deal with the Egyptians to protect him from the Babylonians, when and if.
But you know the Middle East. None of those people can keep a secret. Somebody whispered in Nebuchadnezzar’s ear, and he was, how you say, aroused by Zedekiah’s betrayal.
The Babylonian Army promptly besieged Jerusalem. The Jews starved. Those who fled were captured and killed. When the walls finally fell, thousands were slaughtered. Jerusalem and the temple were burned to the ground. Jeremiah's depiction of the Lord's will came to pass, word for word.
As the city burned, inept Zedekiah gathered up his family and his political ministers and tried to slip out the back way. But the Babylonians had the place surrounded. They caught him on the road near Jericho and put him in chains. They made him watch while they murdered his sons and all his staff. Then they blinded him. He lived long enough to reach Babylon, no longer a king, but a slave. The Jews would remain in exile for seventy years.
Given what they had just survived, you would think that the Jews in exile would straighten up. But most didn’t. They went back to lives filled with things we call sins—murder, adultery, infidelity, lying, stealing, usury, marrying infidels, not eating kosher—but a handful of the Jews, often at great sacrifice, lived righteous and upright lives while in captivity.
It was this minority, the Faithful Remnant, who were allowed to go back and start over in Israel when the Jews were finally freed.
If one looks to 586 BC for a reflection on our present difficulties, it is hard to find durable one-to-one comparisons. With one exception.
The Jews had an all-important Covenant. They trashed it and suffered a total collapse.
And we have a Constitution.
Tells us about the water and electricity we'll need too.
Great piece, as usual. So, knowing what we know about the likely collapse of the dollar and the system as we know it, what would you invest in? If you were gifted one bitcoin (today worth about $100k), presumably you’d sell it immediately for the reasons you cited. What would you do with the money? Seems like any currency at the current moment is at risk, no?
If you handed me 100K right now... and I could convert it to something immediately with no transaction costs? I'd buy either gold or water. :P Probably gold.
You’re so close to getting it right here. Yes, Crypto is generally a grift, but the same can’t be said for Bitcoin. There is no “Blockchain“ or “crypto” industry. Only Bitcoin is relevant and real money.
Bitcoin will not become a legitimate currency as long as early adopters have a financial advantage over late adopters. It won’t be legit until it can be used to make purchases at Walmart and Aldi. It must prove it is no longer a ponzi scheme in order to become legitimate.
There are some misunderstandings here.
1. Early adopters do not have any advantage. The price is set on the free and open market. Early adopters took on greater risk, which has largely now been removed, so they got a lower entry price. People get bitcoin at the price they deserve.
2..Bitcoin does not share the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. There are no guaranteed returns as in Ponzi schemes. There is no hidden Shell game with anyone’s money, everything is out in the open and transparent. There is real value being provided in high security, transparent, instantaneous ability to transfer value between people that has never been possible before.
It doesn’t much matter to me or anyone else whether you understand this. It took me a long time to get over the misconceptions and do my own research as well. You also will get Bitcoin at the price you deserve.
Thanks for commenting. But let’s be clear: you didn’t refute the argument—I don’t think you even read it closely. You just restated crypto dogma, repackaged as benevolent correction, and ended with a smug moral koan about “getting Bitcoin at the price you deserve.” That’s not analysis. That’s ideology wearing a hoodie.
Let’s unpack a few things:
1. “Early adopters took risk, so they deserve the rewards.”
No. Early adopters designed the system, mined it before it had utility, and evangelized it while holding asymmetric bags. That’s not “risk”—that’s pre-mined arbitrage. Hal Finney didn’t bravely invest—he spun up a laptop and minted tokens in a system with no liquidity. The reward wasn’t for bravery—it was for proximity.
You’re describing a meritocracy. What we have is a hierarchy—disguised as one.
2. “There’s no Ponzi because there’s no payout promise.”
Technically true. Structurally irrelevant.
Bitcoin only holds value because someone else agrees to buy in at a higher price. That’s not a productive system—it’s memetic financial theater. It’s a recursive belief loop propped up by scarcity narratives, cult branding, and influencer evangelism. That’s not “out in the open”—that’s marketing with religious overtones.
No criminal intent is required. A speculative pyramid built on nothing but code, hype, and historical amnesia is still a pyramid.
3. “Transparency = Trustworthy.”
The blockchain is open. The narrative isn’t.
The real action isn’t in the ledger—it’s in Discord servers, Telegram groups, private wallets, and hype cycles engineered by people with media leverage. You’re mistaking auditability for accountability. It’s the same mistake people made with Facebook’s algorithm: just because you can “see” it doesn’t mean it’s fair—or safe.
4. “You’ll get Bitcoin at the price you deserve.”
That line is not just arrogant—it’s theological. It implies that market outcomes are moral outcomes. That’s a crypto-calvinist worldview in which people who question the system deserve to suffer.
It’s not economics. It’s prosperity gospel, protocol edition.
So look—believe in Bitcoin all you want. Trade it. HODL it. Meme it into the next bull run. Get down and pray to the digital God you love. But don’t condescend to those of us who analyze it as a system of power, distribution, and narrative control rather than a magical talisman of freedom.
You didn’t refute the post. You just changed the subject.
"This is the Word of the Wallet."
Amen.
At the risk of asking a dumb question: - "Bitcoin only holds value because someone else agrees to buy in at a higher price." Isn't that just as true for lots of things we attach value to? Gold for example? "Crypto never produced anything" to quote Buffett - but neither does gold. WF, not trying to pick on your argument, just to understand how Bitcoin, for example, is really that different in the subjective value that we put on it.
I want to respond directly to your question because it cuts to the heart of the issue — not from tribalism or hype, but from first principles. What is money? What is speculation? And what happens when we confuse the two?
No one buys money at a higher price expecting to resell it. By definition, money is a medium of exchange — not a speculative asset.
Gold ceased being money when it could no longer be used as direct tender. When gold functioned as money, it wasn’t bought hoping someone else would pay more — it was used to settle accounts. That’s a functional distinction, not just a subjective one.
Bitcoin is not used as money — not in any meaningful way. It is not a widely accepted medium of exchange, unit of account, or stable store of value. Its primary use case is speculative appreciation — buy it because someone else will pay more.
This is what Warren Buffett meant when he said Bitcoin “never produced anything.” It’s not a productive asset, and it doesn’t fulfill the core functions of money. That doesn’t make it evil — it makes it speculative.
And yes, that speculation depends on what economists call the “greater fool theory.” You’re betting that someone else will come along and buy the asset from you at a higher price, not because of intrinsic value, but because of narrative velocity — memes, momentum, belief.
Now, Goward’s sleight of hand is a classic one:
He wants to argue that Bitcoin is distinct from crypto.
That the technology is neutral.
That network effects explain everything.
But the tech isn’t the point. The critique isn’t about whether blockchain is “clever” — it’s about how it’s being used, and who benefits.
If you separate the ideology from the incentives, Bitcoin stops being a revolution — and starts looking like a digitized version of the same scarcity-extractive logic that dominates every other financial scheme of the past 40 years.
It is not a sovereign escape from fiat.
It is fiat without a central bank.
It is volatility as religion.
That’s the point I’m making. It’s not an attack on intelligence. It’s a structural critique of what happens when trust collapses and speculation becomes identity.
I suppose you do get the Bitcoin price you deserve, there is the maxim of a fool and his money are soon parted. But I suspect that's not the maxim that Goward intends for readers to appreciate in its glory.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. This is all pretty academic but your piece prompted some interesting ideas. I don’t think the distinction between “money” and “speculation” is necessarily as clear and stable as you suggest. My point stands that gold is no different from bitcoin as it is today (except it’s physical and bitcoin is digital)- it’s speculative, doesn’t depend on government stability, and worth holding because someone else will pay more. As you said, it WAS “money” but it isn’t now. Unless we think someday it will come back into functionality as money? Who’s to say whether bitcoin could eventually be used more widely as money, the way gold has been?
And I suppose that in a post-apocalyptic world, gold still exists, whereas a digital asset maybe doesn’t. But we’ll have lots of other problems in that event.
Again, it’s all pretty academic, and as you noted, what it money? what is a “store of value” and can that definition change with technology?
Thanks for a thoughtful exchange.
To clarify, I am not a religious Bitcoiner so your ad hominem attack is empty.
Again, I did not have to refute most of the article because I agree with most of it. The one error you made is conflating Bitcoin with your “crypto/blockchain/web3” rant.
1. “pre-mined arbitrage” This is true for crypto coins, other than Bitcoin, where promoters create a coin, pre-mine it, then rug the world. Just like the $TRUMP scam. And, unlike centralized coins, Bitcoin has a hard capped supply of 21 million.
Interesting that you mention Hal Finney. He invested many years innovating and researching to try to create a new cash system for the digital world. That’s why he understood the potential for Bitcoin as soon as it was released by Satoshi. Back then, it had no value because it had no adoption or validation, but the visionaries were working in the space to create a solution to the fiat money problem.
The value increases with adoption due to network effects and scarcity, just like gold. But with Bitcoin, the world is experiencing the adoption phase, which is why its value continues to increase.
There is no hierarchy in Bitcoin. Anyone can buy it from anyone else for whatever they’ll part with it for. Just like every free market.
2. “Bitcoin only holds value because someone else agrees to buy in at a higher price.”
This is what a free market does. Have you seen the price of gold lately? How about the S&P 500?
Bitcoin’s value over years goes up because its value is being recognized as its use cases and security are proven out.
3. “The real action isn’t in the ledger—it’s in Discord servers, Telegram groups, private wallets, and hype cycles engineered by people with media leverage. ”
Again, you seem to be referring to crypto pump & dumps. This is not a characteristic of Bitcoin for the most part.
Yes, I will agree with you that there are also Bitcoin religious zealots. But there are similar over enthusiastic messiahs within any revolutionary cultural change. Importantly, that does not have anything to do with the actual value inherent in Bitcoin, positively or negatively.
4.
“That line is not just arrogant”
That’s a valid opinion but your overall lack of rigorous analysis here smacks of sour grapes and emotional rant rather than careful analysis.
Sadly, Bitcoin is one of the most important pillars for creating a sovereign life and you’re discouraging people from learning about it.
I would encourage you and your readers to do more research.
“You will get Bitcoin at the price you deserve” tells me everything I need to know. Thank you.
Personal responsibility is a bitter pill.
And what is it that is used to purchase the electronic tulip bulbs?