The Greater Fool Isn’t Who You Think

A subscriber of my Crypto Capital service messaged me last week:

‘Hey Ryan, have you seen this?’

He linked out to an article from a crypto sceptic.

Now, I don’t usually read such articles.

Not because I don’t like to test my conviction against opposing arguments.

I do.

It’s just I’ve found that most armchair critics don’t understand what they’re criticising. They broadcast their ignorance every time they write, as they get so many things wrong.

But as a courtesy to this subscriber, I gave the article he sent a quick scan…

Pass me another drink!

If you created a drinking game for these same, tired old arguments, you’d be more than tipsy a few sentences in.

‘Ponzi scheme.’

Drink!

‘Used by money launderers, porn sites, and drug dealers.’

Drink!

‘Relies on the greater fool theory.’

Drink…!

The article in question tried to get a bit technical at one stage (despite the author in the past admitting he didn’t understand technology!) and said blockchains weren’t ‘scalable’.

Well, here’s banking giant Morgan Stanley saying earlier this year how Bitcoin’s Lightning Network was ‘superior’ to Visa.

Hmmm, I think that’s pretty ‘scalable’!

Anyway, I wrote back to the subscriber.

‘Nothing new here. Same old arguments I’ve been hearing since 2013. IMO, the greater fools will be the ones that leave it too late to get in!’

And it’s true…

I have been hearing these attacks for a long, long time.

Check out this interactive chart of notable ‘Bitcoin sceptic’ articles over time:

You can go onto the site and click on each dot to read the various articles, and you’ll see what I mean.

Same old arguments every single time.

To be fair, this kind of thing happens with all new technologies, especially ones that disrupt the status quo so much:

For example, compare the ‘bear market’ pair of headlines below:

When you’ve been in crypto for as long as I have, you turn off such noise.

I personally learned my lesson in 2017/18.

Although I’d been invested in Bitcoin [BTC] since 2013, I was still giving credence to these kinds of criticisms, and I know how it can make you doubt yourself.

So, when the 2017 bull market came around, I didn’t have as much invested as I could have.

I didn’t make the same mistake in the 2018/19 ‘crypto winter’ and loaded up on bitcoin and a select few quality projects while the sceptics celebrated their short-term victory.

And in the 2020/21 bull run, I was rewarded handsomely for it, as were many of my subscribers who stuck with it.

But this industry has always been about more than money for me.

Which, as I’ll explain shortly, is why I’m still here trying to explain why you should ignore the haters and find out for yourself.

The fact is the pushback against bitcoin from various entrenched interests has been intense for its entire existence.

And yet, despite that, it’s risen from a standing start to become an existential threat to the entire fiat system.

Think about it…

Better than gold

If it was so bad, so rubbish, so unusable — why use so much wasted ink trying to tell everyone how bad it is?

Wouldn’t the market have done so by now?

Instead, it’s the best-performing asset of the decade!

And the best form of money out there for our digital age. Check out the competition (I’ll admit gold wins out on shininess!):

It’s funny…

You certainly don’t see the same kind of pushback on the original ‘hard money’ asset, gold, do you?

Where are the reams of negative articles saying how useless gold is?

How bad for the environment it is, how indivisible it is, how hard to spend it is, how the paper market is 200-times larger than the physical market, which makes it very easily manipulated…

Nope, you don’t see much of that at all.

That’s because gold isn’t a threat to existing power structures in the same way bitcoin is.

It’s a captured asset owned by the biggest countries in the world and stored in vaults controlled by the biggest banks and corporations.

And believe me, they’re trying to do the same to crypto markets.

Yep, contrary to what you’re hearing, many big companies are trying to lock up the infrastructure around crypto in much the same way as they did with gold.

Consider this latest news from last week…

‘Nasdaq bets big on digital assets despite crypto turmoil’

‘Nasdaq Inc is placing a big bet on the cryptocurrency market, with the launch of a digital assets business that is aimed at tapping institutional investors.

‘The new unit, Nasdaq Digital Assets, will offer custody services for cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ethereum, potentially pitting it against firms such as Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets and Winkelvoss twin-owned Gemini that offer similar products.’

Hmmm, interesting, isn’t it?

Why would the mighty Nasdaq bother doing this in the depths of a crypto winter if it didn’t think there was a strong chance of a rebound coming?

Why waste time, energy, and money on a ‘dying asset class’?

The fact is, Nasdaq, BlackRock, Google, Samsung — all the companies that have been pouring money and resources into crypto these past few months — know this is the way the future is heading.

I mean, just last week, Starbucks announced they’d partnered with Ethereum layer two, Polygon, to launch their own NFT (non-fungible token) rewards scheme.

As Crypto Basic reported:

‘The blockchain industry is fast creeping into the daily life of the average individual as the adoption rate sees a massive surge.

‘Institutions, having noticed the use cases of blockchain and Web3, are showing increasing interest in the sphere. American coffeehouse company Starbucks is the latest in line to jump on the train.’

Expect to see a whole lot more of this over the next 12 months.

Big players are using the sea of negativity to build their stakes up in key projects to prepare for the mass adoption phase that’s coming.

But counter-intuitively, as good as this might be for my own wallet, I’m not 100% happy about this.

My mission is to make sure this future isn’t owned solely by these kinds of institutions.

After all, this idea is at the heart of the crypto revolution…

More than money

The fact is there’s a worrying global trend towards centralised power in the world.

And they only want more.

Big tech owns your data, and they allow governments to snoop on you.

Central banks control money and dole it out to their favoured parties.

And unelected international bodies literally decide the fate of sovereign countries through access to international finance and trade.

I mean, watch Larry Fink in this video recently explain how the IMF and World Bank should have even more power over developing countries.

For their own good, of course…

It’s no wonder these types of people hate bitcoin. They’re control freaks, and bitcoin cannot be controlled.

But I ask you…

Is that a future you want your kids to live in?

Everything tracked and traced…micromanaged by elites who lord it over the rest of us?

I don’t…

And, like it or not, crypto is the ONLY industry fighting back against this inevitability.

Luckily, the people in it — the true crypto proponents, not the scam artists — have won this battle before.

Not many people know this, but bitcoin was borne from the cypherpunk movement of the 1990s.

As this great article in Nakamto.com explained:

‘The cypherpunks were an eclectic crew, but they all shared a core conviction: that the Internet would soon become an important battleground for human freedom.’

It’s thanks to this group of oddballs and misfits that you have any privacy at all on the internet.

Governments at the time wanted to turn the emerging internet into a global panopticon.

But by using cutting-edge technology, code, and cryptography, the cypherpunks pushed back.

Many were harassed, spied upon, and even arrested at the time.

But with perseverance and legal support from human rights groups, the cypherpunks ultimately won out.

Online privacy was deemed legal and a human right.

Bitcoin is the continuation of that fight.

And it’s the fight of our lives.

If it doesn’t win, mark my words, the future of money will be a world of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) controlled by faceless groups.

As John Lennon’s son Sean tweeted last week:

You should watch this new presentation to see how bad CBDCs could be.

It’s not pretty, but it’s what’s coming if crypto loses.

So, what can you do?

One simple thing you can do to fight back

There’s one simple thing you can do today to support the idea of a more decentralised future.

Buy some bitcoin…

Store it in your own non-custodial wallet. That is a wallet only you have control over (here’s a good one I use — https://blockstream.com/green/) and no one else.

And then simply hold it for the long term.

Whether it’s $10 worth, $1,000, or a more serious amount…it doesn’t matter.

By doing it, you’re signalling your support for a self-sovereign future.

A world where a competing monetary asset can exist. At the very least, its existence keeps pressure on the global monetary monopolists.

And it may stifle them from going as far as they want to with their CBDC plans.

Of course, if you want to dive deeper into the crypto world, that’s an option too.

But be aware, you’re moving up the risk curve if you do that, and you’ll need a good guide.

There are plenty of scams and con jobs in crypto, no doubt about that, as there are in every other aspect of life, especially when it comes to money.

But as I’ve found in nearly a decade in this industry, there’s also the best of humanity too.

People who think deeply about human rights, fair access to financial infrastructure, and who worry about the dangers of a world of centralised control.

There are also some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet actively creating this future.

It’s these people and that future I’m backing.

Good investing,

Ryan Dinse,
Editor, Money Morning

PS: If you’re interested in learning more about how Bitcoin fits into the existing monetary system, there’s a great FREE course you can do here. It’s created by some Aussie Bitcoiners that are getting global traction with it. Check it out.