He confesses that he’d been approached about SBF by a journalist who had assumed — no, presumed — that he would know who the guy was. The journalist presumed this based on his intro book, The Bitcoin Standard. Dr Ammour did not.

His sense is that the very premise that SBF was legitimately wealthy was impossible. Therefore this was a scam from the very beginning. Positive reputation effects were exploited from the get go.

Trading Bitcoin, he says, is completely different from platform hosting,
which is analogous to Nasdaq — market making.
This is, he explain, is pure “shit-coin-nomics.” Almost pure
gaslighting ponzu scamming.

FDT trading consist of less than 200 addresses (not necessarily as many participants). There is almost no liquidity in this trading platform whatsoever..
The whole thing looked fishy from the start.

He then goes on through a timeline of publicly known events.

He states “Whom the gods would destroy they first make talk shit about Bitcoin” — when SBF states only days ago online “there is no future in Bitcoin.”

It Saifedean’s version of QED.

People put in more money because other people are putting in money.
It is feasible is that people naively believe the con man game. Therefore,
it grows until the accordion collapses.

I’m inclined to think some, at least of ‘exchanges,’ like RTX, is warranted. They’re basically banks doing all the bank things only with cryptocurrencies instead of specie or fiat currencies. On the other hand, the only trust I have for the folks who wrote the law (conveniently, there was a set of regulations SBF was championing, and I’ve little doubt they can be spun as preventing RTX’s destruction if only they had been implemented sooner) is that it’ll be set up to guarantee an income stream for themselves and/or their party.

Many people only this year wanted to get in “on the dip” and ride Bitcoin > $100,000.

BTC peaked ~$64,000 and is now $16,811.60.

I read somewhere last week – it might have been here – that Charlie Munger refers to ‘crypto’ as “Rat Poison, squared”. I couldn’t agree more.

Crypto is not just a clever tech hack to get around governments, banks and currencies. To many young people, mostly male, it’s the path to a brighter utopian future which must triumph over the present disappointing economic reality as good triumphs over evil.

They speak of “hodling” crypto no matter what with “diamond hands.” Hodl is “Hold On for Dear Life” and “diamonds hands” are hands so armored that no fire of dropping prices will burn them.

This morning Insty directed to me to this “City Journal” article:
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The crypto world, according to Olson, is filled not only with hype but also with professional scammers, broken promises, predatory and antisocial behavior, desperation, greed—and rage. Rage at how the post-2008 world had turned out, rage at how the American dream doesn’t seem attainable anymore, rage at whomever and whatever could be blamed for robbing the people inside that online world of what they felt they were owed.

https://www.city-journal.org/the-new-gnostics
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Of course this religious dimension doesn’t help but makes crypto enthusiasts even more susceptible to scams.

In the last gasp of American Indian Wars a medicine man arose who taught a special dance which would bring back spirits to help fight American whites. This was called the “Ghost Dance.” It failed of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance

TJ’s book explaining crypto sounds interesting. I would mention that all nations currencies are backed by the taxing power of their governments. That taxing power depends a lot on the wealth of the country and the citizens ability/willingness to pay up. Thus, some currencies are much mor more valuable than others.

Currencies used to be backed by assets, like gold and silver in the national treasury. People have been willing to accept no backing since we went off the gold standard during the Nixon administration. That has led to the idea of Modern Monetary Theory. MMT theorizes that money is nothing more than numbers on computers, and governments can print or spend all they want to because we “owe it to ourselves.” We widely accept plastic cards as money now. Bills and coins are less used than ever. So, the reasoning goes, if plastic cards are valuable, why wouldn’t encrypted currencies be also? The value in plastic cards lies in the user’s ability to repay the money spent. Where is the value behind cryptocurrencies?

Crypto= hidden, concealed, secret
Cryptocurrency = hidden money.
Who wants to hide money? Drug dealers, tax cheats, fraudsters, and other shady types. Cryptocurrency has been sold as a place to salt your money away from prying eyes of ….whoever. But it has nothing behind it. No taxing authority, no gold/silver/real estate/bonds/etc. What is it worth? Aye, there’s the rub. Its only value lies in the secrecy. How many people really need that? It’s an investment in secrecy and that’s about it. Proceed with caution.

“I will not buy what I can’t understand.”

If you and your husband have anything close to a normal American’s portfolio you are almost certainly invested in plenty you don’t understand. Do you own any treasuries? Explain the Federal Reserve system to me. Have you audited Fort Knox? How about the Federal governments’ debt system with its multiple balance sheets? Equities? Are you sure none of the CEOs of the corporations whose shares you hold are cooking the books? Investing company assets in Crypto? Have holdings in China?

None of this is intended to belittle you, or your husband. It’s meant as a brief synopsis of the fine kettle of fish we all find ourselves in.