Dearly Beloved, We Gather Here Today...
Let Us Put Bitcoin Six Feet Under
Dearly beloved, we gather here today to commit an act long considered impossible by internet prophets, laser-eyed evangelists, YouTube finance gurus, and the digital cultists who have spent fifteen years promising us that salvation would arrive in the form of a cryptographic token.
Today, we gather to bury Bitcoin.
Not because it has vanished.
Not because the servers stopped humming.
Not because the blockchain finally collapsed under its own jargon.
But because the world that gave Bitcoin meaning may be dying.
And without that world, Bitcoin increasingly resembles what it always feared becoming:
Just another speculative asset desperately searching for a purpose.
In the Beginning Was Rage
Bitcoin was not born from optimism.
It was born from fury.
The year was 2008.
Banks detonated the global economy.
Governments rushed to rescue them.
Ordinary citizens watched their jobs evaporate, their homes disappear, and their retirement savings implode.
Then came the ultimate insult.
The people who caused the disaster got bonuses.
The people who suffered got lectures.
Into that inferno stepped the mysterious figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Bitcoin white paper wasn't merely a technical document.
It was a political grenade.
Embedded forever in Bitcoin's first block was a newspaper headline referencing bank bailouts—a permanent middle finger to the financial establishment.
Bitcoin's message was clear:
"You trusted bankers. Look how that worked out."
The Greatest Beneficiary of the Thing It Claimed to Fight
Here's where the story becomes deliciously ironic.
Bitcoin's mythology tells us it defeated the system.
Reality suggests something far stranger.
Bitcoin became the greatest beneficiary of the exact monetary system it supposedly opposed.
The central banks unleashed oceans of liquidity.
Interest rates collapsed.
Money became nearly free.
Investors, unable to earn returns from bonds or savings accounts, began searching for yield anywhere they could find it.
Stocks exploded.
Housing exploded.
Private equity exploded.
Tech valuations exploded.
NFTs exploded.
SPACs exploded.
Dog-themed cryptocurrencies exploded.
And Bitcoin?
Bitcoin became the king of the everything bubble.
The revolution against easy money became the poster child for easy money.
History has a dark sense of humor.
The Cult of Number Go Up
Bitcoin enthusiasts often portray themselves as rebels.
Yet over time, much of the movement evolved into something remarkably familiar.
A speculative religion.
Its central doctrine became:
Number Go Up.
When prices rose:
Bitcoin was the future.
When prices crashed:
Bitcoin was on sale.
When institutions bought:
Validation.
When institutions sold:
Manipulation.
When governments regulated:
Proof Bitcoin was dangerous.
When governments approved ETFs:
Proof Bitcoin had won.
Every outcome somehow confirmed the prophecy.
The blockchain equivalent of medieval theologians explaining why every plague, famine, and earthquake proved God was pleased.
Easy Money Was Bitcoin's Oxygen Tank
The uncomfortable reality is this:
Bitcoin's greatest bull markets coincided with periods of extraordinary monetary expansion.
When trillions poured into financial markets, risk assets soared.
Bitcoin soared even harder.
This was not magic.
This was liquidity.
Lots and lots and lots of liquidity.
A drunken firehose of liquidity.
The kind of liquidity that convinces venture capitalists to fund startups selling AI-generated dog food subscriptions.
The kind of liquidity that persuades investors that JPEGs are retirement plans.
The kind of liquidity that makes people believe a digital coin can only move upward forever.
Then Inflation Came Back From The Dead
For years economists treated inflation like a vampire killed decades ago.
A relic.
A ghost.
A museum exhibit.
Then inflation kicked down the front door and reminded everyone that it was merely sleeping.
Suddenly central bankers found themselves confronting something they hadn't seen in generations.
Prices rising.
Workers demanding raises.
Supply chains breaking.
Wars disrupting trade.
Energy markets convulsing.
The fantasy of permanently free money began to unravel.
And with it came the return of something investors had almost forgotten:
The existence of alternatives.
The Return of Gravity
For over a decade investors faced a simple problem.
Government bonds paid next to nothing.
Savings accounts paid next to nothing.
Cash paid next to nothing.
Everything pushed investors toward risk.
Now?
Risk must compete again.
Government debt suddenly offers yields.
Money markets offer yields.
Savings accounts offer yields.
Actual income exists again.
The financial universe is rediscovering gravity.
And gravity is notoriously bad for objects whose primary investment thesis is perpetual ascent.
The Uncomfortable Question Nobody Wants To Ask
What exactly is Bitcoin for?
Not theoretically.
Not philosophically.
Not in a 6-hour podcast featuring a man with a microphone and a supplement company sponsor.
Practically.
Right now.
Today.
As a currency?
Hardly anyone spends it.
As a medium of exchange?
Transaction volumes remain tiny compared with traditional payment systems.
As a unit of account?
Nobody prices groceries in Bitcoin.
As digital gold?
Perhaps.
But even gold has thousands of years of cultural legitimacy and industrial demand behind it.
Bitcoin increasingly survives because investors believe someone else will buy it later for more.
Which is not necessarily fraud.
But it is speculation.
And speculation requires fuel.
Enter the True Believers
Of course, Bitcoin won't disappear tomorrow.
Religions rarely vanish overnight.
Neither do ideologies.
Neither do financial manias.
There will always be believers.
People who genuinely view Bitcoin as humanity's last defense against monetary tyranny.
Some are thoughtful.
Some are intelligent.
Some raise legitimate concerns about debt, inflation, and government overreach.
Others appear to believe that every world problem can be solved by repeating the phrase:
"Have fun staying poor."
These are not the same people.
Unfortunately, the latter are usually louder.
The Trump Card
There remains one possibility.
Governments could choose inflation.
Faced with enormous debt burdens, policymakers may decide that quietly debasing currencies is politically easier than fiscal discipline.
Historically, governments have often preferred inflation to honesty.
If that happens, Bitcoin could enjoy another spectacular resurrection.
The corpse might sit upright in the coffin and start moonwalking.
Markets have witnessed stranger things.
But What If The Party Is Actually Over?
What if higher rates are not temporary?
What if inflation proves stubborn?
What if government borrowing continues exploding?
What if investors demand permanently higher yields?
What if the age of free money was the anomaly rather than the norm?
Then Bitcoin faces an existential challenge.
Not technological.
Financial.
The environment that nurtured its rise may no longer exist.
The Funeral Nobody Wants To Attend
This is the part where Bitcoin maximalists usually accuse critics of not understanding the technology.
Maybe.
But technology alone does not determine prices.
History is littered with brilliant innovations that became terrible investments.
Railroads changed civilization.
Most railroad investors got slaughtered.
The internet transformed humanity.
Thousands of dot-com companies vanished.
Being revolutionary does not guarantee profitability.
Being useful does not guarantee infinite valuation.
Being popular does not guarantee permanence.
Ashes To Ashes, Hashes To Hashes
Bitcoin may survive for decades.
It may even thrive periodically.
It could rally again.
It could surprise everyone.
Markets enjoy humiliating certainty.
But the central argument deserves examination:
Was Bitcoin truly a monetary revolution?
Or was it the ultimate child of the cheap-money era?
If the answer is the latter, then Bitcoin's greatest enemy was never governments.
Never regulators.
Never banks.
Never skeptics.
Its greatest enemy was the return of a world where money once again has a price.
And that world appears to be arriving.
Slowly.
Relentlessly.
Like a tax auditor.
Like aging.
Like winter.
Like reality itself.
So dearly beloved, as we stand around this still-breathing patient and listen to the choir sing one last chorus of "Number Go Up Forever," let us remember Bitcoin not as its disciples imagined it.
Not as the destroyer of central banks.
Not as the savior of civilization.
Not as digital immortality.
But as the most spectacular financial creature of the Easy Money Age—a creature born from outrage, raised on liquidity, worshipped as prophecy, and ultimately confronted by the one force every bubble fears:
The bill.
And the bill, sooner or later, always arrives.
yours truly,
Adaptation-Guide
No comments:
Post a Comment