Let’s say I come to you and offer you a “sure thing” investment. It involves buying certain items with no intrinsic value, but I promise they will soon become very valuable. For the small investor, all you have to do is buy shares, sit back and rake in huge profits. For the major investor, it means building an expensive piece of equipment, which then allows you to get more of the profits, and actually earn some of the real items. Which aren’t really real, you understand, but are virtual objects. Upon looking further into the situation, you find that the way these huge profits are being generated is through new investors joining the scheme. Trying to look further, you are stymied by the fact that the originators of the scheme are impossible to trace. Further, you find that the value of the stock is being artificially manipulated by limiting the number of items available. The apparent limit to the number of items will be reached in twenty years or so.
What Would You Say?
If you had any brains, you would probably say that I was flogging a very clever but rather obvious pyramid scheme. And you would be right. The defining element of a pyramid scheme is that it creates no real value, but pays off original investors with money from new suckers brought in by a get-rich-quick feeding frenzy. This inflates the value of the stock until no new investors can afford to join. Then there is a correspondingly panicked regurgitation of stock, and the price plummets to its real market value, which is next to nothing.
Then the perpetrators and the smart people who played the system right walk away chuckling, and the poor rubes who got suckered in stagger off wondering what hit them.
Which, by the way, pretty well describes the stock market in general. The first time this happened was the Great Tulip Bubble in Holland in the early 17th century, when the price of certain varieties of tulip bulb went through the roof and then crashed. People who had borrowed money in the expectation of riches were left with nothing but tulip bulbs to eat. Or so the story goes.
Since then, the stock market has become far more sophisticated, creating all sorts of scams, such as the commodities market, the futures market, derivatives and yes, even mutual funds. All with one intent: to create another gambling opportunity where knowledgeable insiders can fleece the unwary.
Bitcoin
And the latest one is Bitcoin. Notice that a Bitcoin has absolutely no value. When the crash comes, you won’t even have the paper it was written on to eat, because it’s all imaginary. Note the clever trick of making “serious players” invest in infrastructure, and then using that investment to get them to “mine” for Bitcoins, providing the incredibly huge amount of computing power necessary to keep the whole thing afloat. Almost for free.
Mining
Here’s how it works. You build a large set of powerful computers, and use them to keep track of a block of Bitcoin transactions. You get paid a minimal amount in transaction fees for this service. When you have calculated and recorded a certain (absolutely huge) number of transactions, you are given an actual Bitcoin of your very own. Well, not an actual one, because they don’t really exist. A virtual one, anyway. Thus persuading people to hook themselves financially in the system, just like door-to-door and “party” salesfolk are induced to buy huge product lines to use as demos. A “miner” interviewed on CBC last week had $100,000 invested in his mining operation, for which he was receiving a whole $10 a week in fees. But he was expanding his operation, with high hopes of hitting the mother lode and earning some Bitcoins.
The Latest Twist: Bitcoin Goes Mainstream
You will soon be able to buy stocks in funds valued strictly on their prediction on whether the value of Bitcoin will rise or fall. The banks want in on this windfall, although they are cautiously demanding more regulations first.
Bitcoin and the Stock Market
My book, “Why are People So Stupid” has room for a whole chapter on the stock market, and how it works (or doesn’t). But the main point to remember is that there is a finite amount of money in the stock market at any given time. This means that if someone makes a million bucks, someone else has to lose a million. Sobering thought, isn’t it?
Last Friday, the value of one Bitcoin dropped from $1700 to $1400, then jumped back to $1600 in one day. Since there were very few new Bitcoins created in that short time, the drop means that half the sellers lost $3000 of their investment. Which means that the other half made $3000 on theirs. Then somebody cashed in on the jump and made another $2000. So a “lucky” investor made $5000 on his investment in one day, for every Bitcoin he owns. Which, if you remember the finite nature of the funds in the stock market, means that somebody else lost $5000 on his.
Luck?
One of the big temptations of pyramid schemes and the like is giving the investor the feeling that he is one of the smart ones, taking advantage of an opening that nobody else knows about. Face it, folks. Are you one of the smart ones? I don’t think I am. And the smart ones are going to walk away from the table with all the chips, believe it. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t.
“Real Market Value”
And remember, the Bitcoin is completely useless for its original intent: as a currency. It’s too volatile to be useful. The example given above would calculate out to a devaluation of 18% and a revaluation of 14% in one day. Even the terrible declining days of the Weimar republic – 1500% inflation over 6 months – where it took a wheelbarrow load of paper money to buy a loaf of bread, were not that bad.
And Peter Rosenstreich, head of market strategy at online trading firm Swissquote Bank SA, says,
“There is growing unease on how central banks and governments are managing fiat currencies. Ordinary people globally understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven.”
I’d say using the word “safe” in the same article as “Bitcoin” is missing the point; it’s the kind of thinking that got Donald Trump elected. If people who don’t understand the system can be persuaded that the “elite” who are running the system can’t be trusted, they can be sold just about any other solution, as long as it’s simple enough for them to think they understand it. Yeah, that’s right. People think they understand the stock market.
So go ahead and buy stock in Bitcoins. But realize that you’re playing with the big boys, and quite a few of them are pyromaniacs. Make sure you’re not one of the fools who get burned when it all goes up in smoke.
PS
And if you’ll pardon my conspiracy theorism, since this is such a widespread phenomenon, which could have serious effect on the capitalist economies of the Free World, and since the “evidence” points conveniently to a Far Eastern nation (The originator is known as Satoshi Nakamoto)…well, let’s just say that the whole scam just could be a plot by the government of a certain large Pacific Rim power that would be very happy to see Free Enterprise come to grief, and would love to use the weakness of the system to cause its own downfall. And I’m not talking about California, here.
You heard it here first, folks.