Why Crypto Will Crash Hard And Come Back Long
Ten days ago, the founder of $LUNA laughed and said “95% [of coins] are going to die. There’s also entertainment in watching companies die too.” Well, his coin cratered. YouTuber ksi said “my 3 million dollars worth of Luna is now worth a few $100.” Which is, like, boo-hoo millionaire, but many people are downright suicidal and that’s awful.
It’s easy to dunk on crypto as a dumb cult, but every religion is just an old cult. Crypto and NFTs are surely stupid and evil, but stock markets and art hoarding are stupid and evil too. They’re just so established that they look like religion, and we don’t question them.
In truth, the difference is not good vs. bad. It’s old vs. new. While crypto markets itself as revolutionary, it’s fundamentally competition for elite status. A different hierarchy, not its overthrow. First merchants displaced nobility, now geeks are taking their shot at the throne.
Hence you get massive concentrations of crypto holdings by a few people, and institutional investors and banks getting into it too. It’s like the Romans with the Christians. They condemned it as a cult, until they figured out ‘hey, put some bling on this thing and we can use it to rule.’
The Cult Of The Corporation
The more modern cult that became a religion is the corporation. The limited-liability corporation is an honestly batshit idea that Adam Smith said would inevitably lead to “negligence and profusion.” As Joel Bakan wrote:
People talk about how crypto is unregulated and has zero accountability, but that’s precisely what limited liability enshrines for corporations. There’s some bullshit about corporate responsibility, but who actually gets prosecuted? They literally get away with murder and destroying the globe.
It’s important to remember that ‘limited liability’ is made up as much as ‘decentralized finance’ or whatever. Just like crypto today, limited liability was also laughed at and opposed when it came out. As Bakan continues:
The other criticism leveled at crypto is that it destroys the environment, which is true, but the rise of emissions starts almost exactly with the rise of the corporate form. The corporation was used for colonialism (the Dutch East India Company was the first IPO) and the violent extraction of resources has simply continued to its logical end. Not the destruction of the land and lives of colored people, which can be ignored, but the destruction of the entire livable Earth.
The final criticism of crypto is that it’s just stupid and insane, which it is, but look at what corporations were doing in their frothiest of bubbles. While NFTs sell (links to) pictures of apes, European companies literally traded in human beings. They bought and sold rights to enslaved people, and viewed the millions dead on the ocean floor as just so much industrial waste.
During the South Sea Bubble, people were selling essentially NFTs to South America. The entire colonial corporate structure was based on claiming ownership of things they did not own, and then speculating on it. It makes NFTs look like child’s play. That bubble blew up bigger and exploded harder than anything today, but we act like crypto is uniquely crazy. White people been crazy. Crypto is just the latest craze.
Why Crypto Won’t Go Away
To me, both crypto and corporations are forms of artificial life (AI if you will) and their emissions are what’s geologically choking out the rest of life on Earth. Whatever survives 2,000 years hence won’t have our conceit that apes are somehow superior. Corporations are crypto are obviously alive, as evidenced by the fact that they’re killing us.
Hence my point is certainly not that crypto is good. My point is that it’s also evil. The differences between corporate speculation and crypto speculation are irrelevant. Just as humans bet on fighting dogs and cocks, they bet on Shiba Inu and stocks. Same shit, different day.
Crypto is almost certainly going to crash by 95% or more, in an absolute extinction level event. The small crash of May 12th, 2022 was just a taste. But life does this all the time. Nature is constantly destroying 95% of lifeforms, but the ones that survive adapt and find a way.
So it was with the corporation after the South Sea Bubble of 1720, and so it will be after the OpenSea or whatever bubble that decimates crypto one of these days. Artificial life also finds a way. The same evolutionary principles are at play. The fact is that life can evolve in our dreams and greed as well as whatever it is we call ‘reality’. So yeah, crypto is definitely going to crash, but it won’t burn. It’ll live to evolve another day.
Note: this is not investment advice of course. For that, I invite you to consult the long-term investment firm of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, et al and give all your shit to the poor (which I don’t do) and get right with ye gods. Someone’s coming back, and I’m pretty sure they’ve got a sword.
Further Reading:
Oh, and Giles, if you want to talk about this call or email me, but I’ll need to be drunk or something.