The Great Bitcoin Reversal, Redux

Rally around what you know to be true… [Gilder's Daily Prophecy] May 26, 2021 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [ARCHIVES]( What’s Wrong With This Stock Market? [newspaper]( day the market is up… the next, it’s plummeting… leaving investors terrified to even peek at their portfolios. But George Gilder thinks he knows why — and [the reason will SHOCK you.]( It’s not coronavirus… Fed interventions… or even the economic shutdown. It’s a scandal you’ve likely never even heard of. [Click here to see a brief message from George Gilder with the disturbing details.]( [Warning] Do you enjoy receiving Gilder's Daily Prophecy? Please [Click Here Now]( so we know to continue sending you Gilder's Daily Prophecy for free! [Editor’s Note: Jeffrey Tucker is steering the Daily Prophecy ship as George continues to research and write his newest book, Life After Capitalism. Keep scrolling to read his latest submission!] The Great Bitcoin Reversal, Redux [George Gilder]Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, At what point did you grow weary of conventional financial news and opinion? So predictable, so short-sighted, so unjustifiably certain about cause and effect, so driven by sound bites and easy-to-digest media flourishes. For me, it was eight years ago. I was working for Laissez Faire Books. I had been watching the development of Bitcoin for three years, trying to wrap my head around the impossible. What I saw was that Bitcoin worked as a technology of money. Why and how? That’s what I wanted to know. That it worked had become indisputable to me earlier that year. In March of 2013, I was swarmed by some gangsters from the Bitcoin space, people who are now of high net worth. They took me to lunch, nearly against my will. I was curious about Bitcoin, but a bit weary of the tech talk that came with it. Too much complexity, too many neologisms, and an implausible level of enthusiasm (“to the moon!”). I just wanted a nice lunch. But at that table, a person sent me three Bitcoins (if memory serves, they were priced at $14 each). My phone buzzed and there it was. I was an owner. I asked the same question that Janet Yellen would ask many years later: What is the mediation platform that made this transaction possible? The wild and crazy answer was: none. My heart jumped, as I thought through the meaning of a payment system that relied on no financial intermediation. Can it be true that technology had more-or-less solved one of the great problems that had vexed humanity from the beginning of human experience, namely the problem of money? Has money truly been privatized in a way that neither governments nor kept private institutions can touch? And more than that, how is it possible that this new form of money – which earns its value on its own rather than being tied to any government currency – is somehow bundled up with its own payment system built as part of its structure? When I returned to my office later, I arrived with a burning passion to figure it out. [Government rule to unleash $15.1 trillion?]( More Money, More Problems In those days, there were no FAQs on Bitcoin, no popular magazines, no coherent YouTube videos. It was all tech, all the time. I finally ran across a lengthy attack on Bitcoin that ran in Wired. At least the article was in English. Midway through, the article slipped in a truth: the quantity of issuance is strictly limited in quantity by a fixed protocol that no one in particular can control. Which is to say: this new money not only restricts, but completely eliminates discretion. That was my eureka moment. I saw the reason that Bitcoin as a currency unit was then worth 14 times the world’s reserve currency. I saw the basis of the demand. It was then that I realized that we had no prior experience with such a thing. What would the market discover here? How high could the price go? I had no idea, and still do not. But this much I knew: Bitcoin had solved an age-old problem… How to transfer property valuation peer-to-peer, without relying on a centralized system such that the government or some other powerful actor could take it over. For me, the essential drama and the beautiful stuff of life is summed up in ideas made real. This is what entices me, enthralls me, and drives me every day. Since I was in college, the problem of money and its quality had intrigued me, simply because — unbeknownst to the multitudes — the quality of money in circulation has a massive influence on the fate of civilization itself. Somehow, I had the sense that Bitcoin had put it all together. I was not sure then entirely how and why, but I decided to write about it — simply because that’s what I do. Warning: Financial Extinction Event Imminent [warehouse person head down]( July 14th, 2021, a seismic event is expected to send our financial system into a devastating tailspin. At this point, there’s nothing the Federal Reserve, the government or even the President can do to stop it… If you’re not prepared for what’s coming, you should do so now. [Click here to see how some extremely powerful strategies could mean protecting yourself from the carnage that’s coming…]( [No more banks. No more accountants. No more Wall Street?]( Riding the Bitcoin Train I filed my first article on Bitcoin in April 2013, while working for Laissez Faire. As I recall, the price was then about $30. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my opinion on this – basically saying that this could be the real deal – would have an enormous impact. To this day, I seriously doubt it had an effect on the price, but people at the time believed that it did. In those days, I was somehow and inexplicably attached to Facebook as a portal to public opinion. My timeline was filled with attacks. I was guilty. I had pumped up the price. I was backing a scam. I was using all the credibility I had built over many years of editorial work to lend credence to a racket that would end in a fleecing of investors. At this point, the conspiracy theory went, I would somehow sell at the top (as if I knew what that would be) and make out like a bandit. I was astonished. My conclusion on Bitcoin, or actually my just first-published impression, was purely intellectual. I never gave investment advice and I still do not. What I said was that this thing had a future. Sure enough, the price went up and up. The attacks grew. The price rose further, and the trajectory did not relent. I finally went out on a limb, relying on intuition alone. I predicted that by year’s end, the price would be $1,000. On December 3, 2013, the price hit $1,068. I was then christened a prophet. I put on my laurels and smiled. That was a mistake. Come the new year, smart players in the market skimmed the cream off the top. The price began to fall. The ceiling fell in on me again. I kept telling myself that I was not somehow responsible for this. I never said “invest now.” I never predicted an unrelenting upward trajectory. That it fell was not my fault. But in those days, it’s true, I sweated it out. It was my first experience grappling with valuation predictions. I was right, until I was wrong. As for the investor community, the problem here is universal and ubiquitous. Grabbing the Bull By the Horns When people get interested enough to buy, it’s very likely to be on the tail end of a bull run. Everyone tries to buy low and sell high, and that sounds easy until you realize the key problem — you can only know what low and high is when you look backwards in time. But investment? That is by definition a forward-looking act, a leap into the unknown. It is looking through the glass darkly and seeing only glimmers of truth. It is ultimately an act of faith. I had friends talk me through these hard times. One said to me something along the following lines: You have studied this. You know the underlying architecture. You get how revolutionary this thing is. If you truly get this, what you know is what matters — not the temporary trends, not the exigencies of market opinion, not the financial news that was then screaming (as it had many times before and would for the indefinite future), but rather your own comprehension of the underlying reality. He was convincing. I regrouped and decided to hang tough, even as my friends were holding me responsible for buying Bitcoin at $1,000 (which later in the year was worth only $331). What a ripoff, eh? Well, they eventually found out that they had made the best investment of their lives. Today’s Prophecy I tell this story — which barely even registers in the charts today, other than appearing as a tiny hump — in light of current prices. At the beginning of this year, Bitcoin was priced at $30,000. The latest price is $37,000. Seems like a pretty good deal in terms of returns, right? Not so much, according to the fickle financial press. Bitcoin has been declared dead yet again, and why? Because only recently it had reached a valuation of $63,000. Once the human imagination grasps the possibility of infinite increases in a magic asset, it proves nearly impossible for people to dial back that expectation and be satisfied with a long-run increase that trends above average market returns. Why? Hard to say for sure. It has something to do with our propensity toward enthusiasm for throwing off the struggles of life and our resentment against forces we do not control. I often return to the advice from my friend: Rally around what you, to the best of your ability, know to be true. All the rest is noise. Regards, [Jeffrey Tucker] Jeffrey Tucker P.S. As a loyal reader of Gilder's Daily Prophecy, I’ve promised to keep you informed on life-changing technology opportunities, everything from Wi-Fi 6 to blockchain to “15G” and more! Today, I’m reaching out to you about a rather unique discovery made by one of my colleagues that was recently brought to my attention… He discovered an explosive and easy way to trade the markets week after week. [Click here to see my video where I get into some of the details about this opportunity.]( 04ghd74j - 3b95 - dt38 - 43vg - g7sp38gt [coded screen]( this 32-digit code? While it’s just for illustrative purposes, it’s the prototype for a brand-new digital infrastructure that is set to replace the “old internet” as we know it. Act now to be early on the “new internet”… [Continue Reading >>]( [Three founders Publishing]( To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, feel free to [click here](. If you are having trouble receiving your Gilder's Daily Prophecy subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting Gilder's Daily Prophecy](. Gilder's Daily Prophecy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Please read [our Privacy Statement.]( For any further comments or concerns please email us at GildersDailyProphecy@threefounderspublishing.com. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized financial advice. 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