A Killing Field Of Dreams

A stable and internationally recognised unit of value and exchange or a vehicle for wild speculation? Peter Guy offers his views on bitcoin.

- Peter Guy

A professional speculator once told me: “It’s really not gambling unless you risk losing your house or selling your organs in Shenzhen.” I hate to spoil an exquisite financial bubble, but it’s growing ever more evident that the cryptocurrency and bitcoin craze is shaping up to be an epic, legendary Ponzi scheme.

Psychologically and financially, you’re either inside a bubble plotting when to cash out or outside guessing when to jump in. Bubbles usually make fools out of those who sell out too early or too late – which is almost everyone. Cryptocurrencies represent a perfectly intersecting storm of desperation, greed and overwrought imaginations, all enabled by sexy trading platforms and mobile technology.

Each successive jump in bitcoin price cruelly tempts punters like a treasure ship that hangs out at the horizon, taunting suitors by neither coming into dock nor receding out of sight. The closer the dream approaches you and the higher the price, the more real it becomes. The key to making a Ponzi work is to exploit the subtle but crucial difference between what the “mark” (victim) wants and what he or she really wants. And the scheme is most potent when those who are being manipulated are confident they’re acting of their own free will.