Photo via Flickr

You may or may not turn to Splinternews.com for investment advice, and frankly I could not care less. I offer you a pearl of wisdom and you may do with it what you wish: All these imaginary “digital currencies” are just made up fake things.


What is Bitcoin? Nobody knows. I do not mean that nobody can offer a string of plausible-sounding words that seem at a glance as if they are describing a real thing, and apply those words to Bitcoin or even to “Ethereum” or any other “digital coin” that is “mined” on a computer (fake). I mean that none of it makes any sense.

In my hand I hold a $20 bill. I can use it to buy a huge burrito at any of a dozen places within a ten block radius. On your computer you have a Bitcoin. Its value fluctuates wildly from month to month. You have no idea what you will be able to exchange it for tomorrow. You can’t buy a burrito with it anywhere. It is fake.


“You don’t understand Internet 3.0 and the blockchain.”

Enjoy being broke when this made-up bubble pops.

“This is the future of frictionless global finance.”

Enjoy being destitute because you took your real money and exchanged it for “Bitcoin,” a thing that your computer tells you you have even though it could be lying to you, and you think you can sell that to Greater Fools forever, but there are only so many Greater Fools in the world. You are engaged in the sort of financial collective delusion that seizes humanity with incredible regularity because people are willing to forget the lessons of history if they think they can get rich quick.

“My friend made a ton of money in it already.”

That’s because your friend sold his Bitcoins to a Greater Fool—you. Enjoy the feeling of profound foolishness you will experience on the day when everyone wakes up and realizes they would rather have cash to buy burritos than “digital coins” that can, let’s see here, “pay for transaction fees and services on the Ethereum network.” Oh, that sounds better than cash money that can buy everything anywhere, sure. Great investment.


Instead of telling me computer words about what these digital currencies are, tell me this: Is it better than cash? That I hold in my hand? That buys me a burrito? That buys me a basketball? That buys me a house? That buys me a fighter jet? Is it better than that? No it is not. You are engaged in a massive global act of speculation that will inevitably crash and burn and leave people like you gnashing your teeth and rending your garments and searching your soul about why you went out and spent all your real money on fake “coins” that don’t “exist” except in everyone’s “imagination.”

The answer is that you were “greedy” and thought you could get “something for nothing” but actually you “can’t.”


Laugh your haughty laugh all you want. Enjoy calling me ignorant. I have a burrito and all you have is “code.” Yeah—code for “idiot.”