Fortune: Jamie Dimon

Many people think the market is highly correlated to the news cycle, and more importantly, the sentiment regarding that news cycle. The more positive articles that come out for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the more they should increase in value. On the other hand, if there are a bunch of articles creating a negative buzz, that should push prices lower…right?

Well, I would tend to agree with the correlation above when it comes to news that is directly correlated to mass adoption, scalability successes/failures, and other topics that are closely intertwined with improving the short and long-term cryptocurrencies hurdles (which I discuss near the end of this piece).

However, many people seem to think that when people like Jamie Dimon (J.P. Morgan CEO) and Warren Buffett (you know who he is) make negative comments about bitcoin, it should cause prices to go down. These guys have been financial thought leaders for a long time.

I’m specifically referring to articles like this one where Jamie Dimon is quoted saying he would “fire any employee trading bitcoin for being ‘stupid’”. Then there is this one a bit more recently where Buffett says “bitcoin is probably rat poison squared”.

Anybody who reads these articles (and there are many more from a wide array of financial professionals) would have a hard time justifying a purchase of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency for the sole reason that these people with an impeccable track record are becoming vocal adversaries.

Well, I’m here to make the case that you would be dead wrong to take their statements as divine intervention and I’ll prove my point with a simple philosophical paradox called the “Liar’s paradox”.

In the liar’s paradox, you are presented with a person who is a liar saying the following sentence: “I am lying.”

But this causes an as a statement can only be true or false, so we will exam both individually.

Case 1 — The statement is a lie

If he is a liar, he should be lying. However, if he is lying, then the sentence above would be lie, making the truth, “I am telling the truth.” This can’t be correct since we know he is a liar.

Case 2 — The statement is true

If he is telling the truth, then the statement “I am lying” would be true. But this too can’t be correct because he just said he was lying.

Due to this paradox, we gain no information by the liar saying, “I am lying.”

Now let’s manipulate this a bit and bring it full circle to the Bitcoin comments previously made by Jamie Dimon.

Jamie Dimon says, “Bitcoin is a scam” which I will extrapolate a bit to mean “Bitcoin is overvalued”.

There are two scenarios. Again, I will examine them individually.

Case 1 — Jamie Dimon thinks Bitcoin is a scam and worthless with no long-term value.

Under this case, he would say, “Bitcoin is a scam,” since he would build social credit for being an early person to call out the demise of this new hyped up asset class.

Case 2 — Jamie Dimon thinks Bitcoin is revolutionary and has incredible long-term value.

Under this case, he would also say “Bitcoin is a scam,” in hopes he (or his company) are able to buy or add to their stash at cheaper prices.

As you can see, whether Mr. Big Shot’s opinion is that Bitcoin sucks or Bitcoin is great, he is always incentivized to say, “Bitcoin is a scam.”

They are both variations of the same paradox.

Therefore, we gain absolutely no information from these comments, just as we gained no information when the liar said, “I am lying.”