TL;DR: Oh, the tones are changing. Coronavirus is the culprit! they scream. Nobody saw a world economic downturn! they’re pleading. BTC Store of Value (SoV) shills promised just days ago you’d regret not buying at $10,000. Now they’re desperate to salvage their reputations as followers are rekt.

BTC Store of Value Shills Desperately Try Walking Back Narrative

“With hindsight, store-of-value comes in different contexts,” BTC SoV cheerleader Changpeng Zhao (CZ) of leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, attempted to sagely explain to dumbstruck followers. “Today, with <0.1% of the population who hold/accept #btc, it’s not liquid enough in pandemic situations; Neither is gold, hard to carry/travel with; Fiat is still the payment currency.”

It’s illustrative of a subtle shift that often comes when seemingly inexplicable BTC price declines happen out of the blue. As BTC’s price rises, of course, it all makes sense and no explanation is ever needed. $10,000? Next stop The Moon! Why? Because potato! It’s going up, so therefore it should go up more!

As of publication, however, BTC is down more than 20% in overnight trading. Long liquidations on exchanges such as BitMEX are approaching $700 million. The BTC price hovers around $6,000 USD right now, and shills are beginning to weave a walk-back narrative to account for a $4,000 gap they virtually promised would not happen, could not happen, just days ago. But don’t get stuck so much on the exact numbers. Let’s pay closer attention to the narrative.

The SoV Side is Now Completely Debunked

Early Bitcoiner Olivier Janssens has another take. “It’s proven beyond doubt now that Bitcoin is not a gold-like hedge,” he insisted soberly, “but a high risk asset class that’s first in line to be sold even before normal stocks. The ‘store of value’ side is now completely debunked in addition to the ‘everyone needs to run a non-mining full node’ side.”

It’s easy to dunk on the likes of John McAfee and The Dickening. Few take him seriously, though admittedly too many seem to do just that. But what about CEOs of industry unicorns, praised to the heavens, such as CZ? Famed investor Tim Draper? Wall Street analyst Tom Lee of Fundstrat?

They’re consistently among eager BTC hopium peddlers who can’t seem to find a negative thing to say about BTC, and the cumulative amount of delusion they spread has a real effect on investor FOMO. The truth is BTC isn’t good for much. Even BTC maximalists have given up on it as a payment processor, noting BTC is slow, far from anonymous, clunky to use; merchant adoption is declining, and fees are too relatively high. They’re so sure it never will be, they’ve gone off and created second-layer scaling solutions and ever-more complicated side chains like Lightning Network.

That leaves BTC, once thought to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, to an entirely new rationale, digital gold, developed in the last two years. Both Draper and Lee have made ridiculous price calls, with Draper doubling down at a Malta conference last year, claiming BTC “payment processors are really going to open the floodgates,” calling his price prediction of $250,000 in two or three years “conservative.” Guys like CZ, Draper, and Lee can never be wrong because Lambos and The Moon are always right around the corner, and haters are simply demonstrating confirmation bias, they’ll say. That is becoming increasingly harder to sell with each downturn.

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