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“It is the story of a man who is falling from a 50-story building. On each floor, as he falls, he consoles himself by repeating: it’s good for you (so far so good), Jusquisi tout va bien, Jusquisi tout va bien.”
So begins the wonderful 1995 French cult classic la hain. Those words, that image, have somehow been seared into my consciousness for the rest of my life. They calm me when I feel anxious or have treacherous worries. He suggests that, given that I’ve been able to avoid it so far, maybe I should keep getting away from it.
And jusquiciThe shills and magicians of Bitcoinland are also getting away with it. Sure, sure, Bitcoin may have had a few dozen major crashes, a few hundred crypto companies may have shut down, countless people may have lost their life savings, but every time Bitcoin falls, it always bounces back. Those who can afford it manage to stick with it (it’s those who can’t who are wiped out), and the cognitive muscle memory they acquire on each rebound leads them to believe that their sacred crypto coin will live forever.
Allow me to put this sensitively: It is not. The overconfidence of Bitcoiners – or more accurately the confidence they display, which is crucial in keeping the entire scheme going – has always been unreasonable, irresponsible and foolish. Since its creation, Bitcoin has been on a journey that will end in shattering into the ground.
This week, that ground came into sharp focus. Bitcoin suffered its worst decline since 2022, falling near $60,000 at one point on Friday, erasing all gains made since Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election and halving since a record high of more than $127,000 last October. According to this, approximately $1.25 billion of Bitcoin positions were liquidated in just 24 hours from Thursday to Friday data from coinglass.
The frustration and “confrontation,” as a brother might say — meaning someone is confused and struggling to accept a painful truth — is palpable. “I have never been more bullish on crypto,” said Balaji Srinivasan, a prominent crypto evangelist and former chief technology officer of crypto exchange Coinbase. Posted on x On Thursday. “Because the rules-based order is collapsing and the code-based order is rising. So the short-term price doesn’t matter.” He would like It is said that.
Some chose self-humiliation rather than gobbledygook. “If you want to give me a birthday present, buy yourself some Bitcoin,” Michael Saylor, the man who turned his company, Strategy, into a huge all-in bet on Bitcoin (it’s over 713,000 BTC, about 3.4 percent of the total in circulation), posted on Wednesday. poor thing birthday billionaire.
The next day, during an earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2025 – the year before the worst crash but in which the strategy still managed to post an impressive $12.4 billion loss – Sellars was trying some different persuasion tactics. “I don’t think you can overestimate the importance of support for the industry and digital capital at the top of the political structure,” he said, stressing that America’s “Bitcoin President” intends to turn it into the “crypto capital of the world.”
But this is where it gets really weird for Cryptoland. Because Saylor is right – the closest we have to a “Bitcoin president” is the family with vested family crypto interests. And yet despite establishing a “strategic Bitcoin reserve,” pardoning several convicted crypto criminals, allowing Americans to put crypto into their 401(k) pension accounts, and claiming to end former President Joe Biden’s “war on crypto” in his first 200 days in office, Trump’s presence in the White House has not been able to stem the tide of selling. If Bitcoin can’t thrive in this environment, when can it?
“We may not have reached the final Bitcoin final.”death circle“; I don’t claim to know when that will happen. Trying to figure out an end date to a speculative frenzy based solely on belief – or especially on belief in other people’s belief – is a difficult task, and Bitcoin may still have some more wiggle room to go (at the time of writing, it had reached nearly $69,000).
But trust is beginning to wane. This week has shown us that the supply of “big fools” that Bitcoin relies on is drying up. The fairy tales that kept crypto alive are proving to be exactly that. People are beginning to wake up to the fact that there is no basis for the value of anything other than mere airiness. Ask yourself: Will this thing still be around in 100 years? And remember that “it’s not how you fall, it’s how you land.” Jusquisi tout va bien, Jusquisi tout va bien, Jusqui. . .
jemima.kelly@ft.com
