Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is crashing all over again, and it is taking the smaller crypto currencies down with it. It has fallen by a quarter from its highs, and there is little sign that the relentless selling is going to stop anytime soon. Plenty of people will be reheating arguments about how the digital currency is completely worthless and that the bubble was always going to pop one day. But Bitcoin has been through plenty of bear markets and it has always bounced back – and there is little reason to believe this crash will be any different. It is certainly a substantial fall. From a high of $114,000 a coin at the end of last month it has fallen all the way back to $83,000. It has been just as bad for the other crypto currencies, such as Ethereum and Dogecoin.

“It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to a conference with this level of energy… I promise I’m not just saying that to juice my own memecoins.” After dropping this clanger in his keynote speech at the 2025 Bitcoin Conference, J.D. Vance paused awkwardly for an applause which never arrived. Bar a few perfunctory laughs, this was one buzzword the Vice President rolled out which failed to impress the thousands-strong crowd in Vegas yesterday afternoon. To understand the frosty reception, a cursory glance through Trump’s recent dealings in this chaotic corner of the crypto industry is required. On January 17 this year – a mere three days before his inauguration – the soon-to-be president of the United States launched his own memecoin: $TRUMP.

I don’t gamble. But in October 2016, I made a bet. It was obvious Trump didn’t just have skeletons in his closet but a walk-in necropolis. As we stumbled toward November, the question wasn’t whether one of these skeletons would break free, but just how bad the October Surprise would be. It was supposed to be a polling-shifting, election-sealing, reputational nuclear bomb. And if you read the press, that’s what the “Pussy-Grabbing Tape” was. But to me, it was just another example of Trump being vulgar. And Trump had always been vulgar. And voters liked that he was vulgar, or didn’t care that he was vulgar, or liked that he was so unlike other politicians that he could be vulgar.

The Hawk Tuah girl, a young woman famous for a viral video in which she tawdrily describes a sex act, launched a meme coin this week — because of course she did. It instantly lost over 90 percent of its value. This, too, comes as no shock. But out of ignorance, stupidity and greed, many people put their real money into $Hawk and lost it all. And so, 2024 ends with assassinations in the middle of New York City, attempted coups in South Korea and @jiggadrin_ tweeting out that his $35,000 in “$Hawk is now $2,000 after ten minutes of buying,” and that “I am a huge fan of Hawk Tuah but you took my life savings.” In some replies, he tried to spin this as a joke post. But it appears he genuinely lost the money, as did many others.

Dealing with the writer, statistician, Twitter warrior and self-described flâneur Nassim Nicholas Taleb is no simple matter. First there was the initial approach, months ago. I ventured to email him and ask for an interview despite his long-held and often-expressed low opinion of journalists. (Heuristic: those who make the biggest deal out of disliking the media care about it the most.) To my surprise, Taleb agreed to it almost immediately even though he “doesn’t do interviews.” Some logistical back and forth ensued. Then a twist: he would only agree to be interviewed if he wasn’t photographed. Why? Because in photos he is “made to look sickly and weak.

In the precarious world economy of 2023, everyone is selling you something — and much of that something doesn’t amount to anything. Companies, of course, sell you products and services; much of their junk amounts to solutions for problems that didn’t previously exist, though at least there’s still some sort of deliverable. Meanwhile, in worlds as essential to human flourishing as personal finance and bodily fitness, an ever-expanding class of so-called “influencers” are selling a whole lot of nothing dressed up as something. Their underlying success, ostensibly tied to their ability to help people become richer or fitter, depends in actuality on their ability to sell advice or investment opportunities that are likely only to enrich themselves. How did this happen?

This time last year, football fans dubbed the Super Bowl the "Crypto Bowl," after eToro, Coinbase, Crypto.com and FTX all paid for airtime. Just twelve months on, Mark Evans, the executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, told the Associated Press there would be "zero representation in that category on the day at all," following the disastrous downfall of FTX, In other sporting news, NFL legend Tom Brady has finally retired, which is nice for him. Anyone who took his investment advice won’t be doing that any time soon. The seven-time Super Bowl champion is currently named in a class action lawsuit that claims he and his now-ex Gisele Bundchen lured fans into a massive fraud.

For anyone seeking direct proof that woke capitalism is nothing but a scam, look no further than Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the now bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, who says as much in a direct message exchange with Vox reporter Kelsey Piper. He calls “ethics” a “dumb game we woke Westerners play” — presumably to avoid any scrutiny from journalists, employees, investors and consumers. I’ve worked for and with these people for decades. They want to convince you and the employees in their company that they are in it out of the goodness of their philanthropic hearts. They are just trying to make the world a better place, you see.

Bankrupted crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is the talk of the town thanks to the implosion of his heavily celebrity- and lawmaker-endorsed digital currency platform, FTX. SBF cleverly disguised his shaky financial schemes behind an awkward personality and philosophy labeled as “Effective Altruism,” meaning giving away massive amounts of wealth in the name of simply doing good. It’s a popular philosophical fad that has caught on among progressive global elites in the philanthropy arena and seems to be quite popular among media elites as well. Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced a plan to donate most of his wealth, on the same day that 10,000 jobs were to be eliminated at Amazon.