1. Crypto OGs aren’t your typical hoomans. They believe in (and fight for) tech that attacks the world’s leading power structures (banks, corporations, stock exchanges, VCs, the Fed, 180ish fiat currencies, etc.).
2. For the first 15 years of crypto’s existence, the smart and logical assumption was govts would strangle the little crypto baby 👶 in its crib before it had the strength to walk.
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3. That logical assumption (however flawed and blind to crypto’s third- and fourth-order effects) is why many of the world’s keenest minds have looked at crypto and rejected it.
4. Outspoken rejectors include financial juggernauts Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger.
5. These are not mid-curve men. Tbh, I revere them like grandfathers. Their words and ideas have echoed in my mind for decades.
6. And yet, we could not agree on crypto.
7. That’s because for the first 15 years of crypto’s existence, it required the mad and fevered minds of the fringes… those who inhabit not just the world as it is today, but the world as it may be in the future.
8. Before 2024, crypto believers saw the walls around the industry not as the stopping point, but as the marker for how far the current financial system could take humanity.
9. No one else bothered to gaze beyond the wall. And it’s hard to blame them…
10. How could we possibly expect politicians, bankers, fund managers and government employees to see beyond the very structures upon which their livelihoods relied?
11. It’s a ludicrous, unfair request. (sorry, Charlie) (sorry, Warren)
12. And yet, the walls about the centralized garden trembled on January 11, 2024. For that was when the bell was rung. And the first bitcoin ETFs went live.
13. The door – made of stone – forever closed, suddenly cracked open.
14. Here. There. Everywhere. The world’s keenest financial minds were forced to look at bitcoin with brand new eyes.
15. The crust and mucus flaked away. (And the old man bent over rows of sorghum singing soulfully: “I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.”)
16. A wise woman told me once that Japan is 10 to 20 years behind the US when it comes to social change. It stuck with me because it’s a reminder that cultural transformation is not binary. Instead, it’s chaotic and unevenly distributed. Change works angrily, like oil and water mixing, wending its way through ever-higher pockets and strata of society (or sometimes in the opposite direction).
17. In 2017, we saw a madness, you and I. Crypto onboarded its first truly gargantuan wave of new believers. Few tradfi souls were among them. Instead, this was a madness that infected the smokers… the jokers, the midnight drunken tokers.
18. Again, the madness came in 2021. This time, a few tradfi elites joined the ranks, but their numbers were small. And their voices were muted by their reputations for depravity.
19. And now… now, how that sweet bell (rung on January 11) resounds. And a similar madness begins to grip the tradfi mind.
20. For the stamp of government approval has been granted. The seal bears the eagle, arrows clutched in talons glinting gold.
21. Under the weight of this great change, I’m not sure we stand on the verge of a “bull market.” But rather, we stand on the verge of a tectonic repricing… a societal awakening, a realization, an acceptance, a hat that must be eaten by the Buffetts, the Dimons, the Blackrockers and all the rest.
22. I thought, once, quite recently indeed, that this cycle could take crypto’s global market cap to $10 trillion. (Currently, we stand at 2.5t). Now, I wonder how cautious that prediction is. Perhaps, it’s only the halfway point… or a quarter of the truth.
23. If tradfi is to play this game, they do not come with cookies, hot toddies and a quilt. They come with smiles hiding knives.
24. For if this game is real and true, and bitcoin is to become a genuine, global currency one day, it is not mere gains they seek. It is their very lives. They come for survival, for their reputations, for their second homes, for their wives with nips and tucks (smelling of sweet buttercups).
25. They come to protect the wealth they’ve worked every day of their lives to amass.
26. This is the world’s most dangerous game of “who goes first?”. Banks, pension funds, investment advisors, governments, corporate treasurers… all of them eye that tiny, glittering mound of orange coins.
27. There are just 21 million #bitcoin after all… How scarce that number. There are something like 59 million millionaires in the world (not enough for all of them to hold even 0.36 BTC).
28. Quietly she whispered unto me: “I could never marry him. He’s just a quarter-coiner, I’m sure you see.”
29. Who moveth first?
30. What titan dares step forward?
31. Who pushes bitcoin above $100k?
32. The answer doesn’t matter. The hallowed land of 6 figures is coming, I am certain. And only then, will the tradfi madness truly begin.
33. The madnesses of 2017 and 2021 were madnesses of common men.
34. The madness of 2024/25 will be the madness of the suits and of the heads that bear the chafing crowns.
35. Yes. This cycle will be very different than the rest. For its participants come with different minds (and coffers of quite different size).
36. BTC, ETH, SOL will be targets of their obsession. But so will other coins… especially those which speak to their steel-trap logic. Coins like MKR, ENA, UNI, LINK… RWAs, AI and depin.
37. The midnight tokers are woefully underexposed to these crown jewels. But they’ll perpetuate their own manias. They’ll buy memecoins, politifi tokens, gaming, NFTs, inscriptions and other gleaming baubles (for theirs are the minds of the fringes… often earlier and ahead of the suits, cigars and doddering dukes).
38. Inside Pandora’s box, the bitcoin ETF once hid. We lifted that lid, and instantly and forever elevated this nascent asset class to a new, more prestigious caste.
39. Like a virus, the madness shall spread… from streets to sheikhs. From young to old. From individual to hallowed institutions.
40. This is not a rally we approach… it is a global restructuring of power and finance.
41. The first through the breach stands to gain the most (hullo, Mr. Saylor).
42. I feel the rest gathering courage and conviction.
43. I see them with their eyes upon the horizon faraway.
44. Soon, one will move ahead. Between the bricks they’ll slide, to freedom on the other side. And then, the great horde will move its mass, pressing forward, ever forward, toward a gap that’s much too small.
45. Some will fall.
46. And on their backs, the unstoppable heels of progress must grind.
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