When Bitcoin’s price reached $100,000, we sold all our Bitcoin, which wasn’t a lot. We certainly didn’t get rich from the sale. We were never going to get rich from Bitcoin. Neither are you unless you bought it a decade ago.

In this post that I wrote about a Bitcoin crash two and a half years ago, I said that I still believed in Bitcoin. And for a few years there—since accepting Bitcoin for something Ayin was selling on Craigslist in 2018—I really did believe that Bitcoin could become a cool, outsider, technology-based alternative currency. I don’t believe that anymore.

The new president, whose name I can’t bring myself to type, launched what’s called a “meme coin” (or, as some more accurately call them, shitcoins) a couple of days before his inauguration. It immediately shot up to a value of around $75, then just as immediately crashed. Leaving everyone who bought at the highest price with a pocketful of lint and the feeling of being had. If that isn’t a perfect demonstration of the inherent ridiculousness and scamminess of today’s cryptocurrency, I don’t know what is.

I can pinpoint the moment I lost faith in Bitcoin. It was when the price spiked after The Hamburglar won the election. I thought, “If that’s what the value of non-shitcoin crypto is based on, the blind love of amoral billionaires, then it has no value that interests me.” Crypto companies like Coinbase and Kraken and crypto investment companies like Robinhood and Crypto.com went on to donate millions of very real dollars to The Hamburglar’s inauguration fund, kissing the fascist ring to curry legislative favor for cryptocurrencies.

Politics aside, as an alternative currency, Bitcoin failed miserably. I’ve never met or spoken to anyone else who accepted it in exchange for a real-world thing. So, if Bitcoin isn’t an alternative currency, what is it? It’s just another investment vehicle. Or, more accurately, it’s a transfer of wealth from your pocket into the pockets of people who know how to work a system we only think we understand.

Can you make money buying Bitcoin today? Maybe. But probably not. At least not much. As I mentioned, people who bought or mined Bitcoin in the very early days (and held on to it) are rich. On paper, anyway. But everyone else? If they made a profit, it was modest.

We doubled the money we put into Bitcoin (though the Bitcoin we got from that Craigslist sale sold for 700% of its 2018 value 😳). That might not seem like a “modest” profit, but it was a modest amount of money (we never bought in amounts that would hurt to lose), and it took almost six years on a rollercoaster to get there.

I say “rollercoaster” because, at some points, the value of our holdings was down as much as 60%. So, at times like those, we were losing money on Bitcoin. Six years from now, Bitcoin could be worth more than it is today, or it could be worth nothing. If you can risk that and you’re comfortable rubbing elbows with thieves, conmen, survivalists, and now, far-right dummies, go for it.

Eh, let me back up a bit. 😁 Not everyone who believes in Bitcoin is a thief or a dummy; some are sincere and believe in its initial promise. I understand where they’re coming from, having once been dazzled by that promise myself. But most people who buy Bitcoin now believe in it strictly as a pathway to wealth, and it will never be that for them.

If you bought $10,000 of Bitcoin today and one day, in an imaginary unicorn-governed future, it achieved a value of a million dollars, you’d have $100,000. A hundred grand is nothing to sneeze at, is it? I’d take it. But it’s also not enough to buy two new (non-luxury) cars, let alone enough to consider yourself wealthy.

Wealth aside, Ayin’s (understandable and enviable) lack of interest in it was another major factor in liquidating Bitcoin. I’m at the age where I have to consider what happens to my family when I’m no longer around. What is Ayin going to do with a couple of Bitcoin drives that they don’t know how to turn into cash? That “money” wouldn’t be available to them.

An envelope full of cash in the safe (that’s just an example; there’s not an envelope full of cash in our safe, just a bunch of papers that would profoundly disappoint you if you were to rob us) would lose value every day just from inflation. But in most ways, it would still be better than an imaginary currency that requires jumping through a dozen technological hoops to turn into cash.

Anyway, Bitcoin is hardly the first thing in my life I’ve been enthusiastic about but then lost interest in. You could see that as capricious or impetuous (or some other word that means goofy), but I prefer to see it as being open to the world, having curiosity and enthusiasm, but also the instinct to know when to close particular doors.

It doesn’t matter if my instincts were wrong—or are wrong now—when it comes to Bitcoin. Sometimes, it just feels good to trust yourself. And it definitely feels good to get off the rollercoaster.

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN