As the price of bitcoin hit $10,000, the cryptocurrency’s supporters took to Twitter last week to boast of their triumph. “You, a Wall St trader: spent years in school learning the minutia of finance, 10 years of 100-hour work weeks, never see your family, super excited about your 10 per cent returns this year,” one enthusiast wrote. “Me: a Bitcoiner: read some books, s*** posted on Twitter, ate some steaks, enjoying 900 per cent returns.”
This trolling social media comment perfectly captures the mutual disdain between professional financiers, who have mostly watched bitcoin’s rise with a mixture of puzzlement and horror, and the hardcore of true believers who view owning cryptocurrencies as a disruptive act of financial iconoclasm.
Those who are trying to explain bitcoin’s popularity and behaviour through the spectacles of mainstream finance are committing a simple analytical error: they are attempting to apply fact-based analysis to an asset that is impervious to it.