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The suits are here, and Bitcoiners are the new hype in financial markets.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s been the story for most of this year, culminating spectacularly in the bitcoin price plunge during Bitcoin Asia 2025. Bitcoin, the most vocal vote-of-no-confidence in the permissioned fiat monetary system is now rushing headfirst back into traditional finance. <\/p>\n
Cypherpunks, morphed into suitcoiners, have found their ultimate expression as stonkcoiners.<\/p>\n
The rebellious teenagers repented their sins. The lost son has returned \u2014 in glamorous, greedy glory.<\/p>\n
We, the nerdy outsiders who were once dead-set on building a new and improved world have become cheerleaders for regulated, permissioned securities \u2014 neatly levered up and financially engineered for maximum bitcoin-per-share. The laws of financial gravity rudely shoved aside, even the staunchest rebellious hacker has given up most of their principles now that Wall Street is paying $2, $3, or $5 for a dollar of bitcoin.<\/a><\/p>\n And at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong, everything else was upside-down, too. The crowd came out, not for the self-custody or cypherpunk-y Bitcoin talks, but for the political hotshots<\/a> and financial engineers. (The word \u201csycophants\u201d comes to mind.) \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The balance sheet is becoming the P&L, said Alexandre Laizet, CEO of Europe\u2019s largest treasury company on stage<\/a>. He wasn\u2019t merely saying that treasury companies are now banks<\/a>, using <\/em>their balance sheets to eke out profits; he meant that the only thing that matters<\/em> to bitcoin treasury companies is the balance sheet itself. Profits are of no consequence when you\u2019ve got bitcoin-per-infinitely printable share.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what you should do as a rational player in the market.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Some 200 companies, with Strategy and Metaplanet (the main sponsor for Bitcoin Asia<\/a>) as the most vocal poster boys for the movement, are vacuuming capital markets for cheap fiat to plunge into bitcoin. Everyone is hitting records everywhere \u2014 of audiences and viewers, of attendees and sales. Everyone who\u2019s been around Bitcoinland feels the energy, the building, the never-ending factory floor of shipping and building. It\u2019s never been easier to grasp Bitcoin and we\u2019ve never had as many people here\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026yet the price keeps meandering its way down from a hyped $125,000 to the $118,204 entry point for Nakamoto\u2019s 679-million-dollar purchase<\/a> to $111,000-ish around conference time, before plunging<\/a> to a low of below $108,000<\/a> \u2014 in direct tandem with the bullish speakers on stage.<\/p>\n The drone show on Thursday, lighting up the Hong Kong evening with awesome Bitcoin graphics in the sky, couldn\u2019t have been more symbolic for how everything is upside down. Displaying a powerful 21-divided-by-infinity sign that made absolutely no sense, it was a directly inverted version of Knut Svanholm<\/a>\u2018s famous everything-divided-by-21-million <\/em>claim<\/a>: <\/p>\n All 20,000-odd of us in attendance need urgent bitcoin price therapy<\/a> after days on end watching bullish proclamations on the Nakamoto Stage disproven and undermined by the large-font price chart behind them.<\/p>\n From the Nakamoto Stage in Hong Kong, David Bailey sat confidently and celebratory, applauding our great efforts and successes as Bitcoiners \u2014 while the audience stared at the large, SALT-sponsored bitcoin price on the screen behind him continually plunging downward, eradicating an ungodly amount of wealth with each downward flick. <\/p>\n The dissonance couldn\u2019t have been greater between the bullish words said on stage, the impressive and plausible-sounding gospel from the dozen or so treasury companies present, and the harsh reality of an ever-decreasing price.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s almost like the more David Bailey et al. talk and pump their bitcoin-acquisition vehicle stocks, the worse our market becomes and the lower the price goes.<\/p>\n Maybe Mr. Bailey just has much bigger cojones<\/em> than me, or a YOLO recklessness far surpassing anything humanity has ever seen, but had I <\/em>just burned some $60 million of investor money with nothing<\/em> to show for it, I\u2019d be more humble and skittish, downtrodden and skeptic.<\/p>\n Price is in the pudding, and it\u2019s really not that nice a cake.<\/p>\n\n
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