Mark Basola, CFA

If you want to ✨ really ✨understand why #bitcoin is so important, watch (or rewatch) The Big Short. The closing scene, with Mark Baum (Steve Carrell’s character, based on Steve Eisman) sitting on a balcony overlooking Central Park, despondent over the fraud & destruction that has just occurred, realizing that nobody responsible will face any consequences because the system itself is run by criminals - this is the world into which #bitcoin was born, & the rank desolation to which it has brought Hope. Meditate deeply on how (as elucidated throughout the film) inescapably rigged that system was: - The SEC is a revolving door with the banks, with no incentive (or ability) to police them or the securitized mortgages they were selling). - The banks sold (& were pricing) the swaps that insured against the downside that they faced, and for months fraudulently refused to price them correctly, trying to force out (via capital calls) the people betting against their own structural insolvency. This capped Baum and others’ upside because if they waited too long to sell their insurance contracts - NOBODY WOULD BE LEFT TO PAY THEM. - The government was always going to step in & bail everyone out, because the system the banks created effectively held hostage the only real financial asset most Americans owned: their homes. The system allowed them to win more when Americans won; it should ALSO have meant that they lost proportionately more when housing crashed, but they knew that the government would never allow this to happen, so gains would be privatized and losses socialized. Think about this world: the banks controlled the regulators, the ratings agencies, & the Congress. But even worse: the banks were the only way to bet against the banks!! The banks won when We The People won, & they won when we lost. They were the House & everyone else is just players in the casino. We couldn’t get out unless they let us out, & they sure as shit weren’t going to ever let us win if it means them losing. This is why #bitcoin is such a massive, MASSIVE idea: as the only independent asset not synthetically created by a bank or controlled by a government, actually HELD by the people who own it, & not native to any one country - it is, effectively, a limitless Credit Default Swap on the entire banking cartel-operated fiat system, insuring against the insolvency, not just of any one bank or government, but the entire financial world with nobody to cap the upside or police the exits. This is why I am a #bitcoin maximalist: because the 2008 financial crisis left an indelible impression on me, as it did when it motivated Satoshi to write the White Paper & embed that famous FT headline from this era in the Genesis Block. I, like Mark Baum, was the hopeless disappointed idealist sitting on that balcony, cynically despondent because the entire system is fucked and there was no way out. Until #bitcoin created the only Hope we have to ✨fix this ✨ & create a better, fairer world in its place - one in which we cannot be held hostage by the gatekeepers of the financial system as they leech our wealth and labor. Ethereum & other cryptos are, if anything, the moral equivalent of those toxic mortgage-backed securities built on a blockchain. Issued by the House, controlled by the House. Wholly owned by the House. They, if built upon, would create a world WORSE than the one Baum was lamenting - not better. Only #bitcoin allows the people to rise with one voice & bring the entire corrupt system from which Baum saw no possibility of escape crashing to the ground for good - as in the depths of that same despair his brother had come crashing to the ground in the opening of the film. #bitcoin is the most important & most powerful idea in your lifetime - because you still live in the corrupt fiat world of 2008. Even if you dont realize it, you are a Mark Baum sitting on that balcony. Only #bitcoin can fix this. Only #bitcoin is a way out. Only #bitcoin is Hope.