[Recommend my two-volume book for more reading]:
BIT & COIN: Merging Digitality and Physicality
Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) posted on X-platform calling the committed BTC buyer Michael Saylor the Egg Man.
Mr. Schiff’s post is funny, but does not capture the true deceptiveness (and effectiveness) of Saylor’s BTC scheme.
Saylor’s scheme is a Stock Market Amplified Ponzi (SMAP) scheme. It is quite simple but terribly effective, thanks to its deceptiveness and the crowd’s propensity to fall for such deceptive schemes.
It all starts with BTC, which is already a classic Ponzi scheme in its own rights, but Saylor’s BTC scheme is far superior to any traditional Ponzi scheme, because it is a Stock Market Amplified Ponzi scheme, as outlined below:
(1) Buy BTC using a stock exchange-listed public company
(2) pump up the price of BTC
(3) use the BTC price appreciation to influence the stock market perception of the company’s performance and stock price
(4) find new funds by leveraging the boosted stock market perception (by either issuing and selling new stocks, or securing loans using the company stock as collateral)
(5) Repeat from (1).
The whole thing is based on circular logic, resulting in self-feeding repetitive cycles without a foundation in the economic reality.
One key in the above-described SMAP cycle is that Saylor’s company MicroStrategy simultaneously takes advantage of being the most prominent buyer and promoter of the BTC and the magnifying effect of the stock market perception of a public company.
While a private company seldom enjoys a P/E greater than 5, let alone 10, public companies typically enjoy a P/E over 20. In the case of MicroStrategy, the P/E ranges from 20x to 200x in 2023, depending on the mood of the stock market.
The result: A Stock Market Amplified Ponzi scheme that is at least 10 times more effective (meaning at least 10 times more harmful to the real economy) than the naked BTC Ponzi scheme (see: Is BTC a Ponzi Scheme?).
To the members of the “number go up” cult, there is nothing wrong with the above scheme. Not only that, it is something to be revered, celebrated, and even worshiped.
To people who still have a conscience unquenched, it is time to wake up if you still wish to live in a world where the corruption level does not reach total suffocation.
The economy is, by analogy, an “organism”, to which the productive business models are its very life and healthiness, while rent-seeking models are unhealthy fat. But BTC is in a different category. Sustained by Ponzi and even Stock Market Amplified Ponzi, BTC has become something much worse than unhealthy fat. It is cancer.
BTC is not digital gold. Calling it ‘gold’ doesn’t make it so. There are fundamental differences between physical gold and the so-called digital gold. See The Idea of “Digital Gold” — BTC’s Value Fundamentals“.
[Recommend my two-volume book for more reading]: