Why?

If you were delusional enough to buy Bitcoin in March for $47,000 you’ve lost 66% in eight months. Ouch. Of course, if you’d jumped into the hype four months earlier, one unit would have cost $64,000. So today you’d be licking a 75% wound. All numbers are in real dollars – greenbacks.

Crypto is a sham now unravelling in a spectacular fashion with more to come. FTX circled the drain in the last couple of weeks. It’s high-flying, curly-mopped, 30-something, globe-trotting founder’s fortune went from $16 billion to zero in a day. That’s a record. As we noted here last week, the dude took a boatload of Ontario Teacher Pension Plan cash down with him.

How could smart professional pension plan managers be dumb enough to tie the retirement assets of their clients to such a make-believe donkey? Do they not have a fiduciary duty?

Let’s see how regulators respond. But this should make everybody with a pension plan they thought was stable, boring and godly have a look at assets held. Some of these wokey fund cowboys are clearly out of control.

And now it gets worse. The next domino to fall will be BlockFi.

This crypto lender was bailed out by FTX a few months ago, and now its lifeline has snapped as the exchange goes paws-up. Last week BlockFi stopped giving clients their money back while refusing new deposits. The lights are about to go out entirely – yet another crypto crash (like Celsius Network and Voager Digital).

The funny-money crypto kiddos thought BlockFi would compete with the traditional (regulated, trusted) banks, but it hit the wall months ago when token Luna went to zero and $55 billion disappeared. FTX stepped in, and now that is ending in tears. Dead end. Finito. Apparently you can’t construct a viable business model when your core assets have been, well, made up. Backed by nothing. Dust.

And how about those hot, hot, hot Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that smart people were snapping up last Spring (when we told you to stay away)? Well, in the wake if the FTX implosion, they’re now down in value by 82%.

None of this ends well.

Here’s what crusty veteran trader Ed Pennock had to say today:

Crypto is Imploding. The Crypto Lender BlockFi is reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy. This environment has Institutions putting on the brakes. Distance from a problem is important to them reputationally. Deniability is even better. The question today is “What is Tether”? Some will sell. Some will halt acquisition. No one will add.  What do you tell your clients? We lost your money in an unregulated, unproven, misunderstood supposed currency in the midst of massive fraud. No FDIC. No FTC. No SEC.  How does one answer the question, why?

By the way, Gemini and Genesis have both just suspended redemptions. The billionaire Winklevoss twins are fading faster than a Liz Truss lettuce. The FTX fallout is sweeping through an industry which is beyond fragile, massively susceptible to fraud and manipulation and will erase hundreds of billions in the coming weeks and months. Crypto never was investing, but always gambling.

This day was inevitable. One of the greatest Ponzi schemes ever is coming to an inglorious end. What on earth was Pierre Poilievre thinking?

About the picture: “Here is Casper,” writes Maureen, “a senior, dignified gentleman we found as a stray kitten.  He had been hanging around our local hospital emergency ward for days.  One day he followed our neighbour home, one of the emergency ward nurses, and we took him in immediately.”