Fuck AI

I wish I knew.

The blockchain bubble has kinda burst. But not exactly in the way I would have predicted.

I say it's "burst" is because nobody's talking about it. (Mercifully.) It's not in everyone's face like it was.

I say "kinda" because Bitcoin's still worth like $80,000 USD per coin or something? (Ok, I'll check... holy shit it's more like $85,000.)

My prediction would have been that people would figure out Tether wasn't really backed 1-to-1 and then the value of Tether would go to zero, bringing the rest of the blockchain ecosystem to zero with it. (And I suppose it's possible that'll still happen. But that apparently wasn't necessary to bring down the hype.)

But also, the blockchain bubble is no longer the hot kid on the block because the AI bubble has taken its place. In a way (actually in more than one way) the AI bubble is just a continuation/pivot of the blockchain bubble. So, maybe it's even arguable that the the blockchain bubble hasn't yet popped, it just "changed color".

So, I'm reticent to make any predictions except that probably the burst will come when we least expect it and in a form different from what we might expect as well.

Ed Zitron at one time was predicting... I think it was before the end of 2027? But I think he's kindof changed his tune and stopped predicting any particular timeline for the collapse. (He kinda predicted that people would "wisen up", but he's admitted more recently that he was wrong to bet on people waking up and seeing what's really going on. Which kinda tracks if you think about how things went in The Big Short during the time when mortgage defaults were going up but the rate of the housing bonds was also going up.) David Gerard has more recently said "probably sometime next year". So maybe then?

There are also some signs of things weakening. The whole "Project Jupiter" thing with Oracle and the force majeure could be a harbinger (I hope).

I really want to believe the collapse is imminent, but unfortunately I don't think anyone really knows how imminent it is. I do believe it has to collapse at some point, but unfortunately, some historical bubbles have persisted for surprisingly long times. :\

That said, I watch Ed and Gerard and everyone else predicting an imminent collapse like it's crack. Because it makes me feel better about the state of the world. I freely admit it's absolute hopium.