Recently Bitcoin has been plunging in succession into a bear market, and its current price has already fallen below my own average purchase price (while I was writing this piece it dropped 10%!). But I figure it still has another stretch of decline ahead of it, so lately probably isn’t a good time for newcomers to enter. Of course, Bitcoin’s rhythm is the rhythm of the Internet age; a so-called bear market can’t possibly last for years the way it did after the bursting of the Nasdaq or Chinese A-share bubbles. At worst it may take ten days or half a month, at most a year or so, and it will recover very quickly. I’m very calm about this~
A bear market has its own advantages: it can scare off some speculators who care nothing at all about the ideas behind Bitcoin and only want to ride the wave and make a quick killing. Those people who shout all day long about “scam, scam” ought to be satisfied and quiet down a bit too.
Although I believe in Bitcoin’s future, I must admit that Bitcoin can also fail. It may not go all the way to zero, but it could indeed become marginalized.
However, contrary to what most people imagine, whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails is not an economic problem, but a political one. Because Bitcoin is setting off a revolution for a new era, and any revolution is risky. If China’s War of Liberation had failed back then, then the early renminbi issued in the liberated areas would all have become waste paper. The same logic applies to Bitcoin: once the revolution fails and the gate to the new world does not open, Bitcoin’s value will also be depreciated—though it can always continue to exist on the margins in the form of guerrilla warfare. Bitcoin’s nature determines that it will almost never be completely wiped out, so holding Bitcoin is still far safer than holding the currency of any nascent regime.
Recently, while paying attention to news about Bitcoin, I also took note of Chinese netizens’ reactions. On some specialized Bitcoin sites, things are still all right; but on places like cnBeta, whenever a piece of Bitcoin-related news is posted, there are inevitably a whole crowd of flamers underneath, making mockery of it to the utmost.
In general, I support satire and ridicule, but that is when they are aimed at the powerful mainstream: teasing mainstream ideology from the standpoint of the lower strata or the margins is meaningful. But in reverse, when the mainstream mocks something nascent or a marginal force, that becomes much less interesting.
The ridicule of the mainstream by the margins, on the one hand, expresses opinions and attitudes; on the other, it can break prejudices and stimulate reflection. But the mainstream’s derision of the margins, apart from displaying its own arrogance and prejudice, brings no benefit or pleasure. The only advantage is that it may strengthen one’s sense of belonging and solidarity with the “mainstream.” This is just like how middle and elementary school students often band together by expressing dislike for some unpopular kid; it is also like how we always seem to need to unite by jointly looking down on outsiders or foreigners. Such cohesion is often effective, but also very unreliable.
The key point is that whether Bitcoin is a pie-in-the-sky fantasy or a far-seeing ideal, whether this conception is crazy or rational, most Chinese onlookers either pay it no heed at all or sneer at it. Even if it is a mistaken fantasy, so what? In the Scientific Revolution or political revolutions alike, what revolution that changed the world did not, at the time, contain dreams that seemed wildly unrealistic?
Speaking of dreams, I can’t help thinking of *One Piece*. Today I happened to see an article, “The Age of Bitcoin’s Great Voyages,” which stirred up some reflections. That article was not written all that well; it described the main problem Bitcoin’s navigators have to face as evading regulation. In fact, it is not like that. The adventurers of the Age of Great Voyages were not necessarily all lawless men; in fact, many of them sailed under the sponsorship of governments or royal houses. Of course, among navigators there were indeed no shortage of people who wanted to evade regulation and secretly make a few petty thefts and then flee, but such trifles were utterly insignificant compared with the opening of the new world.
The navigators were not trying to evade regulation; rather, they discovered a vast new world beyond the order of the old world. This new world needs a new order to be established.
In the new world, some explore, some seek treasure, some enclose land, some gather followers and form associations, some take a quick profit and leave, and others eventually use the resources and ideas of the new world to transform the old world in return.
To be precise, this new world was not opened up by Bitcoin; this new era is the Internet age, and the new world is the networked world. Bitcoin, then, is the sign that this new world has declared its “independence.” It symbolizes not evasion of order, but the establishment of a new order.
Chinese people, who are accustomed to focusing on immediate material interests, are the hardest to make sense of the long-term value of such spiritual things. Recently I saw an article saying that Chinese tourists, when traveling abroad, scrimp and save on everything, caring only about splashing out on big purchases. This kind of “materialist” mentality is similar in the face of Bitcoin: even if they are brought into a new world, their first reaction is not to try to understand or appreciate what is novel about it, much less to venture and explore, but to ask: what can I grab right away?
Ironically, though, Chinese people who don’t believe in Bitcoin still trust the Chinese stock market—even though it has also fallen by more than two-thirds from its peak, and has not recovered for years, people are still more willing to believe in the stock market—even though they know there are market manipulators and backroom dealings and such, they still think the stock market is safer than Bitcoin. But China’s stock market, which hardly pays dividends at all, is precisely more like a Ponzi scheme: stockholders are not expecting dividends, but expecting their profits to be ensured by a constant inflow of new investors. Isn’t this the classic Ponzi scheme model? Why is it that materialist Chinese people have not seen through the falseness of the stock market? I’m afraid it’s because behind the stock market there is the government, there are mainstream economists and financial experts, and the Chinese, who love following the big players, feel reassured only by attaching themselves to these traditional forces. But behind Bitcoin are geeks, libertarians, and anarchists—those “rebels.” Honest and proper Chinese people would rather attach themselves to the “teacher” they dislike, stay behind him as good students, than keep company with the rebels.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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