English
New Delhi, March 4th, 2017 - I am in the garden of the Royal Plaza hotel, sitting next to the table of a group of Indians, probably Hindus, two women in colorful saris and two men, all of them in their fifties. They are checking me out, I catch them doing it a few times. A Romanian manea, with heavy Indian influences starts playing from the speakers, I am surprised, I start laughing.
- Do you like our music?!
He's dark skinned, with a Domenico Modugno-style mustache, the backs of our seats are touching.
- Yes, but the song wasn't made in India, but in Romania. Did you think it was one of yours?
He nods. He turns around and translates what I said to the others.
- You are from Romania?
- Yes. I understand the lyrics: "Money is just pieces of paper that changes people / I've been poor, but I am rich and money hasn't changed me / I was and am staying the same, with decency / Beggar or lord, I'll stay the same..."
- Nice. Is Romania next to Russia?
- Yes.
- What do you do?
- I am a journalist. You?
- I have a factory, I am manufacturing monumental gates. Look, just like the gate of the hotel, like this.
- It's complicated. Hard business.
- Yes. I am selling it, I don't want the plant anymore.
- And what are you going to do?
- Bitcoin trading.
- Say what?!
- Do you know what Bitcoin is?
- Yes, I've heard. Bitcoin is "The nothing". Do you sell your plant to trade "nothing"?!
- In a transaction, it's not the merchandise that's important, but making money. And for it to be easy.
- I am a financial journalist. The bitcoin market is a Ponzi scheme. My advice is to stick to monumental gates. Don't do it!
He turns to the others, I think he is recounting them our conversation.
One of the women, probably his wife, frowns, he tells her something in response.
They laugh.
The song has long since ended.
I've finished my coffee.
We take pictures together.
We say goodbye to each other.
Bucharest, April 6th, 2018 - Bloomberg announces that the 26 billion dollars hedge fund of the Soros family intends to trade the cryptocurrency market, a piece of news which was reported by news agencies and the rest of the mass-media, saying that Adam Fisher, the macroinvestment manager of the Soros Fund Management company, headquartered in New York, has received the internal approval to conduct virtual currency transactions and that the on principle approval was granted a few months ago, but for now it has not made any trades.
The companies also mention that just on January 25th, in the Davos forum, George Soros said that bitcoin was not a currency, but a bubble: "Cryptocurrency is a wrong name and it is a typical bubble that always depends on a sort of misunderstanding. Bitcoin is not a currency, because a currency ought to be a stable currency deposit, and a currency that can fluctuate 25% in one day cannot be used, for instance, for the payment of wages, because wages would drop 25% in a day."
On the other hand, in the same speech, Soros said that blockchain technology (the database of the cryptocurrency transactions, fully accessible to the public), even though it is mainly used for evading taxes allowing dictators to hide their nest eggs abroad, it can also be used for positive purposes; the speculator said that "the Soros Open Society Foundation" uses the blockchain technology to reduce the global refugee crisis, using it to allow migrants to communicate with their families and keeping their savings safe (even though he didn't explain how he does the latter, without converting their savings to bitcoin).
One day earlier, Indian Naval Ravikant (look, another Indian!), cofounder of internet company "AngelList", had posted on his Facebook page: "Bitcoin is an instrument to free humanity from oligarchs and tyrants, dressed up as a get-rich-quick scheme."
Bucharest, April 8th 2018
- the NewsBTC website, focused on the issue of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, announces that:
1. Rothschild - "this family which is particularly known for its ties to banks and other financial institutions" - which you wouldn't expect to be looking towards bitcoin, seems to have been active in cryptocurrency transactions, since 2017, through Bitcoin Investment Trust;
2. Co Flock, the company created by Bhavin Turakhia (many Indians in my article) which makes collaboration and communications programs, is willing to enter the cryptocurrency market.
- "Fortune" publishes an article given by David Pakman, a partner of Venrock (investment fund of the Rockefeller family), in which he said that the firm in question was willing to enter the cryptocurrency market.
Bucharest, April 9th, 2018 - I checked on the bitcoin market today.
The day I listened to (for the first time in my life) "Money is just paper that changes people", bitcoin was valued at 1,267.68 dollars and came one year after its value had tripled (January 11th, 2016 - 409.95$), and so it was natural that he would charm my Domenico Modugno from India, but the explosive rise of the next months drove everybody crazy: on June 5th, one Bitcoin had nearly doubled again, being valued at 2,851.07 dollars, on August 28th, it had risen to 4,672,83$, and on December 11th it reached 17,549.67$, and then to peak at 19,000$.
Somebody collected the difference from 1,000$, to 19,000$.
It was a glorious peak, and then it started dropping, but one year after the discussion in the garden of the Royal Plaza hotel, on March 19th 2018, bitcoin was still about eight times more expensive (8,717.55$).
I don't know what the Indian did, I don't think he listened to me, I think he bought bitcoin and he made a killing, if he got out on time.
Let's say that he sold his plant, let's say he got 500,000$ for it, let's say he spent all that on bitcoin on June 5th, and that he was smart enough to sell on December 11th (he didn't wait greedily to sell at over 19,000$, but at 17,500); it follows that he multiplied the initial amount six times, to 3 million dollars.
That was in the past.
Currently, the bitcoin market has experienced the hangover after the euphoria, going down to 6,500$.
The news that Soros would invest in bitcoin has raised the price from the low of 6,540.21$, of April 6th 2018, to 6,842.89$, on April 7th, and on the next day, April 8th, it continued to rise to 6,950.22$, to get new boosts from Rothschild and Rockefeller. On April 9th it rose to 7,170.60 and crashed again to 6,685.56, at 17:00 from Bucharest.
For me, the fact some people win in the Ponzi scheme doesn't make it anything else than what it is - a pyramid scheme, to hoover the money from the bottom of the pyramid, to the top.
The first ones in win.
They are few.
The hysteria of the tulip bulbs, which started in Holland in the year 1635, has provided impressive gains to some and led to a huge volume of speculations until 1637, when the burst of the speculative bubble caused huge losses (there were cases where a tulip bulb was valued at 5 hectares of land).
Bitcoin is one such craze.
Soros, Rothschild, Rockefeller know it's a fad and they're feeding it.
They are ahead of the line or they know how to do that if needed.
The most disturbing suspicion is that behind the speculations with bitcoin is the State itself - the states that are overindebted have come up with a way to vacuum more money from their citizens. That is another scenario.
When all is said and done, bitcoin is a caricature of the currencies broken away from the gold standard, which have completely no connection to the production of goods.
The cryptocurrency market is nothing but a farce.
But you could win, and you could lose, by investing in this farce.
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