I’ll Collect The Relaized Pennies, You Collect The Unrealized Pounds.

‘Keep clear of bad company’ – cautionary advice and a daily reminder espoused from my mother; however, it’s good company that is always the problem. Birds of feather, end up at after parties together - throughout the years there has always been frenzied appetite and lust for any reason not to say no. It became commonplace to be sitting in kitchens in uncharted and unexplained locations only to be told ‘you don’t have to go home, but you have to leave’ by a friend of a friend’s flat mate on his or her morning commute. However, since 2018/2019 a malicious pathogen has penetrated these suspended, once holy realms of reality and began to infect and dominate the discourse.

Let me paint the scene; take Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ (as seen above) the congregation has been reduced to the kitchen table with the remaining degenerate gremlins elbow to elbow as ears begin to singe and char. Pupils are dilating with immeasurable levels of confidence and heads full of substandard and unrealistic ideas soon become mouthfuls of overly enthusiastic and passionate words. Center stage is commanded and controlled by either (a) a Canada Goose wearing, Turkey teeth showing, tattoo sleeve bearing ‘howya’ or (b) a privately educated, Amex wielding, Ralph Lauren wearing ‘west-britt’ – both, given enough airtime will release an identical conversation ending, dialogue destroying battle cry:

‘So have you heard of the latest crypto bro?’

The advent of ‘Crypto’ dates back to 2009 and takes the form of Bitcoin - put simply: a type of digital currency that operates on a digital network (using blockchain) that records and secures all transactions. A novel and revolutionary concept that has gained gargantuan levels of popularity and value in the last five to seven years, but with such rapid exponential value and wealth creation comes specific unwavering attention from moronic hordes of self-proclaimed gurus – ‘Crypto Bros’.

Sitting amongst them feels like being cast into an abstract dyslexic episode of Countdown – ‘rekt’, ‘mooning’, ‘paper hands’, ‘hodl’, a seemingly endless task of deciphering and decrypting terminology, acronyms, abbreviations and colloquialisms. This barrage of parseltongue then envelopes itself into the ‘Crypto Bro’ asserting in a boastful and arrogant manor their (unrealized) ‘net worth’ whilst bragging about how many times they have ’10 x’d’ their investment. The monologue will continue until the dreaded and traumatic sales pitch i.e. your necessary and required recruitment to artificially prop up the latest unserviceable and impractical meme coin protocol ponsi-scheme. If you are so blessed to be included in the tirade, it will be in the form of direct interrogation and questioning: ‘What are you holding?’, ‘What is your portfolio spread?’, ‘What L2’s you in on?’, ’Have you heard of the new (insert inanimate object) Coin?’. As they ooze nauseating levels of capitalistic rhetoric you realize that this ‘after party’ you had sacrificed your Sunday and indeed your productivity for the first half of the week for has turned into an unhinged seemingly endless Ted Talk.

Is this irritating, parasitic virus a new phenomenon or just a reincarnation of some prior deity/being? Well, twenty years prior, when fifty chomps were a fiver and ten freddos were a euro, the same archetype was slinging half-built holiday homes on the coast of Bulgaria claiming; ‘The Black Sea is the place to be’ or selling unstable, poorly engineered glass conservatories to harness Carlow’s renowned Mediterranean climate. It’s a chronic condition and disorder of man to equate unrealized, potential, on paper financial gains as cash in hand - I reckon the over-leveraged developers and illiquid banks of 2008 didn’t have a plan to ‘cash out‘ either.

Look, I’m aware ‘Crypto Bros’ are a sensitive bunch - but go sow your financial oats and reap the cryptocurrency crop you deserve just keep the digital currency porridge away from the after-party table.

Don’t think less of yourselves just think of yourself less.

PS: An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

** This is information – not financial advice or recommendation **