Quote of the Day
The market is currently navigating a ‘crisis of faith’.
Shiliang Tang
Managing partner of Monarq Asset Management.
February 4, 2026
Bitcoin falls below $72,000 as market faces a ‘crisis of faith’
I have been publicly skeptical about Bitcoin for a while now:
- Existential threat to Bitcoin | April 15, 2021
- Quote of the day—Lee Reiners | May 25, 2021
- Quote of the day—Jim Rickards | June 27, 2021
- Citations needed | October 12, 2022
- Quote of the day—Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff | January 13, 2022
- Tell Me Again Why Someone Should Own Bitcoin | August 11, 2024
- Biggest Popular Delusion in World History | November 13, 2024
- Bitcoin Collapse? | November 22, 2025
And, as I mentioned in several of those posts, it is a faith-based asset without the backing of a government which accepts it for payment of taxes. The government backing of an issued currency ensures a non-zero value as long as the government exists (since they will honor as payment of taxes). Bitcoin could go to zero in the span of days or weeks. Right now, you could be watching it slide into oblivion.
If this is its end, the economic ripples will be “interesting.”
“…so long as the government exists” — true for many governments. But some have been known to disavow previously issued “money” with little or no notice. An example that comes to mind is India, where with very little notice several of the most commonly used denominations of paper money were voided, with the excuse of suppressing untaxed commerce. Somehow the government survived that little scam, but it certainly produced an uproar at the time.
There may be other examples. It clearly is possible for this sort of thing to be done.
But wasn’t there a process to convert the large bills? Most money these days are just numbers in computers anyway. Physical paper money is a very small fraction of the money used.
Bitcoin and all other “crypto currencies” are just modern day tulip bulbs. I’ve been saying for a long time – longer than I expected.
But I have yet to see anything to convince me otherwise. Oh, people **DESPERATELY** want a viable currency that isn’t controlled by a government (because of all the money printing, among other things), so that will sustain it for a time (and it’s already been quite a while…), but at the end, what use is there for “crypto currency”? It has no backing, nothing to hold it up beyond hope and faith.
People will say the same thing about fiat currency, but that is false. Government fiat currency is backed by men with guns who will come take your stuff and possibly thrown you in jail if you don’t use it to pay your taxes.
Nearly identical reasoning as yours, from what I can tell. Fun to find that.
“a faith-based asset without the backing of a government which accepts it for payment of taxes”
Virtually all forms of payment rely on the faith of people collecting it.
Try to make bail in NYC with silver rounds.
“Virtually all forms of payment rely on the faith of people collecting it.”
The only faith required in the use of government fiat currency is the faith that men with guns will come to take your stuff (and possibly you to jail) if you don’t pay your taxes with it. Everything else flows from there.
For us “little people”, that doesn’t take much faith. We’re insufficiently specific to get off with a hand slap if WE don’t pay our taxes, unlike the special people like Hunter Biden.
I’m undecided about Bitcoin. I love the concept of a fixed-supply decentralized currency, but there are several things that bother me: the bandwidth bottleneck, the lack of privacy, that it has no intrinsic value, and the waste of energy. However, I highly doubt this is anything more than a major pullback. My understanding is that BTC is being both heavily shorted and heavily adopted by major banks like JPM as a way to get in at artificially low prices before the next run-up. I expect we will see a new all time high in the near future.
And from the infamous Karl Denninger;
Of course the “bulls” will say that this is a temporarily thing and will shortly rocket higher. Uh huh.
What if it doesn’t?
Oh by the way, if you have it now how do you like the gamble with what is, at this point, close to a 50% loss thus far and what could turn into a 100% loss, given that there is no actual “thing” behind what amounts to “being paid to solve math problems.”
Sounds rather idiotic, doesn’t it?
Well, that might be because it is.”
And from yours truly.
“Bitcoin goes off with the electricity. I still have bullets and beans”