Higher and higher and higher and higher
"I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (your love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher and higher, higher)
Alright, now sock it to me"
Recorded by Jackie Wilson, "Higher and Higher," 1967
You can't pick a market top. You see them afterwards, when it's too late.
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| Maurizio Cattelan's conceptual art piece "Comedian." |
This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of the banana and look forward to it sparking further inspiration and impact for art enthusiasts around the world.
Some things in life get pulled back to a base line or some natural equilibrium. Pendulums come to rest.
But sometimes things go crazy. A force feeds itself. We have all experienced the loud squeal of a feedback loop when a person holding a microphone stands in front of a speaker. This doubling and redoubling often comes to grief, most often in financial markets, but elsewhere, too. Social contagions are as real as financial market bubbles. We hit maximum progressive wokeness in 2019 when Democrats jockeyed to be the presidential nominee feared being thought moderate or centrist. Many Democratic candidates outdid themselves. "I'll see your medicare for all, and raise you with gender affirming surgery for illegal immigrant prisoners."
I believe MAGA support is a similar social contagion. Election denial, January 6 violence, porn star payoffs, stealing from his foundation, the E. Jean Carroll judgment Haitians eating Ohio pets, the Trump Bible grift, the golden sneakers, the Truth Social public offering, the Matt Gaetz nomination -- nothing is too much to dampen enthusiasm for Trump. At some point we will may hit maximum-MAGA and trigger a reversal in mood, but that hasn't happened yet. Crazy things can persist longer than one can afford to bet against them.
We all know about the tech stock bubble and then the mortgage bond bubble. We look back and think it was all so obvious. I think we are there again now. I think this art-piece is a signal.
Bitcoin is as imaginary and ephemeral as are Non Fungible Token images of apes. Bitcoin is a post-modern, idea, a bit of arch irony -- rather like the conceptional art piece of a banana taped to a white board. You need to "get it." This art piece is indeed a "cultural phenomenon." It makes sense among grad students and faculty in university art departments and rich people who want to be understood as being equally sophisticated. This purchase is like CRT, Critical Race Theory, in that it makes sense to the highly sophisticated person able to see the reverse-twist that shows that both sides of opposites are equally true. Get it? That is why racial discrimination isn't racial discrimination; it fixes racial discrimination. (I get it. I just don't agree with it.)
Bitcoin is limited in number and therefore has manufactured scarcity. There is only one of these pieces of art that got famous for having sold at auction for $6.2 million.
Is this purchase of the duct-taped banana going to look reasonable in a year? It might be sellable at even higher price. But I see its value as a signal to the world of maximum craziness. Somebody marks the top, like the person who made that last purchase of AOL or Cisco just before the internet bubble popped in March of 2000.
When playing musical chairs, how does one know when the wise people have already left the game and the music will soon stop? One way is to realize that the game one is playing is musical chairs.
I may well be early, but I don't think I am wrong.
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5 comments:
The guy who bought that banana is rich so he must be smart, right? Obviously, intelligence comes in many different shapes and forms. For example, there are supposedly intelligent people who actually welcome Trump’s leadership over the next four years, and perhaps Vance after that. They care more about the price of eggs than they do about our nation’s founding principles, so they joined a cult led by a compulsive liar who promises to get rid of inflation by imposing tariffs on everything. He’s been found liable for rape and fraud, and he tried to overthrow the government, but they look forward to his “leadership.” I wouldn't call that smart. In fact, after all his blatant, boldfaced lies, to still believe anything he says is sheer idiocy.
How about Trump imposing massive tariffs on our major trading partners? What could go wrong? After all Trump’s a financial genius.
Spending the fruits of your labor like this is bananas, unless you have the ability to predict the future.
Did any candidate in 2019 really say, "I'll see your medicare for all, and raise you with gender affirming surgery for illegal immigrant prisoners." Did Kamala ever say that when she was running this year?
I’m going to tape a dildo on a pink board and sell it for not less than $10 million. Too bad. I thought of it first.
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