Hodlers: an apology

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Regular readers of FT Alphaville may have formed the impression that its current and former writers are united in scepticism about crypto in general and bitcoin in particular. This is correct. 

FTAV posts between June 2011 and today may have communicated the idea that bitcoin is a negative-sum game being played on a protocol that’s very clever and hypothetically useful as a unit of account, but is chronically inefficient as a conventional means of exchange and is compromised as a store of value. Our posts may also have promoted the idea that the price of a bitcoin is an arbitrary hype gauge that’s disconnected from any utility the token may have, because it’s trivial to duplicate the utility provided by said token, so any intrinsic worth comes from the sunk costs of infrastructure alongside intangibles like regulatory acquiescence, interconnectedness with mainstream financial systems it was once sold as being the antidote to, and the souvenir attraction of “being the first”. 

We stand by every single one of those posts. 

Nevertheless, with bitcoin’s price recently crossing $100,000, a significant number of commenters seem to feel they deserve an apology in light of our longstanding cynicism, so here it is:

We’re sorry if at any moment in the past 14 years you chose based on our coverage not to buy a thing whose number has gone up. It’s nice when your number goes up. And we’re sorry if you misunderstood our crypto cynicism to be a declaration of support for tradfi, because we hate that too.

Further reading:
“Still Right. Still Poor” — FTAV merch shop