I'm resurrecting this very tired thread to point out that we are no longer hearing very much about crypto in the media. At least I'm not. And we're not even talking about it on this thread anymore. It's like a fad that has suddenly passed.
One would think low media coverage would correspond with a period of disappointing returns, but GBTC's year to date performance has been 142% and ETHE has returned 138%! Plus, you have the juicy trials of SBF and the spectacle of Coinbase/Binance fending off investigations while insisting everything is fine. You'd think the media would be all over it.
Thoughts:
1) These contradictory pieces of information - less interest and rising prices - contradict any narrative that bitcoin is a media-driven fad, and suggest a disconnect between crypto prices and media coverage. Price influences may only include artificial manipulation (e.g. self-selling to boost prices) and criminal demand.
2) The demise of Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank, on the heels of the FTX collapse, seems not to have meaningfully dented the rise of bitcoin prices. Of course, it's debatable whether any of these prices are real or manipulated, but they are what they are. But basically we can see the prices are not dependent upon linkages to financial institutions. Such institutions just got dynamited and crypto rose despite it.
3) For people hunkering down in treasuries and CDs amid relentless rate hikes and recession expectations, maybe these "assets" now represent a leveraged call option on a soft landing or risk appetites returning. Because of the correlation to stock returns, a small long investment in GBTC or ETHE could offset the risk that a new bull market leaves the bears in the dust.
4) I recently watched
a video where it was explained that Twitter advertisers could pay 10x more to advertise in a way that prevents their ads from appearing next to objectionable content. Almost all blue-chip brands prefer to pay the higher price. Crypto content is so scammy that few corporate advertisers will touch it. So scammy advertisers are the only ones placing highly discounted ads next to crypto content. This observation may reflect a drying-up of the ad ecosystem for crypto promoters. If the ad money has dried up, and if the platforms are prioritizing content that can attract reputationally-aware advertisers willing to pay top dollar, then maybe the crypto pumpers are off to the next thing. As the overall crypto noise on social media has declined, the corporate media noise has declined too, because they mostly report what people are talking about on social media. Also, every media company is trying to avoid becoming the ghetto of advertising, where sketchy content targeting broke idiots is accompanied by sketchy ads sold at a loss. This is the explanation for why Twitter lost half its ad revenue; Musk's free-speech absolutism turned it into a swampland where corporate reputations fear to tread - i.e. another 4-chan. As other media companies learned from Twitter's mistake, they cut or demoted their own crypto content. So maybe the crypto bros are very excited but they can no longer get their posts and videos in front of a large audience.
