Bitcoin’s Grand Farce: A Skeptic’s Molièrean Interlude

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Behold, dear reader, the spectacle of Bitcoin! This digital alchemist’s stone, hailed as the salvation of mankind, has ascended to heights of $115,500, where it now perches like a peacock among sparrows. Eighty-eight percent gains in a year! Four-hundred percent in three! Forty-thousand percent in a decade! One might think the coin itself were a sorcerer, or perhaps a most convincing illusionist.

Yet here we stand, at the precipice of folly, asking: Is it too late to partake in this modern-day gold rush? A question as sensible as asking if the moon is too far to dance upon. For if you believe Bitcoin’s tale, you must also believe in perpetual motion, in the philosopher’s stone, in the notion that scarcity alone can fill a man’s purse-or his head.

But let us not dismiss the coin outright. No, for Bitcoin, like a certain bourgeois gentleman, wears many hats: a store of value, a hedge against inflation, a “long-run” marvel. Its creators, with the solemnity of priests, proclaim it a bulwark against fiat’s decay. Yet one wonders if they themselves have drunk the Kool-Aid-or worse, sold it to you at a premium.

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The Miner’s Masquerade

Bitcoin’s white paper, that sacred scroll, speaks of two paths to wealth: mining and hope. The former, a farce of energy and machinery, wherein computers toil like Sisyphus to unearth 6.25 coins every ten minutes. A reward! Or is it a cruel jest? For every four years, this bounty is halved, as if nature herself mocks the greed of mortals. The fourth halving, in April 2024, reduced the feast to a meager snack. The next, in 2028, will make even the hungriest investor weep.

By 2140, when the last Bitcoin is mined, the miners shall live not on glory, but on transaction fees-like actors paid in applause. A fine fate, indeed, for those who once burned coal to light the stage.

The Miser’s Paradox

Twenty-one million coins, they say, is the limit. A tidy number, as if the universe had consulted a spreadsheet. Yet some are lost to time, swallowed by forgotten wallets, like gold buried in a desert. Thus, the supply dwindles, and the price, like a lovesick suitor, rises ever higher. Ah, the classic ploy: limit supply, stoke demand, and call it “economics.”

But tell me, good sir: If a coin is valuable because it is scarce, why not burn a few and watch the price soar? Or is this merely the theater of scarcity, where the curtain never falls?

With exchange-traded funds and institutional investors now in the crowd, Bitcoin’s farce continues. Will it end in a standing ovation-or a hissed curtain call? Only time, that most fickle of critics, shall decide.

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2025-08-06 16:32