Listen To This Episode:
In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Fed Watch,” Christian Keroles and Ansel Lindner discussed the recent events around r/wallstreetbets (WSB) and GameStop from a macro perspective.
They spent some time setting up the history and what transpired, before diving into the meanings and implications of what happened. They tried to answer the questions, “What is the goal of WSB?" and "Were they successful?”
Keroles placed the WSB phenomenon in the context of being upset at the system. So, from the angle of the people. While Lindner set the WSB events in the same context as the U.S. Capitol protest from a couple of weeks ago, as commentary on the system itself. Both of these takes exposed a weakness of U.S. institutions while government the overreach, the action/reaction by the government and financial authorities over the last month were typical of people acting scared or threatened. They were definitely not the reactions of people who are confident in their role or authority.
Although "Fed Watch" leans toward being a U.S.-only show, many places around the world are seeing events in the same vein as those in the U.S. It is all a symptom of the Fourth Turning.
The hosts also discussed the significance of the Elon Musk Twitter bio change to the single word, “bitcoin.” Keroles believes it is a bullish sign of the mind virus spreading, while Lindner took a slightly different angle. The fact that bitcoin pumped 20 percent in an hour, and then dropped to the same amount in the next six hours or so proved how far bitcoin still has to go. Of course, bitcoin is volatile and that is a selling point at this time in its history, as Keroles rightly pointed out, but the volatility does mean bitcoin is not ready for the big leagues quite yet.
Lastly, they discussed their thoughts on WSB’s shift to silver as a way to keep up the pressure on the system. Silver is a much bigger target than GameStop. GameStop was one of the most shorted stocks for a reason, while silver is a very big, established market. The chatter over the weekend resulted in a 10 percent jump in the futures prices on Monday, remaining in its long-term trading range, and a quick reversal back to prices seen last Friday. It seems that, for the time being, all there was were rumors that the silver market was simply too big to manipulate.
Bitcoin’s market is very robust and resistant to price manipulation. That might be generous, but at least bitcoin is no stranger to it, and will give any manipulator a rude awakening if they try to mess with the honey badger of money.