The financial space is a juicy island ruled by a few to serve their own interests, tightly controlled to stay as is. That we already know, and it is more or less commonly accepted, even though we don't see or acknowledge the mechanisms that are used to keep it this way.
What the Reddit community r/wallstreetbets (WSB) achieved last week was truly brilliant. It coordinated a myriad of actions from the "little guys" to overturn the “big guys'” investment strategies. The fact that its members made money or that hedge funds lost some is beyond the point. What's exhilarating to see is the fact that coordinated action can have huge systemic effects, even in the kingdom of crony capitalism, Wall Street.
Moreover, their action was so imprévisible that after that big punch to the face of the Boardroom Cartel, the overlords of Wall Streets felt so cornered they had to immediately react with the most despicable and yet normally hidden tactic: more control, more manipulation, more coercion, more corruption. But this time they acted under the spotlight, in plain sight, and everyone paying attention was a witness to the completely unfair advantage they have over everyone else in this game: they do whatever they want to push things in the direction that fits their needs.
As a reminder, some hedge funds decided to short the GameStop stock, but WSB members coordinated their action to long the price and pushed the market up as much as to push the hedge funds' positions to liquidation, pushing the price even higher. As a result of the market going in the "wrong" direction (i.e., hedge funds not making money), Robinhood was forced (by whom?) to close access to trading the GameStop stock. (About half of Robinhood users had a position on GameStop.) Now these users can only sell their positions to push the market back down again. That's how far flagrant manipulation can go to keep the hedge funds' "investment strategies" in the green.
WSB did manage to expose the systemic corruption of the financial and monetary system.
But even though WSB won a battle, it’s still fighting an uphill war. As we have seen, Wall Street has enough versatility and ammunition to fight back and to crush this upheaval in the long run. As long as the little guy uses the same weapons as the big guys, and continues to fight on his masters' battlefield, like the heavily-regulated financial markets, he doesn't stand a chance.
This series of events have been eye-opening, both to the fact that coordinated action can compete with powerful cartels, and to the fact that the money game we all play is completely rigged.
For so long, the promoted motto has been to try and win the game, but we now understand the game itself has to be overthrown for it to be replaced with another, more fair and open game.
This saga attracted the Bitcoiners' attention and sympathy toward the effects of WSB’s coordinated actions. They also shared the amertume of playing a rigged game and being openly cheated by the consequences of government-imposed, unsound money and systemic corruption.
Bitcoin is a serious contender in this rigged game of fiat money and market manipulation. It proposes a new set of monetary rules, this time engraved in widely-distributed code, to get back power that has been concentrated in the hands of governments and corporations and put it back in the hand of every little guy to build a truly open market.
I can already feel the Bitcoin submarine reaching the surface to welcome the WSB community, and I hope we can all share some knowledge on how to create a better game together.
Maybe some of them will get onboard…
This is a guest post by Arkantos. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.