For anyone who’s been following the saga of cryptocurrency, and specifically the flagship token Bitcoin, you’ll know that the most important quality you need if you want to get involved isn’t obvious stuff—strong constitution, perseverance, tons of spare cash — but the less touted one:  a sense of humor.

Bitcoin has been a wild ride from Day One, that is, January 3, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto “mined” the initial “genesis block.” For years, the value of Bitcoin languished, a little known kinda-sorta alternative to Real Money. (Nakamoto was and is similarly unknown.)

Slowly, people cottoned on to the idea that cryptocurrency might actually be a viable alternative to fiat currency, saddled by none of the political restrictions or dangers inherent in actual money, which is subject to the whim of the powers-that-be. (Fiat = paper money made legal tender by government decree.) So a single Bitcoin went from being worth a fraction of a cent to nearly $70,000 in 12 short years — only to drop back to $18,000 a year later. Giving fresh meaning to the often-used term beloved by financiers, “volatility.”

Some Bitcoin tid-bits:

# The price of Bitcoin jumped by $5,000 in an hour in 2021 when Elon Musk publicly endorsed it on his Twitter profile.

# James Howells of Newport, Wales, would be worth nearly $400 million today if, in 2013, he hadn’t mistakenly tossed a hard drive. The drive contained the keys to the 8,000 Bitcoins he’d previously mined. Since then, he’s been trying, unsuccessfully to date, to get permission to try to recover it from the local landfill. (I’m not sure how his sense of humor is holding up.)

# Reported as good news: “The [crypto] industry lost $1.8 billion to fraud and hackers in 2023, down 51% from the $3.7 billion lost in 2022.” (“A billion here, a billion there, soon you’re talking about real money.”)

# What prompted this column was the government’s green light to 11 Bitcoin ETFs on January 10. (ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, allow investors to gamble on the future of Bitcoin without actually owning it.) In the months and weeks prior to the SEC approval, speculation ran rampant, pushing the price of Bitcoin up from around $30K to nearly 49K, with the general expectation that it would go through the roof once approval actually happened. Instead, it promptly dropped nearly 20% in value in the next few days!

# The CEOs of two of the largest financial companies on the planet, Blackrock’s Larry Fink and JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, have been decrying Bitcoin in no uncertain terms for years: “worthless”…“hyped-up fraud”…“worse than tulip bulbs,” etc. Following the legitimization of the ETFs, they’re now in cahoots, having unashamedly teamed up to trade in Bitcoin, Fink now saying, “I’m a big believer.”

Pyramid scheme or the future of money? Fraud or democratic answer to government control? Scam or opportunity? Don’t ask me, I’m as befuddled as anyone. 

But I sure love Bitcoin for its entertainment value.