Balaji is Wrong
There’s this popular saying amongst Tech Twitter nerds which was first coined by @Conaw, the Roam Research founder.
Balaji is referring to Balaji Srinivasan. Here’s a paragraph of Balaji’s wikipedia page.
Balaji S. Srinivasan (born May 24, 1980)[1] is an American entrepreneur and investor. He was the co-founder of Counsyl, the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Coinbase, and former general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.[2]
Pretty cool.
Although already well known amongst the Tech Twitter community for his predictions about the future of tech and American politics, he gained tech twitter superstardom due to his Covid-19 prediction extremely early on during the pandemic.
Now his new prediction is that Bitcoin will reach $1 Million in the next 90 days (83 days when this is published).
People might be captivated by the bet amount but that doesn’t matter that much in this scenario. Balaji has made 9 figs or maybe even 10 figs throughout his career. Betting $1 million for him is like the median American betting $200 on the superbowl.
It’s a publicity stunt to get his message across that he believes that hyperinflation of the US dollar is going to happen very quickly and that the only escape is through digital gold AKA Bitcoin.
In the US, Gold has been defeated before by Executive Order 6102 under FDR in 1933 and it was only freely allowed to be owned and traded in 1975.
While Bitcoin could be hit by similar laws, its a lot harder to control when all you need to do is memorise 12 words in your head to have access to billions of dollars.
Balaji says to get Bitcoin out of exchanges. Obviously predicting that exchanges are not going to be able to function in this hyper inflationary time period. Whether that is due to more regulations on crypto firms or these companies just breaking down under financial collapse. To be fair, we have seen crypto companies tumble under much more favourable conditions last year and you should have learnt your lesson from 2022.
The reason people are taking this seriously is because Balaji doesn’t make these types of comments on the price/valuation of stocks or crypto or startups ever.
This is the first time he has done so and he says it is to alert people to get their money off of banks and into Bitcoin.
It needs to be noted that he says he has 99% of his money in Bitcoin so he’s going to be ‘slightly’ biased.
You can read about his hyperinflation thesis and the reasons through his tweets. I am not here to debate his points about the failure of the Federal Reserve, Interest Rate Hikes, US Treasuries, FED Balance sheet etc.
Anyways as mentioned in my previous post, the US Government is obviously trying to limit money going into crypto and cracking down on crypto companies through Operation Chokepoint 2.0. So Balaji is advocating for people to escape the clutches of the ‘evil’ American banks through Bitcoin and self custodying it like Lord Satoshi intended it to be.
Also the title of this post is kinda misleading, I don’t think he is completely wrong about his prediction of high inflation to support the bank collapses caused by the Fed but $1 Million Bitcoin in 90 days? Hyperinflation of the US dollar? Absolute destruction of the American financial system? American Civil War 2?
If that were to happen, there would be a lot more issues to deal with than just losing all your purchasing power. Wealth preservation is the last thing you care about during an actual crisis. You need to prioritise items for survival. The number of Bitcoins you have on a blockchain definitely won’t be your number one priority.
If I were Balaji and actually believed that I would be in a remote mountain bunker (Probably Alaska or Switzerland or New Zealand or Siberia or Greenland or Antarctica) powered by solar energy with large food, water supplies that can last years and lots of weapons preparing for worst case scenarios.
He gave his talk about this topic a week ago at a private meeting with a bunch of Tech and Crypto people here in Singapore. Apparently the vibes there were not great. Turns out people don’t like to hear someone talking about the century and a half old global superpower collapse due to total economic destruction in the coming weeks. He also said this will be the event that defines the 21st Century in America (more than 9/11, more than 2008, more than Covid etc).
He then went on to talk about how the US Federal Reserve is launching their Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) through FedNow. It is expected to launch in May or July of 2023. That’s one of the reasons he made the prediction timeline 90 days instead of longer like a rational predictooor would.
Here’s a fun post I wrote about CBDCs at the start of 2023
Also I’m obviously not an expert on this topic but if you wanted to hedge against being wrong (i.e. Balaji was right), could just buy some Bitcoin, throw into a hardware wallet in the wild case that his prediction does end up coming true.
Or you could wait and see what happens. Maybe Balaji’s hyperinflation idea becomes more clear with more information coming from the FED and Bitcoin (and other stuff like Gold, Silver etc) skyrocketing out of nowhere.
Or maybe it just stays the same and even drops below 20k for fun and Balaji was wrong.
Or maybe Balaji’s Covid prediction was his Micheal J Burry 2008 Global Financial Crisis prediction moment and it’s all downhill from then on.
Or maybe he lost his mind due to some mental illness (i doubt this btw)
Who knows. Have fun. Stack Sats if you are into that sort of stuff. Stay safe from small US banks. Diversify your portfolio to not get spooked etc etc. I really really hope Balaji is completely wrong but if it does end up happening at least it will be ‘fun’ reading about this chapter in history books.