$TRUMP!

The great Dutch tulip craze lasted from 1634-1637; it remains one of the most famous market bubbles and crashes of all time. It occurred in Holland from 1634 to 1637 when speculation drove the value of tulip bulbs  to extremes and even today endures as a parable for the pitfalls of excessive greed and speculation in investing. Until crypto!

The start of crypto currency as a popular phenomenon is usually marked by the appearance of Bitcoin  whose inception can be traced to a white paper published in 2008 by an individual or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto. It detailed the concept of a decentralized digital currency that could be sent directly from one party to another without needing a financial intermediary. Banks of computers, a.k.a. the blockchain, keep track.

President Trump clearly views his presidency as his, a make-it-as-you-can extension of his multifarious business interests. It need not surprise anyone that barely behind the Resolute desk, he announced a new cryptocurrency, $Trump, and is touting a new government program to buy and stockpile billions of dollars in Bitcoin, the most recognizable crypto currency. This initiative will neither draw the eye nor straight-arm of Herr Musk who is otherwise cutting and slashing apace.

Bitcoin has gone from zero dollar value in 2009 when it was introduced, and over the next decade plus tanked more than once, rebounded and now one Bitcoin trades past $105,000. The US Federal Reserve says US banks can serve crypto clients. Unlike most Americans, Trump is a sophisticated player who fully understands that unlike traditional forms of money, Bitcoin isn't backed by  physical assets or government policies. Instead, it's backed by a novel system that uses decentralization, incentives, an enormous output of energy and heat - and cryptography.

Does any of this matter? In what has already become the louche world of Washington in the first two weeks of the Trump regime, a world capital now dominated by a morally corrupt, convicted felon, apparently not. The media has had almost nothing more to say. Given all of Trumps’s other transgressions, fatigue already set in. We have four years to go. The Dems are limp with exhaustion, doubt and not (yet) a single mensch in sight.