Over the weekend, the CBOE began issuing bitcoin futures contracts, meaning investors can buy options predicting the price of bitcoin will either rise or fall by a certain date, making money if they guess correctly. Before now, it was very difficult to short (or put) bitcoin in order to make money off its volatile price swings. Instead, you’d have to buy the bitcoin and hope to become the next Winklevoss, assuming you don’t get robbed first.
In the first day of bitcoin futures trading, the strike price for January contracts rose 20%, but before you run out and plunk money you can’t risk losing into bitcoin futures it should be noted that Wall Street will invest in a bubble even when they know it’s a bubble. And regular people who aren’t too big to fail usually end up taking the brunt of a downturn. It’s hard to say what bitcoin’s price will do next, considering the price was breaking symbolic barriers every few hours for a while last week. To quote the aptly-titled “Crypto Through The Tulips” piece in The Economist, “The beauty of bitcoin is that its intrinsic value is impossible to determine and that makes any value plausible to true believers.”
The beauty of bitcoin is also that it is very easy to make jokes about, and Twitter has done just that, such as jokes about the volatile prices:
A boy asked his bitcoin-investing dad for 1 bitcoin for his birthday.
Dad: What? $15,554??? $14,354 is a lot of money! What do you need $16,782 for anyway?
— Ran Neuner (@cryptomanran) December 8, 2017
Or jokes about how implausible this all seemed five years ago:
Haha, I feel sorry for all you losers who missed out on the Bitcoin train. You should've bought in years ago, like me: A perfectly normal man who coincidentally hoarded a virtual currency during a time when it's only use was for sex trafficking and purchasing organs.
— Shane (@Shanehasabeard) December 8, 2017
To be fair, people could also use it to buy drugs. “People” meaning other people, not us. Definitely not us.
Although it should be noted some people did predict a rise in bitcoin prices. MIT’s Bitcoin Club pledged to give $100 in bitcoin to every incoming MIT freshman back in 2014. $100 was about a fifth of a bitcoin then, worth about $3,200 now. Wait, $3,000 now. Wait, back up to $3,200. Wait, no, $3,100. Wait– ah, screw it.
Some people on Twitter wondered how bitcoin would work down at the club:
[opens clearly empty wallet in the club]
"Hoo boy. So many bitcoins"— Fred Delicious 🍆 (@Fred_Delicious) December 9, 2017
Try making it rain down at the club with your stupid bitcoins nerds
— Dr. Bucky Isotope, Astrologist, IQ 188 (@BuckyIsotope) December 8, 2017
Others plotted bitcoin’s destruction:
Here’s the plan: we tank the value of Bitcoins by all agreeing to start calling them Nerd Dollars
— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) December 8, 2017
Others hinted at the implications of bitcoin mining using more electricity than 150 of the world’s countries combined and possibly creatting 100 million tonnes of CO2 each year.
Bitcoin was supposed to demonstrate the power of a true free market. Instead it's full of scams, rent-seekers, theft, useless for real purchases and accelerates climate change. Mission accomplished.
— Adam Chalmers (@adam_chal) December 6, 2017
https://twitter.com/ByYourLogic/status/939032016464502784
Others just had no idea what bitcoin is:
Wow, if I had invested $1,000 in Bitcoin last week, today I would have… still no idea how Bitcoin works.
— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) December 9, 2017
John McAfee: Bitcoin now at $16,600.00. Those of you in the old school who believe this is a bubble simply have not understood the new mathematics of the Blockchain.
Gas station manager: Sure man, sure. Just … just put the gun down, and we’ll find you some pants
— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) December 8, 2017
And finally, here’s Jack Douglass with a quick overview of bitcoin as explained by a guy who doesn’t know what bitcoin is.
To the glorious future!
Join me in investing in Icarus, the digital currency that will never stop going up
— Borscht the T is silent (@InternetHippo) December 8, 2017
(Via CBOE, Quartz [1, 2, 3], NBER, The Economist, Digiconomist, The Conversation, and Laughing Squid)