Perspective can be a useful thing. Cryptocurrencies have had a bad 24 hours.
There are hundreds of lessons in the movie. But, like most things human, we quickly forget them. Or we pretend like they couldnât happen again. Or we justify whatâs going on today as âbut itâs different this time.â
In 2000 I was co-chairman of a public company called Interliant. The company had gone public in 1999 and the market cap rose to just under $3 billion ($55 / share, up from $10 / share at the IPO). By the end of 2000, the stock price was at $13. I was on a walk at my house in Eldorado Springs with one of the VPs who asked me how low the stock could go. I canât remember the exact phrasing, but I remember it being something like âThereâs no way the stock will go below $10 / share, right?â
My response was simple. âIt could go to $0. I hope it doesnât, but it could.â
In 2002 Interliant went bankrupt and the stock went to $0.
Now, I donât have schadenfreude about cryptocurrencies going down. Like many, Iâm fascinated by them and the potential implications of both cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. I hold plenty of cryptocurrencies â either directly or indirectly in funds Iâm an investor in. So I benefit financially from them going up.
But Iâm not a trader. I never have been. I never will be. Itâs not my temperament. I donât enjoy it. I donât want to spend mental energy thinking about the gyrations of the market â any market. I donât want to make money on short-term financial trades, but rather by helping create new things over the long-term.
We all eventually die, at least for now. Some people learn from history. Some people suppress or deny it. Many people ignore it. I prefer to reflect on it and make sure the big lessons are inputs into my thinking. If you want a quick, 128-page frame of reference on this, read The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. The cliche âthe more things change, the more they stay the sameâ is a cliche because it applies to a lot of things.
My scan of my morning news feeds included Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000, BlackRockâs Message: Contribute to Society, or Risk Losing Our Support, GE Shares Dive on $6.2 Billion Charge for Problems in Its Finance Unit, and a very interesting post titled Impatience: The Pitfall Of Every Ambitious Person.
Iâll leave you with this.
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Also published on Medium.