By now, you’ve probably heard about Bitcoin, the fake internet Monopoly money that’s using more electricity than Africa. Its sudden surge in price, which is totally not a bubble even though it looks exactly like every other bubble in history, has brought it to mainstream attention, and even popular TV shows like The Big Bang Theory have done episodes about it.
You know who really likes Bitcoin, though? Nazis. It kind of makes sense if you watched them adopt it in real time on social media, which I did, so let me explain. For a not-that-small contingent of internet users, their main hobby is watching Facebook and Twitter to see if people they don’t like do anything they can report to social media networks and, more importantly, payment processors like PayPal and Patreon. And it turns out that, like Papa John’s, payment processors don’t want Nazis to use their services.
But Bitcoin can’t kick Nazis out, because it’s based on the blockchain, which is… I don’t even know. I’ve read a lot about the blockchain, and no one actually seems to be able to explain what it is. We could ask the guy who invented Bitcoin, but no one knows who he is, either. Which seems like a good idea for a system billions of dollars are invested in. It’s basically Napster for drug dealers and hookers. Remember Napster? It’s like that, but instead of downloading ‘Tubthumping,” you put your life savings in it and hope everything works out for the best.
So in a massive win for everyone, we took away the PayPal and Patreon accounts of Nazis! Yay us, job well done. With basically no alternative to do e-commerce, they turned to Bitcoin. You know, just before it hit its inflationary period. So Nazis all bought Bitcoin when one imaginary internet coin was worth $4000 US. Then they went up to $20,000. Now they’re at $13,000, which still means all those Nazis tripled their money. You think maybe we should have just let them have a PayPal account?
Of course, it’s not all bad news, as the Washington Post reports.
Also unaffiliated with the far right yet profiting handsomely is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who tweeted in October that U.S. political pressure on traditional payment processors such as credit card companies to stop handling transactions for the site “caused us to invest in bitcoin — with > 50000% return.” In a dig at policymakers who pressured the companies, Assange expressed his “deepest thanks.”
I can never keep it straight if WikiLeaks is good or bad. I know it was good when it leaked all the bad stuff Bush did, then bad when it leaked all the bad stuff Obama did, but I’m not sure where we’ve landed again yet. It’s really weird how that works. Is there any other good news in this “Nazis get rich from fake money” story?
Spencer, however, said he did not begin buying bitcoin when he touted it in the March tweet. In recent months, though, he has set up several accounts to raise money for various sites and causes.
“I really wish I had bought more bitcoin,” Spencer said. “I guess we all do.”
Richard Spencer didn’t invest in Bitcoin, but now he’s putting his money in it just as everyone is realizing the bubble is about to burst. That’s amazing. I hope he loses his shirt. Hey, how about a musical interlude?
Boy, that really hits the spot. I want to pour that video over pancakes and serve it for brunch.
[Image: Anthony Crider]