Vibe Shifts

London's Tottenham Court Road area used to be shabby. It was artsy, intellectual, and delightfully dirty — both unclean and unsavoury. A young man could lose himself in music and books by day, drink by night, and have chlamydia in the morning. It's quite plush now. You can actually fit passengers into the rebuilt tube station, and you get coffee in clean cups. As an older man, I prefer it this way.

But I'll never forget a bar in Needle Alley, so nicknamed for the number of used syringes that had littered it during the Nineties. By the Noughties, the needle problem was gone and somebody enterprising opened a massive bar, presumably with cheap rates. The clientele started as gay women, grew to include gay men, and eventually became anyone who wanted a good time. By midnight, we were all too intoxicated to care about anyone's sexual preferences, so it became something rare for its day — a bar without anyone hooking up. We just talked, danced, drank, and lived in the moment. Not long after, the vibe shifted, and the bar turned into something generic. Bulldozed, now, to make way for the new station.

Everything changes, particularly vibes. Just ask anyone glued to their screen watching the price of crypto. I have friends who have been doing this for years, and they're ageing faster than they ought to. Besides some trading in illicit goods, crypto's price is driven by how much people want to buy it or dump it. It has no other value, just vibes. A dear buddy always attests that the underlying blockchain technology is revolutionary. Having the ability to understand the mathematics of it, I agree — it's breathtaking. But blockchain isn't proving to be worth anything on its own.

To cut a technical story into real life, when you make an agreement — buying a house, signing a contract, accepting a EULA — you take on liability for it. Our social, political, economic, and legal systems are built around that liability, a state of affairs centuries in the making. The simple principle that if an agreement goes tits-up, somebody can be blamed — and sued or imprisoned — is the founding principle of Western civilization. The major reason I pay accountants and lawyers isn't because I have complex finances or nuanced legal issues, but because I want to pass liability onto them.

Blockchain outsources agreements to technology — no liability needed — on the principle that it's mathematically impossible to break a blockchain agreement. Everybody rejects blockchain on the principle that there’s no one to sue should an agreement be broken. The logical flaw is irrelevant. Most people can understand handshakes, signatures and courtrooms, but you need mathematical training to understand blockchain. It's widespread adoption — as the revolutionary technology it could be — is a very steep hill to climb.

As digital investments, however, adoption of crypto is smooth. There is an enormous industry built on vibe investing — evidenced by the number, and value, of online trading platforms. These platforms deluge users with information and charts of asset prices, YouTubers constantly offer nonsense advice on how to interpret this data, and, naturally, AI can do it all for you. The platforms make money by charging trading fees whether users win or lose; the YouTubers make money per view; and as a paraphrased Warren Buffett put it, 'You get the same result if you turn the charts upside down' — i.e. randomness. Slotting crypto into this legalized scam was a no-brainer.

I couldn't help noticing that a crypto trading platform sponsored Trump's recent birthday parade. If you can call it that. This follows the President releasing his own cryptocurrency.

Last century, the entire Western World agreed to make the US dollar its reserve currency. To make it the linchpin of a massive shared economy. Everything in the liberal order thus hinges on the greenback remaining dominant, secure, and unchallenged. Frankly, the dollar is more important to my British bank balance than the pound is. One person on Earth is supposed to champion this status quo more than any other — the President of the United States. The current one is actively competing against it.

It’s time we embraced the Euro.