The crypto market has plunged again, erasing more than $1.2 trillion from cryptocurrencies’ market value in roughly six weeks.
Bitcoin has fallen back to levels last seen in April, briefly dipping below $90,000 and shedding about a third of its value from the October high.
The key to understanding crypto is that it has no intrinsic value.
It generates no income, commands no productive capacity and pays no dividends.
Unlike sovereign money, it is not backed by a tax base or government authority.
What props up its price is not cashflow but expectation: the hope that someone else will validate today’s valuation tomorrow.
When sentiment turns sour or money exits, there is nothing to halt the fall.
Prices don’t correct; they collapse.
In 2023, UK lawmakers argued that cryptocurrency trading should be regulated as gambling—a stance rejected by the government at the time.
The volatility of cryptocurrencies is not accidental but structural.
The Financial Times reported investors pulled out of crypto amid a global retreat from speculative assets amid concerns about sky-high AI valuations and the path of US interest rates.
But while the crash is global, Britain is uniquely vulnerable to its fallout.
No other large economy has hollowed out social mobility while selling the myth of entrepreneurial escape to its young, and Britons are more likely to own crypto than many Europeans.
Regulators warn that too many young Britons are taking on debt to chase crypto profits, seeking a quick windfall.
The UK has become, in effect, a one-shot society—a place where stagnant wages and unaffordable housing leave millions clutching at any chance, however illusory, to escape.
The piece notes Eminem’s Lose Yourself as a metaphor for this mindset, with crypto marketed as that “one moment” to seize everything.
It is in many ways the clearest symbol of an economic system running out of road: a promise of freedom built on an asset class whose standing depends on decisions made in Washington.
Cryptocurrencies move with the Nasdaq and are tied to the dollar system’s unseen plumbing, with values shaped by policy choices in Washington.
The current crisis has been viewed as an opportunity by the political right.
They promote crypto as rebellious empowerment.
Having once dismissed bitcoin as “based on thin air”, Donald Trump now embraces the role of “crypto president.”
Under Mr. Trump, crypto is portrayed as a tool of patronage, deregulation and self-enrichment unprecedented in modern US politics.
Biden’s attempts to regulate crypto businesses—aimed at curbing fraud and money laundering—have faced resistance.
Those on the right of politics who seek power, whether in Argentina or Britain, now champion crypto aggressively.
It lets them pose as the insurgent alternative to a “rigged” system—accepting donations in anonymous digital payments to prove the point—while drawing closer to Mr. Trump.
Crypto is not the end of politics in money; it is a fresh mechanism for the powerful to profit from the powerless.
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