We seem to be on the precipice of something. Whether it’s a Chaka Khan (featuring Rufus) “Tell Me Something Good” moment — I’m more of a “Feel for You” guy, but you do you — or the complete collapse of the economy as we know it remains to be seen. But it is rather absurd. Everywhere. How absurd? Let us count the ways.
‘Bitcoin Fixes This’ Unless Your Poster Child Goes to the Big House for Fraud
Any time there’s something…anything…remotely goofy happening out there in financial circles, there’s always that rallying cry: “Bitcoin Fixes This.”
Which is all well and good except when you create a poster child/Muppet character who creates $26 Billion of personal wealth through a combination of fraud, abuse, malfeasance, and puppetry. Note that the Sam Bankman-Fried fraud, abuse, malfeasance, and puppetry case took about 3 hours for the jury to reach a unanimous guilty verdict. Which likely means he did a lot wrong while taking FTX to stratospheric heights and then watching it almost as quickly go down in a ball of flames due, again, to his fraud, abuse, malfeasance, and puppetry.
We feel for you, Sam. But we do not think we love you.
The most absurd thing about L’Affaire FTX is how much of an open book everything was. The founder wanted to change the world — as only he or that Drop of Blood Lady could do — and could not keep his big mouth shut about each and every violation of law (and cultural norms) he made.
Responding to Twitter DMs about what he was doing? Check. Donating to every Liberal political campaign under the sun with the hopes of influencing policy? Check. And so on, and so forth.
‘AI Fixes This,’ But The Words and Images Are Kinda Off
The above images are part of my own Bing AI Image Generator experiment. They’re semi-amusing at best — it has been said that your AI content is only as good as the prompt you type — and a little scary at worst.
For instance, the prompt for this group of images was:
“Panhandler on the streets of a large South American city with a sign that reads ‘Bitcoin Accepted Here.'”
Okay, it’s sorta niche content.
But the absurd imagery gets eclipsed by the even more absurd article I created on Bard, Google’s AI tool.
The prompt was glorious, IMHO, as it really amounted to one of those Mad Libs-style inspiration blog posts that are way too popular. “What [INSERT CURRENT EVENT] can teach you about [MARKETING, SOCIAL MEDIA, PUBLIC RELATIONS, LIFE].” Or, in this case:
“Create a 1000-word article that discusses why permanent Daylight Saving Time in the USA would be good for alternative investments like Bitcoin, Gold and Silver, and Land.“
The bulk of the article was gag-worthy, so we’ll spare you the entire thing. But here’s a snippet that should lead most people to throw up a little in their mouths:
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that is not subject to government or financial institution control. It is often seen as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty.
Permanent DST could lead to increased demand for Bitcoin, as more people would have more daylight hours to spend on recreational activities and online shopping. Additionally, the longer days could make it more convenient for people to mine Bitcoin, as they would have more sunlight to power their solar panels.
The Lesson? Embrace The Absurdity
How are we possibly weaving together Bitcoin Panhandlers, SBF, Artificial Intelligence, and Daylight Saving Time? Well, we’re not, except to say we’re living in the most absurd times ever.
Embrace it.