1/13 ANDY HOFFMAN(CryptoGoldCentral.com): Bitcoin - The Most Reviled Asset I Have EVER Seen

Here he goes again, talking about 30 years of financial market experience. How dare he – someone who has lived through countless bear markets, surviving and thriving – download, for FREE, what he’s learned about the myriad forces that contribute to downtrends; the emotions that accompany them; and how he’s handled such situations before.

Yes, MANY bear markets - starting with the 1987 stock market crash; which, despite being short and shallow, caused financial market employment to slow down for years to come. Which, given that I was a senior in high school at the time, impacted me five years later – when, despite a sterling resume, made it nearly impossible to find a good job when I graduated college.

In May 1998, my first big break came when, having finished the grueling, three-year CFA exam, I was hired by Southcoast Capital in New Orleans to be an oilfield service, equipment, and drilling analyst. Lucky me, the oil price crashed from $25 to an all-time low of $10 over the next six months.

Fortunately, I didn’t yet have enough money to invest, so I didn’t lose anything personally. However, professionally, that year was incredibly difficult to fathom, particularly in such an early stage of my career. Plus, the dotcom boom rescued everything – including oil – a year later…enabling me to not only get an even better job, with Salomon Smith Barney in New York, but make some good money with the first capital I ever had to invest.

At the bottom, oil was a VERY hated asset. However, more investors were expecting it to rebound than collapse – which mere months later, it did…rising from $10 in November 1998 to nearly $50 two years later, and $150 a decade hence.

However, long before $150, another vicious oil bear returned – ultimately costing me my job, and forcing me to migrate my personal and professional interests elsewhere. Which was, the post-dotcom; and especially, post 9/11 bear market that took oil back to $25/barrel – this, after all the equity and debt funding the oilfield service sector would ever need had already taken place.

I somehow survived at Salomon until 2005, but business was between dying and dead for three years when they finally, mercifully, dropped the axe. And financially, I was more than surviving – as starting in May 2002, essentially all my attention, and finances, were focused on Precious Metal mining stocks.

That was my first taste of significant success – and by success, I mean my net worth rose as much from 2002-2006 as it did during the 2016-2017 Bitcoin boom…only 15 years earlier, when inflation was a lot lower; and thus, such gains a lot more meaningful. I was on top of the world, thinking nothing could stop the Precious Metal boom that, after 15 years of dormancy, was destined to retake the global financial communities’ imagination, like it did in the late 1970s.

Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong – as despite the meteoric silver surge to $50 in early 2011; and gold to $1,900 a few months’ later; mining stocks peaked in 2007, were DESTROYED during the 2008 crisis, and viciously attacked ever after…to the point that, by the time I finally cried uncle in 2017, they had become the most despised, reviled asset I’d ever seen.

The reasons for Precious Metals’ demise – which I strongly believe to be permanent, given how superior Bitcoin is as a monetary asset – were myriad…and over the past decade, mining stocks have been one of the worst performing assets in the entire market. Fortunately, I survived by selling my miners for bullion in 2008-2011; which, despite underperforming most asset classes in the ensuing decade, preserved my nominal wealth whilst I searched for new opportunities. Meanwhile, those who panned my “horrible decision” to sell miners watched their net worths’ steadily decline…whilst I lived to fight another day.

Today, Precious Metals are more hated than at any time in financial history – and yet, there STILL remains a strong, loyal, but OLD community of “goldbugs” that believes the dollar will collapse, Bitcoin will go to zero, and gold and silver will rise from the ashes, to reclaim their status as the world’s pre-eminent monetary assets. A pipe dream, to be sure, for “inflation hedges” trading at all-time inflation-adjusted lows. But still, a dream shared by a surprisingly large amount of “old school” sound money advocates.

And then there’s Bitcoin – an esoteric, high-tech “asset” that emerged from the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, fought through several vicious bear markets before most people even heard of it; and had its first taste of dotcom-like success and failure, when the Mt Gox bubble blew up in late 2013…only to collapse violently in early 2014. I know, I was there – having invested in exactly one Bitcoin at Mt Gox…which, it turns out, will net me a refund of $172 when the Mt Gox Trustee gets around to awarding it.

From 2014-2015, I watched Bitcoin passively as it meandered aimlessly between $200 and $250 – still intrigued by it, but recognizing how out of favor it had become. But as bad as it seemed, it was clear that Bitcoin was not “universally hated.” Not enough people had been burned to create that kind of emotion; and not enough profits lost – as even at the top, Bitcoin’s market cap was just $12 billion…compared to $370 billion at the December 2017 top. So, when it showed signs of life in early 2016, I jumped back in, in a big way.

Most of the investment world wasn’t paying attention, but the maligned Precious Metal space was; considering, in hindsight, correctly so, Bitcoin to be a dangerous competitor to its monetary leadership role. Thus, while I experienced a lot of hatred from my peers – including my colleagues, and bosses, at Miles Franklin – I didn’t sense it from the investment world at large. When the historic crypto boom commenced in the second half of 2017, the scrutiny within the Precious Metals community became so intense, it led to me departure from it entirely – professionally, and financially. Precious Metals couldn’t have been more hated – and thankfully, I had not only escaped, but done so into Bitcoin.

What has since transpired is truly incredible – as despite all I had been through, NOTHING compared to the power of the crypto bubble…except, of course, the bust that follows, and continues to this day. A year ago, Bitcoin – and altcoins – reached a level of fever pitch on a par with the dotcoms…except unlike the dotcoms, taxi drivers and hairdressers were not actively investing in them. Partly due to the novelty, and complexity of the technology – and partly, because unlike stocks circa 1999, it wasn’t easy to get an account at one of the few fiat-focused crypto exchanges…like, for example, Coinbase.

Still, enough people found their way in to create an epic bubble – which I saw first hand as an investor, and proprietor of my new firm, CryptoGoldCentral.com, which I launched in September 2017 – to create a dotcom-like mania…particularly when the “Hoffman Line” was crossed a month later (i.e., a $100 billion Bitcoin market cap), prompting institutional money to start pouring in, just as I predicted, when the new year commenced.

What ensued was a classic, dotcom-like bust – in which 99% of peripheral crypto assets (i.e., altcoins) lost 90-plus percent of their value. Only this time, the primary asset, Bitcoin, lost, too – falling 85% from its December 2017 highs, to lows it is barely above today, 13 months later. Back then, “the internet” was not a stock that could be bought, so investors couldn’t lose money in it, the way they can in Bitcoin. However, like the internet, Bitcoin usage, “hash rate,” and other metrics of its operational strength have continued to climb – despite every imaginable effort, from both inside and outside the Bitcoin community, to destroy it.

The problem, of course, is that while the internet threatened no one, Bitcoin threatens the status quo like no other invention since, well, gunpowder. Powerful financial interests want it dead – and it doesn’t help that powerful lobbies within the Bitcoin community, led by REALLY BAD PEOPLE like Roger Ver, Jihan Wu (not anymore) and Craig Wright, have done everything in their power to usurp it…pandering to stupid people who don’t know better; and thus, are willing to listen to dangerous, but misguided demagogues, no matter how stupid their ideas.

A year later, 95% of cryptocurrency investors have lost most or all of their money – and as bad as the collapse was through the first ten months of 2018 were, it was NOTHING compared to the devastation that followed in November and December, in the wake of the epic; pre-meditated; seemingly “out of the blue” SV attack. So much so, that crypto sentiment has for all intents and purposes, completely died – to a level exceeding even that of the post- Mt Gox environment.

Fortunately for me, I sold the second the “Hoffman Line” was broken – out of the self-preservation instinct innately in my genes, that I had honed from 30 years of financial market experience. Moreover, while the rest of the crypto community was mocking my interest in BRhodium – which had grown over the course of a year of following this unique, FREE crypto asset – I was acquiring it for pennies on the dollar, well before the mid-November SV-related Bitcoin collapse.

Today, I focus ALL my attention on BRhodium – which as I write, is experiencing a record hash rate, with exchange launch, on multiple exchanges, is imminent. And while its market cap is down from its highs, it remains 10x what it was when MainNet launched – but still, massively undervalued, relative to what I view as comically inferior “peers” like BGold, BDiamond, Lightning BTC, Super BTC; and LOL, BPrivate, the residing #1 scam in all of crypto.

So, not only is the universal HATRED, and CAPITULATION from Bitcoin squarely in my view, but the added VENOM of those who DESPISE me for having G-d forbid, exited the cult of Bitcoin because capital preservation was more important than the “cause”; let alone, for an altcoin that for the most part, I received for free.

Yes, Bitcoin in January 2019 is in my view, the most reviled asset I have ever seen – even more than altcoins, as it SYMBOLIZES the (temporary) failure of what was supposed to have taken over the financial world, miserably failing to do so. To that end, the SV attack proved Bitcoin is NOT as “anti-fragile” as was universally believed; and this past Thursday’s violent, $500 decline for no apparent reason was only proof positive that the entire world wants out.

To that end, I don’t even own Bitcoin anymore; but for the first time in my investment career, DOLLARS, and CERTIFICATES OF DEPOSIT; but, just as when I was cursing SV in November, am cursing Bitcoin today – muttering “dumpster fire”; “dog turd”; and every imaginable epithet, given how much it was SUPPOSED TO accomplish, but miserably failed to do.

Fortunately, we are VERY early in the Digital Age – so Bitcoin, and crypto in general, ain’t goin’ nowhere. However, there is no way of knowing what will catalyze its return to prominence; when it will occur; and from what depths its return will commence from. Clearly, the level of universal hatred and capitulation experienced today is more likely to characterize a bottom than a top, but only time will tell. Draw your own conclusion, and invest wisely.

P.S. PLEASE EXCUSE THAT I DIDN'T GRAMATICALLY EDIT THIS ARTICLE, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. FRANKLY, I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE IT THIS (EARLY SUNDAY) MORNING, FOLLOWING SUCH A LONG ARTICLE.