It might seem strange — even contrarian — to publish a piece critiquing cryptocurrencies in the very week that Bitcoin has reached all-time highs. To many, this would seem like the ultimate market vindication.
However, tulips once traded for mansions.
Manias don’t die because sceptics speak up—they die because reality intrudes.
But this is not a market note. This is a reflection on value, belief, and what we, as investors and as human beings, choose to place our faith in.
As a free-market capitalist, I believe in the right of consenting adults to engage in speculation, commerce, and even folly.
A market, after all, exists whenever a willing buyer and seller meet. And crypto is undeniably a market — an extraordinarily popular one for speculation.
I’ve seen that first-hand through the use of the Vortex Indicator, the technical analysis tool I created, which is widely employed on crypto trading platforms around the world.
I respect the freedom of free people to engage in that. But this freedom must be coupled with clear-eyed awareness of what exactly we are participating in.
Because for all the hype, all the price action, and all the passion — crypto remains a belief system, not a financial system.
Invented Value, Worshipped Worthlessness
Crypto offers no intrinsic value. It generates no income. It has no cash flows, no utility, and no fundamental economic underpinning.
It is not a claim on any productive enterprise. It is not legal tender. It does not pay interest or rent. It is not a commodity in any classical sense.
It is, instead, a pure speculative instrument whose price is determined solely by collective sentiment — the Greater Fool Theory: the fervent conviction that someone, someday, will pay more for it than you did. It is pure abstraction, a digital token with no tether to reality beyond the belief that it is "the future."
This is not new. Humanity has always had a remarkable ability to construct belief systems around unseen, unproven forces. Religion, mythology, ideology — all are testaments to the human capacity for invention and faith. And like these, crypto is a construct. It exists because people believe it does.
No Use, Just Abuse
In the 17 years since the invention of Bitcoin — which makes it nearly as old as the iPhone, and older than Apple Pay — crypto has consistently promised, and failed, to deliver mainstream legal use cases. It is still not a widely used medium of exchange.
It has not meaningfully displaced fiat currencies. And it has not revolutionised payments or banking.
Instead, crypto has flourished where the law fails.
It is a tool of extortion, money laundering, and increasingly, political bribery. The most prominent and consistent applications of cryptocurrencies have been in ransomware attacks, anonymous transfers for criminal enterprises, and schemes designed to deceive and defraud the uninformed.
This isn’t incidental. This is the core of the industry.
Money-laundering and investor scams are not unfortunate behaviours that taint an otherwise promising innovation. They are the enterprise. Crypto has become the mechanism by which bad actors transfer wealth, hide funds, and lure in speculative capital from retail dreamers chasing outsized returns on thin air.
Whatever language future legislation uses to describe or regulate crypto, the result will still be the same: it will be enabling an enterprise that is, at its root, a vessel for deception.
Even as crypto’s criminal uses proliferate, it is currently gaining a surreal political¹ legitimacy.
The same U.S. administration whose First Family² reportedly profited from crypto promotions now floats the idea of a "crypto reserve"—an attempt to launder crypto’s reputation through state endorsement. This isn’t innovation; it’s regulatory capture by speculators, dressing up a speculative cult as national policy.
A Digital Religion, Built on Code
Crypto has all the characteristics of religion: prophets (crypto “thought leaders”), rituals (halvings, forks), temples (blockchain conferences), and a devout, often uncritical congregation.
It promises salvation — from centralised banks, from inflation, from the state — and offers freedom through belief. But unlike traditional religions, which at least claim moral or metaphysical guidance, crypto offers no such philosophy. It offers only price movement. And belief in price, unanchored to value, is a dangerous foundation for capital.
Yes, the blockchain may have utility in select areas — record-keeping, supply chains, digital verification.
But blockchain is a tool. Tokens are not. The conflation of the two is the magic trick that keeps the illusion alive.
Faith is not a strategy
At Alpha Elite, we invest in reality.
Our capital is allocated exclusively to the two largest and most advanced economies in the world: the United States and Europe.
We focus on the world’s leading companies — those that build, heal, entertain, defend, and drive civilisation forward.
From life-saving biotechnology and global entertainment, to cement, infrastructure, aerospace, and defence systems used in the fight against global aggressors.
These are not promises; they are products. In a world seduced by digital illusions, we remain committed to investing in what is tangible, enduring, and real.
The Silver Lining: Human Ingenuity Unleashed
And yet — I do not end this criticism in despair.
Because, paradoxically, the very ability that allows mankind to construct myths, religions, and speculative manias… is the same brilliance that has birthed science, art, mathematics, medicine, and markets. The same imagination that dreams up false gods is also responsible for real breakthroughs.
Crypto is, in its own way, a testament to human creativity — just not one rooted in value. And while this particular belief system may collapse under its own weight, we should still admire the extraordinary capacity of the human brain to invent, organise, and convince.
That ingenuity is not always used wisely. But it is always awe-inspiring.
References:
1. The Crypto Industry Got What It Paid For - The Verge
2. The Real Trump Family Business Is Crypto - The Atlantic