On his last week at our company, a former coworker couldn’t stop touting some podcast episode he had listened to about this investor who’s been convincing people to get in on bitcoin.
The funny thing is that the ONLY argument people have for putting money into something they have NO clue about always goes a little something like this:
“WELL, DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU HAD PUT $100 INTO BITCOIN LAST MONTH (OR TEN YEARS AGO OR TEN DAYS AGO) YOU’D HAVE A ZILLION DOLLARS RIGHT NOW?!”
But that is THE dumbest argument.
I mean, sure, had I invested in Apple 10-20 years ago, I’d have, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But that is Apple we’re talking about–a company that was going places and noticeably changing the world with each new product.
But Bitcoin ≠ Apple.
In fact, Bitcoin is THE farthest things from a smart investment for many reasons.
Read More: Why Investing in Bitcoin Is A Fool’s Game
But many people don’t see the writing on the wall: they instead choose to believe random investors who (to their credit) may know a ton about about real-world investing, but who lack any knowledge about the actual technology surrounding Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.
Ronnie Moas is one such individual and it’s time someone tells him to cordially stop talking and lying to people (either on TV, podcasts, or through his “reports”).
So sit back and grab a drink because it’s my turn to shut up all those Bitcoin evangelists (who apparently haven’t read my last post in which a cryptocurrency miner argues that investing in Bitcoin is a fool’s game)!
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On episodes 60 and 70 of a podcast called Bad Crypto, investing guru(?) Ronnie Moas (whose laundry list of reasons why he’s a seeming god doesn’t explain one bit what makes him so good at cryptocurrency) is interviewed about Bitcoin and his charity work.
But despite he’s arrogance, I think his charity work is far more impressive than anything he could contribute regarding Bitcoin, to be honest.
In this post, I want to detail some of the nuggets of non-wisdom he shared and why he’s dead wrong:
Venezuela
I think the people of Venezuela will have a hard time accepting anything that its government puts out.
At the time he said this, Venezuela had been thinking about starting a crypto called Petro. Let that sink in for a minute: The Venezuelan government–the reason why that country has been in ruins for years. So much so, in fact, that supermarkets have been running out of essentials and its people are fleeing to neighboring Colombia (my birth country) in search of a better life and future.
So Moas basically discovered sliced bread by stating that Venezuelans would struggle to accept anything the government creates.
Next!
Bitcoin undervalued?
On another part of their conversation, Moas alleged that Bitcoin is extremely undervalued and that it should climb to hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next several years.
However, as much as cryptocurrency fascinates me, you can’t just blabber on and compare it to tangible, appreciating assets. Bitcoin isn’t the next gold, and Moas should really learn a thing or two about it before grossly overestimating its value.
Read More: Reasons Why Bitcoin Isn’t A Good “Investment”
All his never-ending “You must invest now!” also makes me wonder if he’ll later work to crash it. (More below.)
I guess we’ll find out?
Why will Bitcoin Sink?
Bitcoin will sink or swim based on consumer confidence
NO.
Bitcoin WON’T sink due to people’s confidence in it.
It will sink because its enterprise capabilities are nonexistent, it’s broken, more merchants are dropping it, there are better cryptos out there, etc. It’ll sink simply because it’s no good!
Can Bitcoin crash?
Moas also later states that those putting money in Bitcoin need to be wary as it’s possible for a few to crash it.
/Sidenote lesson: How to crash a crypto or stock market asset >>
By amping it up and making it seem more than it is, a few bad actors can make its demand increase, which means more people start putting money in it. Then those same actors suddenly dump back enough of their own (in this case) Bitcoin, which would make others panic and rapidly sell their own Bitcoin. Suddenly Bitcoin is supper cheap, and the original “crashers” buy it all back for cheap, only to re-start the cycle.
/End of side note lesson.
So Ronnie Moas saying people will try to crash the Bitcoin market later is a rather dumb comment because it’s already happened to other cryptocurrencies. Yes, seriously! That’s why you investing in a technology that you DON’T understand is foolish!
He and many others like him are only looking at Bitcoin through the eyes of an investor who just considers its market cap and total market value and number of coins times the price of each coin.
But that’s taking into account an overinflated price per coin. When one Bitcoin is itself overvalued, the entire amount of Bitcoin available is also overvalued.
Until people stop and realize that it’s a broken technology, it’ll unfortunately keep deceiving everyone who lets it.
Is Bitcoin like Amazon?
This part seriously cracked me up. In another bit of the episode, Moas compares Amazon to Bitcoin.
Yes, suddenly a company that provides a seemingly invaluable and priceless service to its customers was downgraded to the level of a technology that’s broken and has no value.
If I didn’t think he was wrong before, he had definitely gone nutty by then. A broken technology vs. a reliable, customer-oriented service = No comparison whatsoever.
It’s a very obvious choice, Ronnie
What would you rather do: Lose a couple months’ salary or wait in the sidelines and discover you could’ve made an investment that increased 10+ times?
This is something my coworker couldn’t stop repeating to other people, and he couldn’t be more wrong.
For starters, the best and smartest thing is to actually mine that cryptocurrency because there’s much less risk that way. But let’s say you don’t have that choice. Understandable–not everyone has the funds or the technical know-how to do it.
So what instead?
Put a little money in it, wait a day or a couple of weeks (SHORT TERM!) until you gain back that investment or hopefully double, triple, quadruple+ it, and THEN get out.
But take that with a grain of salt as I’m not a financial advisor and people who DON’T know about Bitcoin have no business investing in Bitcoin.
My husband mines cryptocurrency. His friend doesn’t, but one time he just put in a few hundred dollars in Bitcoin, earned back that same amount and took out his original investment. Now he’s literally riding the wave, which is more fun because he has nothing to lose anymore.
“Not enough people donated to my cause”
On the second episode of that podcast that featured Ronnie Moas, he starts out by SHAMING those who didn’t donate to his charity. Yes, really. Apparently if more people had donated, more children could’ve been helped or something.
The guy’s a douchebag. –My husband
He couldn’t be more right. I realize I chose to listen to both episodes in order to discuss his mistakes on my blog, but after that I couldn’t believe I had to keep listening to him.
WHO SHAMES PEOPLE FOR NOT DONATING?!
Not even self-righteous celebrities criticize those who don’t donate to a particular cause. Instead, organizations are always happy to accept any money they can get! Disgusting.
But I digress. Back to crypto talk.
“I’ve been telling people to diversify”
As soon as I heard this, I yelled “What the faaahhhh” at my computer while my husband exclaimed, “He’s backpedaling. He thought [Bitcoin] was going to be worth millions. The guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
No, Ronnie Moas didn’t tell ANYBODY to diversify last time. He couldn’t stop tooting Bitcoin’s horn, and Bitcoin was the best thing ever, and suddenly “there’s no guarantee that Bitcoin will lead or even participate in the move to four trillion dollars”?
That’s what happens when you advocate for something you don’t know anything about: You lose so you have to start backpedaling.
“I’m in a unique position to give advice”
Yet another quote of Moas’s that made me yell at my computer, haha:
Everything that I’ve learned over my 20 years in the stock market prepared me for what we’re seeing today, and it has put me in a unique position to give advice on how to play these movements.” –Moas
Basically, NO, RONNIE: You don’t know anything about Bitcoin.
He keeps alleging that just like with the stock market where people go from investing in one industry to another after the value of the first begins to decline, overtime, people who have been putting money into other cryptos besides Bitcoin will abandon those other cryptos and go back to Bitcoin.
EVEN THOUGH BITCOIN IS A BROKEN TECHNOLOGY THAT HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT.
Even though Bitcoin isn’t good, it’s still OK?
As far as Bitcoin not being the cheapest or fastest option, it doesn’t concern me.
He just admitted to Bitcoin not being a good-enough product and he STILL advocates for it simply because there are SO many people (who know nothing about it) buying it (#peerpressure) than there are bitcoin available.
At this point I should stop listening to anything else this guy says. It’s making me lose it.
“I missed Ripple. It blindsided me.”
When one of the show hosts mentioned to Moas that they had talked to Ripple’s CEO and how Ripple itself had shot up in value from a few cents to almost $3, Moas had the nerve to say that “it takes me weeks to pick out a flower out of the weeds and to then write reports about cryptos; I did write about other cryptos besides Ripple, Ripple’s increase in value blindsided me, and blah blah blah.”
His version of “The dog ate my homework,” basically. He really had nothing good to say about such a serious FAIL.
[Ripple] is a fantastic alt coin to be in.
YOU THINK?! Ronnie, Ripple is BETTER than Bitcoin. Get it together, man.
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OK I’m done. You guys, I couldn’t write anymore on this “professional.” I’m honestly sick of listening to his moronic comments (and if you’ve stuck with me this far, I thank you and I liberate you!).
Ronnie Moas’s free (<< “free” because he charges for his reports full of God-knows-how-many lies) comments show he doesn’t know anything about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and I don’t want to give him anymore of my time.
At the end of the day, these were among the dumbest interviews I’ve ever listened to, and I’m sorry for the people who bought everything Ronnie Moas said in them.
Lastly, I thought it’d be worthwhile to end this post by noting that right after the airing of the second episode of that podcast that featured him, Bitcoin PLUMMETED in value to almost HALF of what it had been just a month ago. Almost HALF. So don’t believe those know-nothing Bitcoin evangelists!
What is one thing you’d like to know about cryptos or something you’ve heard that you find hard to believe? Ask in the Comments!