The Rhodes Scholar and liberal media commentator mentioned in a section that aired Thursday, March 6, that cryptocurrency is a rip-off. She additionally slammed the White Home for “enjoying this recreation.”
MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow calls Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve a ‘deeply old school easy rip-off.’
She attracts a hanging comparability between crypto and Beanie Infants, saying, “Cryptos function on the identical thought. They don’t have any inherent worth in any respect, however individuals speculate, hoping… pic.twitter.com/KnJrRWRnDd
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) March 8, 2025
President Donald Trump signed an government order earlier that day establishing a nationwide digital asset reserve.
White Home crypto czar David Sacks mentioned, “The US is not going to promote any Bitcoin deposited into the Reserve. Will probably be saved as a retailer of worth. The Reserve is sort of a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency, typically known as ‘digital gold.’”
“It’s value this crypto factor slightly bit,” Maddow mentioned on her present. “Solely as a result of it’s a deeply, deeply old school easy rip-off. At this level, which factors proper to the White Home.”
Right here’s what Maddow mentioned about Bitcoin and what she received fallacious.
1. Not like Beanies, Bitcoin’s Worth Goes Up
“Helpfully, the broad strokes of crypto buying and selling will not be sophisticated,” Maddow mentioned. “It’s like when there was the Beanie Child craze within the late Nineties.”
“It was a Beanie Child buying and selling bubble,” she defined. “Apart from some emotional worth should you had one as a baby, Beanie Infants didn’t have a lot inherent worth.”
“But it surely was value shopping for up a bunch of them as a result of there was hypothesis on the premise that as collectibles, perhaps sooner or later your Beanie Infants assortment might be value some huge cash.”
There may be, nevertheless, a key distinction between Bitcoin and Beanie Infants. Whereas Beanie Infants debuted in 1993 on the World Toy Truthful in New York Metropolis, this toy fad reached its top six years later in 1999.
Following the dot com crash in 2000, the public sale worth frenzy for Infants by no means recovered to these ranges once more.
To get a practical thought of the aftermarket worth of stuffed toys, one want solely examine a neighborhood thrift retailer of their metropolis. However not like Beanie Infants, Bitcoin’s worth has been going up ever because it launched on Jan. 3, 2009.
That’s 16 years of progress in every day change price for the greenback that dwarves comparable ROIs from the highest- flying tech shares within the inventory market’s complete historical past.
Throughout its periodic bear markets, which have to this point occurred on a reasonably predictable 4-year cycle, critics have repeatedly known as Bitcoin a fad and declared it lifeless.
However each time the skeptics have turned out fallacious when the worth units new all-time excessive information inside 4 years. On the subject of historic information, there is no such thing as a wise comparability between Beanie Infants and Bitcoin.
Whereas the toy collectibles peaked in 1999 and by no means recovered, Bitcoin created 84,000 new crypto millionaires in 2024, in accordance to a report on CNBC.
2. Beanie Infants Markets Are Not Liquid or Clear
“Cryptocurrencies function on the identical thought,” Maddow went on in her section to say.
“They don’t have any inherent worth in any respect. The one worth they’ve is that when you have some motive to consider that any person else may wish to purchase them from you sooner or later.”
“What meaning in very sensible phrases is that convincing different people who your crypto is fashionable and in demand— that’s key to really getting cash.”
But it surely’s not true that cryptocurrencies function on the identical thought as toy and style manias or that belongings like Bitcoin don’t have any inherent worth.
Beanie Infants will not be a monetary product and don’t bear qualities that will make them appropriate to be used as one. It’s not as simple as sending an e-mail to change a truckload of toy plushies, however it is rather almost that simple to change Bitcoin.
It’s additionally unfeasible to maintain monitor of what number of Beanie Infants are available in the market and submit up-to-the-minute every day buying and selling information about each.
It’s not solely possible with Bitcoin and different cryptos like those getting into the nationwide reserve— pc builders engineered them that approach.
That’s a part of the worth they supply that makes it potential to make use of these digital commodities as monetary merchandise and funding automobiles: liquidity and transparency.
3. Beanie Infants Are Not Sturdy and Fungible Like Crypto
In the meantime, Beanie Infants will not be sturdy and fungible like cryptocurrencies. Who needs another person’s stuffed toy that they’ve been blowing their nostril on and rubbing Cheeto grease into?
These inventories have market values which are extremely delicate to put on and tear, and the merchandise are very weak to deteriorating right into a situation with a resale worth marked nicely under retail.
Even when maintained in mint situation, after-market values for toy collectibles are extra like the marketplace for used vehicles. After being pushed off the lot, they instantly and sharply depreciate.
The inventors of crypto belongings BTC, alternatively, paid cautious consideration to designing their economics or “tokenomics” to optimize them for resale worth over time and for the foreseeable future.
Cryptocurrencies like the 2 talked about above have provide limits that introduce shortage economics. They’re additionally not topic to deteriorating bodily situation.
The truth is, any unit of Bitcoin is all the time equal to every other equal unit in market worth. That is known as fungibility, and it’s a system requirement for an asset to operate as a foreign money.
4. Beanie Infants Are Not Scarce Like Bitcoin
“The concept of hyping cryptocurrency is that folks can purchase in quickly, proper?” Maddow continued on her present.
“Get in on the bottom ground whereas it’s low cost as a result of it’s about to go approach up in worth as a result of there’s a lot curiosity in it. When you get in on the bottom ground now, then you definately’ll make a bundle. It’s the entire hype. It’s the entire rip-off.”
Whereas it’s true that members in crypto markets might interact in inauthentic, hyped-up advertising and marketing techniques, that doesn’t make the underlying belongings a rip-off.
Nor does it imply there aren’t extra clever the explanation why monetary geniuses like BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Shark Tank panelist Kevin O’Leary, or Technique’s Michael Saylor consider investing in Bitcoin and the blockchain isn’t solely not a rip-off— however the subsequent part of creating the Web and human civilization.
5. Bitcoin Instructions Actual Demand, Not Simply Hype
After making all these errors in her broadcast, Maddow lastly undid her personal case fully along with her closing ideas on this section.
“Think about Trump had simply introduced that the US authorities was going to purchase up tons of Beanie Infants,” the MSNBC host mentioned. “We’re going to set up a federal authorities reserve of billions of Beanie Infants.”
“What do you suppose would occur to the worth of Beanie Infants? Turns on the market’s an enormous assured purchaser for this stuff. They’re shopping for billions of them.”
The reply to her query is: Their worth would most likely go up like most analysts anticipate of Bitcoin. Since there’s an enormous assured purchaser and that purchaser is the US authorities.
Not unhealthy for a rip-off.
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