Crypto currencies have truly gone mainstream these days, with over 10,000 different coins being traded anyone can become a ‘coin billionaire’.  There’s no market regulation, but there is a ton of hype.

This week Bloomberg News (you know the global financial news site) ran the story:  “$ASS Coin Billionaire: Tales From the Fringe of the Crypto Craze“.  My first thought was, “damn, I hope that’s about Broke-Ass Stuart”, and then I read the article and realized that being a ‘coin billionaire’ means about the same thing as being a ‘Pokemon Master’ or a Leprechaun for that matter.  A ‘coin billionaire’ is a phrase that simply denotes that you own a great quantity of mostly imaginary things, whether they be crypto coins or Japanese cartoon monsters.

I’m sure you have more questions, like I did, so let me answer them for you:  Yes, ‘ASS’ coin is a real crypto currency that you can buy today, ‘ASS’ stands for Australian Safe Shepherd (ASS), and their website promotes their coin like it was lifestyle brand for young idiots, with the phrases like, “ASS for everyone” and “How to buy some ASS”.

They paid some ASShole to make a song about their currency, and they’re in full marketing mode over the coin, that’s how you gin up new hopeful prospectors to invest in your ASS I suppose.

Coins like ASS are traded on sites like coinbase.com and coingecko.com and they are affectionately referred to as ‘shit coins’ in the finance industry.

The Bloomberg ‘ASS coin billionaire’ is none other than unemployed bartender and Floridian ‘Eric Hackney’, who bought 20,000,000,000 ASS coins recently for $500.   But don’t get excited, as of this morning Eric’s entire Ass holding is now worth fell to 400 dollars.

Eric Hackney in his cryptocurrency home office that he set up in a spare bedroom.
Photographer: Zack Wittman/Bloomberg

So technically Eric, like hundreds of thousands of other dudes on their laptops, are ‘coin billionaires’.  Unfortunately ASS has gone down a bit in price this week, like almost all coins.   The ‘shit coins’ do not have anything backing them up other than marketing and hysteria.  Crypto coins are only as valuable as what ‘the next guy’ is willing to pay for them.   Lately, that’s a lot less, but next week, who knows?

The internet is awash with speculation on crypto:

Bitcoin price plummets to $30k, How to trade after collapse?

Non-shit coins like Bitcoin & Ethereum (the big boys) seem safe enough because massive multinational corporations have already invested in them.

Warren Buffet, perhaps the most famous investor on the planet, famously thinks crypto coins are a bad investment, and it’s doubtful the 90 year old will change his mind anytime soon.  Buffet always compares crypto currency to the famous tulip market collapse in Amsterdam in the mid 1600s.

Warren Buffett: ‘I don’t own any cryptocurrency and I never will’

Happy trading.  How do you say ‘To The Moon” in Dutch?