The FBI recently reported that losses from cryptocurrency scams were up 45% from last year, over $5.6 billion dollars. It's become so widespread that the FBI actually created their own cryptocurrency to ensnare the fraudsters. You might be thinking what's that got to do with me?

The largest cryptocurrency failure ever happened this week as LUNA coin went from $86 to $0.00002 in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to tank its value and drag bitcoin down with it.

This is going to be painful, but it can no longer be ignored. So I suggest doing it fast, like ripping a bandage off.
I'm going to apologize in advance for some of the worst rap music ever created.

In 2000, Iraq switched away from selling oil for dollars, to selling oil for Euros. Then we went to war with Iraq.

Syria is trying to build a competing pipeline to oil to the European market. So we went to war in Syria.

In 2019, Venezuela and Iran created petro cryptocurrencies to use for oil trade. Now we're going to war with Iran. I suppose Venezuela was a little too close to home for an actual invasion, but we came close, didn't we?

It was beyond easy to see this one coming.
It isn't over.

Cross-posted from Real Economics.

I suspect that most people do not understand bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because they also do not understand how money is "created." The reality that money can be created out of nothing is so ludicrously simple that most people simply cannot believe it. John Kenneth Galbraith observed that "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled."