I love, absolutely LOVE how all of these YouTube shills decry the evils of big banks, then jump up and down like little 5th graders every time those SAME BANKS predict good things for crypto.
It's annoying and it won't bode well for the future of crypto.
So Citibank somehow finagled an analysis that showed bitcoin will hit north of $300,000 by the end of 2021. Great. I really don't care about the number. I'd rather do a deeper dive into how your attention to this number will slowly kill crypto.
More Lame Digital Asset News
First of all, the shill that put up the title was obviously clickbaiting. Big numbers spell clicks for a finance-themed YouTube channel, and the guy behind this one apparently doesn't have enough. That's the first thing. If you can't get clicks in an emerging market as wide open as crypto, then your entire ability to serve as a voice in the space is questioned.
Is this guy taking money under the table from Citi? Just a question — I don't know anything, nor am I accusing. It's just so...out of character for anyone who really understands what crypto is supposed to be about. What we DO know is that Citi has absolutely no problem sending cash to unscrupulous people to further a dirty agenda.
Citibank and Crypto
Crypto detractors claim that crypto can be used for illegal purposes and should be heavily regulated as such. However, the most well-worn currency in crime is the US dollar. That's an objective fact. And Citi, it seems, is no stranger to using the US dollar to commit crime.
In 2015, Banamex, Citi's Mexican affiliate, was fined $400 million for laundering money known to be in the purview of Mexican drug cartels.
Also in 2015, Citibank was ordered to pay $700 million to customers it overcharged.
Citibank was also implicated in the WorldCom scandal, and the bank paid $2.65 billion to make that go away.
Google is your friend. There are many other headlines along the same theme.
And you are trusting this institution to tell you where crypto is going in the next year?
Citibank's Play for Profits
That huge number Citibank put out wasn't for your benefit, by the way. That $318,000 was justification for Citibank stakeholders, because Citibank execs see how much money MicroStrategies et al. are making off of their bitcoin plays. They just don't want to miss out, but the $318,000 is a ridiculous figure. It's meant to whet the appetites of these so-called sophisticated, accredited investors. We've all seen the emperor has no clothes on that one, but whatever.
The numbers Citibank derives come from some weird derivation of the stock to flow model, which is ridiculous to begin with. That model tries to justify taking the once in a lifetime mania of 2017 and applying it to another bull market, never taking into account the market factors that drove that market. There has to be another catalyst. Bitcoin may reach $300k by the end of 2021, but it won't be because of any fundamentals.
Bitcoin hasn't been around long enough to HAVE fundamentals. The catalyst will be some outside force that forces people into bitcoin. I believe it will be a housing crash and a government opt in to try to custody more crypto. As CBDCs roll out, the US will pay quite handsomely for bitcoin holders to give up their bitcoin in exchange for the digital fiat. That, not any made up fundamentals that Citi is relying on, is what will create that storm if it occurs.
Citi's just trying to get the green light from its investors to get in. That $300k number means nothing, and it's really bad when shills use it to get more views and create false hopium.
Citibank has been shown to be a fraudulent institution. Don't attach yourself to it and come off as a fraud, too. And stop being so hypocritical. Decide whether you are going to be for or against the scams of traditional finance or suck off their teat for your own personal benefit and be honest about it to the rest of us.
