What If Barry Silbert Just HODLed? Spoiler: He’d Be Laughing All the Way to the Moon 🚀

In a world as fickle as the Russian spring, Barry Silbert, the man steering the Digital Currency Group, confessed with a wistful grin that his greatest victory would have been simply to clutch his Bitcoin tightly and not let go. Ah, the irony of life, where chasing many rabbits ends with catching none.

It was on a slightly dreary April day, the 17th, where on Raoul Pal’s Journey Man podcast, Silbert recounted his humble beginning: discovering Bitcoin back in 2011 at the inexpensive price of seven or eight dollars a coin — like finding a treasure buried under a still-sleeping birch tree. With the coin’s price soaring, our dear Silbert donned the hat of an eager investor, casting his nets wide over fledgling crypto enterprises.

“I was using Bitcoin to make a bunch of those investments, and you would think, if you invested in Coinbase you would have done really well. Had I just held the Bitcoin, I actually would have done better than making those investments.”

Such a confession, dear reader, brings to mind the village fool who sold his beautiful horse for a song only to buy it back dearer later. While Silbert’s words echo around the parlors of Bitcoin maximalists — those fervent believers like the prophet Michael Saylor, who predict a million-dollar dawn for Bitcoin — governments too are peeking into the glass with wide eyes.

Bitcoin illustration

The United States and Bitcoin: A Comedy of Errors or a Masterstroke?

Zach Shapiro, who commands the Bitcoin Policy Institute like a conductor with a baton, boldly forecasted that if Uncle Sam decided to buy a million Bitcoins, then — brace yourself — Bitcoin might just leap to a million dollars per coin. “Imagine that,” Shapiro mused, “a global earthquake sparked by government greed or wisdom, or perhaps both.”

Meanwhile, Bo Hines, a figure from President Trump’s Crypto Council, hinted at schemes that sound like the kind of financial sorcery one might expect to find in a satirical novel: revaluing gold reserves priced laughably low compared to the market, or turning tariffs into a Bitcoin piggy bank. What could possibly go wrong?

As national debt swells like a bloated bear in hibernation, Bitcoin flutters as a possible savior — a digital needle to sew up the $36 trillion tear, hopefully reclaiming $14 trillion according to VanEck’s high hopes. One can only chuckle at the grand designs that promise to rewrite history using nothing but cryptographic spells and economic wizardry.

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2025-04-17 20:49