Back when I was in college the first time (yes, I have this bad habit of continuing to keep taking classes and learning), I realized early on, basically the first semester, that I wasn't going to be a doctor. I ran into Calculus and got plastered across the classroom floor. So, since my Biology dreams were dashed by an obscure math that had no apparent application to real life, I switched to my other skill, writing, and became an English major. At the time English as a study was maybe a notch above basket-weaving, but I knew it was fundamentally needed. Of course, students absolutely hating to write an essay and coming to me asking me for help all the time convinced me it was an underrated skill as well.

Along the way of churning out probably the equivalent of a book in all my English classes, I somehow ended up in a literature class studying the famous playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Now, this was an 300-series elective, and I was a freshman at the time. So, I first had to convince the caffeine-whacked professor who was a former Berkeley-commie protester from the 60s that I could actually handle my own. Having a mohawk helped establish my "liberal" credentials with him, and the fact that I was one of two or three in the class who could write a coherent first paper didn't hurt as well. That said, he did poke holes in papers where he felt the flow didn't work and he got stuck (literally, the guy would take a pen, punch it through the paper violently in the air, and then say, "I'm f*cking stuck right here, fix it!").

Now, Shaw is famous for struggling with the concept of man and superman, an idealized philosophy the playwright borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche. Granted, Nietszche got a bad stain later on from Adolph Hitler using his philosophy as one of the planks for Naziism in the 20th century, but the German philosopher was nowhere in that insane camp in the 19th century. Instead, he was focused on the idea of evolution producing a super human, to which Shaw then juggled with the idea in his various plays, showing the struggle of man to never quite get enlightened, being dragged down by the world too darn much. Women were a problem too, in Shaw's mind. It's weird as well that Shaw looked a hell of a lot like Charles Darwin in the playwright's older years too.

However, regardless of all the above, and many a night arguing about what Shaw was really saying in a given play with a professor I swear was whacked out on cocaine but wouldn't admit it, one thing I remember from Shaw's plays was the phrase,

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."

The quote is found Shaw's play, Man and Superman.

Now why does this matter in the world of cryptocurrency?

The fact is, we all want that big win in crypto. It's why we got involved in the first place. Just like stocks, we typically hope to catch that rocket that goes right to the moon, being one of the smart ones who got in at the floor and held on all the way to the top and riches galore. And the fact that it actually happened with Bitcoin and lot of other big tokens between 2019 and 2021 only adds to the belief that it will happen again.

Unfortunately, if we get what we really want again, it's probably going to wreck the system entirely. Rapid growth like what was seen in terms of value creation, attraction of the masses and then widespread fraud and wreckage is the kind of formula that really gets the attention of fiat banks and governments. No surprise, neither of those two are really interested in seeing a repeat performance of BTC to $60,000 in a year or so. It scared them as a viable alternative at the time to the traditional market which, if you extrapolate the risk, means all that money could be sucked out of their businesses and investment in mainstream corporations that essentially enjoy fiat protection. When you have a market that goes from under $1 trillion to $2.83 trillion market capitalization in a few months, that's not a laughing matter.

chart source: CoinMarketCap.com , February 5, 2023

Instead, the adoption of crypto as a long-term value generator for investors is probably best served with moderation. Growth at bit at a time with steady appreciation that is controlled, predictable and easy to adopt to is a far better reality for all of us. If you don't believe me, then ask yourself why multiple governments are running frantically to institute all types of controlling and limiting regulations on crypto use and related financial investment? For example, is it any wonder why the SEC continues to deny the creation of crypto ETFs? Anything condoned as allowable is seen right now as a gateway to "bad drugs." So we're caught in an regulatory Edwin Meese rampage because our Ronnie Reagan-esque politicians are yelping "Just Say No to Crypto," without knowing what they hell they are talking about.

And idiots like SBF didn't help.

Now, the reality is, crypto won't grow quietly. It's natural environment is to grow chaotically, without rules, and run amok like the wild wild West. And, as Shaw warned, we may very well get our "heart's desire" as it jacks up again. That will be a sad day if it happens from what I can see on the government landscape.