Alex Jones pinned his colors to the Bitcoin mast this week during an interview with Max Keiser, but this is the last thing that the cryptocurrency industry needs. Bitcoin is in the middle of a PR battle as it seeks to legitimize itself as a genuine asset, so to now have a loudmouthed conspiracy theorist like Jones promoting it is catnip to those who like to denigrate cryptocurrencies.
Alex Jones has capitulated. After 10 years of watching the #Bitcoin bubble inflate, at $10,000 per coin he thinks now’s the time to urge his listeners to buy. This is how manias end. Greed overwhelms reason as people once too sensible to buy join the party just as it’s ending.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 17, 2020
Bitcoin’s Unwanted Attention
Bitcoin has its fair share of celebrity supporters, from the Winklevoss twins to William Shatner, but none of them courts as much controversy as Alex Jones. At a time when Bitcoin is arguably the most respected it has been in its 11-year history, to have someone as discredited as Jones publicly backing it could not have come at a worse time.
Jones is famous not just for spouting all kinds of unsubstantiated nonsense ranging from the government’s supposed possession of “weather weapons” to the famous ‘Pizzagate’ scandal, but also for pedaling worthless junk such as colloidal silver toothpaste and muscle mass builders. He even managed to crowbar two sales pitches for this toothpaste into his interview with Keiser, using it to back up his claim that he doesn’t sell anything he doesn’t understand “backwards and forwards”.
Clearly Jones feels understands Bitcoin well enough now to sell his audience on the concept, which puts it in line with his toothpaste and muscle mass builder (he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that colloidal silver can be damaging to health and has no benefits whatsoever).
This could present a problem for Bitcoin’s image, because it will be all too easy for mainstream media to lump the two together to somehow prove that Bitcoin is favored by his demographic.
Jones’ Mixed Messages Could be a Blessing
There is a ray of hope however – Jones has previous when it comes to Bitcoin comments. Jones has claimed that in 2011 he was asked to talk up Bitcoin on his show by George Soros in return for $5 million, but he declined. However, three years later he did just that, announcing that his show, InfoWars, would start accepting Bitcoin. Jones stated at the time that he had waited until 2014 to embrace the technology because he “didn’t want to get involved with something until a lot of the bumps had been worked out of it”.
Yet, here he is six years later he is telling his audience that he is finally ready to promote Bitcoin to them after ten years of waiting because he didn’t want to “steer my listeners wrong”. In the interim his site had quietly dropped Bitcoin acceptance, neatly helping him press the reset button on his Bitcoin acceptance virginity.
At the same time as Jones’ second promotion of Bitcoin, his “good friend” Max Keiser also quadrupled his Bitcoin prediction (before sampling some “amazing” colloidal silver toothpaste). You really couldn’t script it.
More Flip Flops Than a Beach Hut
So in summary, Jones thinks that Bitcoin is finally ready for the mainstream (again), yet he has stopped accepting it in his online store. He also believes that “cryptocurrencies are the future”, yet he thinks it’s being run by “globalists” (did we forget to mention that one?).
Perhaps, after all, Bitcoin is not the one we have to worry about here.
