Earlier this week, Elon Musk made history by giving his full support to bitcoin (BTC) during a club stream. In a discussion about bitcoin and the GameStop debate with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Musk said: I’m late to the game, but I’m a bitcoin supporter. This comes days after Musk changed his Twitter profile and added Bitcoin to his bio.

Interestingly, Musk’s public support for bitcoin comes at a time when traditional financial markets have been openly caught cheating their own customers, with the Robinhood app at the center of that fraud. The richest man in the world even said he thought bitcoin was about to be massively taken over because of criminal behavior on the exchange.

GameStop Saga

For those unfamiliar with these events, the GameStop saga is a David and Goliath story that began with a community of online traders who undercut hedge funds on the subreddit r/Wallstreetbets – taking down billions of dollars in institutional short orders in the process. A short order is a type of order that allows investors to profit from the downfall of the company.

After retail investors discovered that hedge funds had hacked 150% of all public shares of GameStop – more shares than were available – a group of 2 million (now 8 million) Redditors discovered that the hedge funds that had hacked GameStop would lose billions if they bought shares instead of selling them. And that’s what happened. See you on the 29th. In January, the loss was $19.75 billion as information spreads through the Internet.

Once retail investors started winning, however, the long-term tentacles of centralized firms were able to stop the game altogether by freezing trading on major exchanges and trading infrastructure, allowing hedge funds to reposition themselves without losing everything.

Decentralization and the American Dream

Indeed, one of the greatest fictions of our time is the story of the free market. This concept embodies the American dream that anyone who chooses to follow their dreams can do so (at great personal risk). This includes the possibility of being rewarded (or punished) for participating in a financial game that must follow strict rules.

Whether it’s high-frequency trading, synthetic derivatives, infinite printing of money or a combination of the three, the stock market rewards a handful of insiders who cheat the system and play by different rules than everyone else.

It is important to understand that the problem is not the game itself – free markets are the most efficient way to transfer value properly, if done right. The point is that the rules only apply when institutional players win, otherwise they can be broken, suspended and revised, with minimal consequences for those with friends in high places.

This encouraged many Redditors to say they didn’t care about losing money because they knew the market was rigged, assuming the hedge funds lost billions. It all started with retaliation against those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis and the suffering that many endured as a result.

This Reddit post gives a good idea of the motivations behind millions of people uniting against corrupt financial conglomerates. Of course, there are other reasons, such as. B. Profiteering – no doubt in play, as the market has fed on its own self-reinforcing mechanisms. Anyway, the true colors of the system are now available to everyone.

And while the mainstream financial media have tried to steer the narrative in a certain direction, the truth is that this narrative is apolitical and exposes the fact that ordinary people have no claim to victory. Whatever its intent, the stock market is a means of perpetuating and exacerbating poverty in a fraudulent game that benefits only those who are already rich.

Beginning of the journey

But the journey does not end there, for there is a parallel system, not controlled by Wall Street or central banks, that is currently developing. With a market capitalization of over $1 trillion, cryptocurrencies are rapidly becoming the new frontier of financial markets, with no loyalty whatsoever.

Apart from the fact that it is a new technology that democratises markets, investors now have a very clear reason to leave the old system and move into the new one.

Bitcoin started this revolution 11 years ago, and it doesn’t stop there. A whole new financial ecosystem is being built from Ethereum, giving rise to a variety of decentralized financial products with different trade-offs and use cases.

This time last year, the capital invested in FFi products reached the $1 billion mark. Today, that number is approaching the $30 billion mark, according to DeFi Pulse.

Against this backdrop, the future of financial markets seems closer than ever.

This article does not contain investment advice. There are risks associated with all investments and business transactions, and readers should do their own research before making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect or represent those of Cointelegraph.

Christopher Attard, aka Chris on Crypto, is a journalist turned crypto currency analyst. After years of working in the events blockchain and traditional finance sectors, he now covers bitcoin in detail in the Mid-Week newsletter. Christopher also works with several small and medium-sized businesses in the region as a writer and content strategy consultant.

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