Opinion: What the crypto crash says about Pierre Poilievre’s judgment

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Con­ser­v­a­tive MP Pierre Poilievre ris­es dur­ing Ques­tion Peri­od in the House of Com­mons on Par­lia­ment Hill in Ottawa on June 15.Justin Tang/The Cana­di­an Press

From the moment he entered the race to become the next leader of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty of Cana­da, Pierre Poilievre has been up front about the job he real­ly wants.

“I’m Pierre Poilievre and I’m run­ning to be prime min­is­ter,” he says in cam­paign videos. Becom­ing the new leader of the CPC would be a mere stop along the way.

Yes, prime min­is­ter is the job he wants, with all the atten­dant seri­ous­ness and respon­si­bil­i­ty the posi­tion demands. But since the out­set of his cam­paign, Mr. Poilievre has most­ly invit­ed ques­tions about his judg­ment and suit­abil­i­ty for such an office with a series of bizarre pol­i­cy pro­nounce­ments. Some­how, he hasn’t real­ly had to answer for many of his more out­landish posi­tions, such as his vow to fire the Gov­er­nor of the Bank of Canada.

How­ev­er, he can and should be ques­tioned today about his enthu­si­asm for, if not out­right pro­mo­tion of, cryptocurrency.

Ear­li­er this spring, Mr. Poilievre made head­lines when he praised the con­tro­ver­sial dig­i­tal-mon­ey sys­tem. It was the answer for Cana­di­ans who want­ed to “opt out of infla­tion,” he claimed. After all, he was a bit­coin investor himself.

The pre­sump­tive favourite to win the CPC lead­er­ship has been much qui­eter about cryp­tocur­ren­cy these days. I won­der why?

Per­haps it’s because the cryp­to world is implod­ing, just as War­ren Buf­fett and his part­ner, Char­lie Munger, had sug­gest­ed it might. Two of the history’s great­est and most prof­itable investors have been down on bit­coin and the cryp­tocur­ren­cy indus­try almost from its incep­tion. Mr. Buf­fett famous­ly said he wouldn’t pay US$25 for all the bit­coin in the world. Mr. Munger was even more con­demn­ing, say­ing that in his life he tried to avoid doing any­thing that was evil, stu­pid and made him look bad in com­par­i­son to oth­ers: “Bit­coin does all three,” he said.

The para­noid style in Con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics has deep roots

Pierre Poilievre’s good for­tune: His sup­port­ers don’t see his hypocrisy

This week, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said cryp­tocur­ren­cy was based on the “greater fool the­o­ry.” This is the notion that investors can make mon­ey on some­thing rel­a­tive­ly worth­less, as long as there are peo­ple will­ing to bid high­er for it.

Recent cryp­to loss­es have been esti­mat­ed to total as much as US$1.5‑trillion. The val­ue of Bit­coin con­tin­ued to tum­ble this week, with trad­ing down as much as 8 per cent to around $20,000. In Novem­ber, it was trad­ing at almost $65,000. The total val­ue of the cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket has dropped by 65 per cent since last fall, and many ana­lysts believe the floor under­neath it is still collapsing.

One con­cern amid all this is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that many Cana­di­ans bought what Mr. Poilievre was sell­ing ear­li­er this spring. And why would that be a stretch? The man, after all, is “run­ning to be prime min­is­ter.” Sure­ly, he wouldn’t reck­less­ly pro­mote some­thing that was inher­ent­ly risky.

I under­stand the allure Mr. Poilievre holds to many dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple out there, with his spec­tac­u­lar promis­es to get rid of the so-called “gate­keep­ers” alleged­ly ruin­ing the lives of so many. Gate­keep­ers such as the Bank of Cana­da, which Mr. Poilievre reg­u­lar­ly trash­es. But the same gate­keep­er, it turns out, did issue cau­tions about this very situation.

Who looks stu­pid now, Mr. Poilievre?

Some peo­ple are sug­gest­ing that the cryp­to crash is no dif­fer­ent than the over­all stock mar­ket crash. That may be the case, but if Mr. Poilievre had been hard-sell­ing a stock that dis­in­te­grat­ed in val­ue, we would expect him to be held account­able. We would antic­i­pate he would artic­u­late just how he felt about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Cana­di­ans were seduced by his warm embrace of a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, plopped mon­ey down to buy it and were now fac­ing excru­ci­at­ing finan­cial loss­es as a result.

The real­i­ty is that much of the cryp­to indus­try appeared almost overnight, built on a foun­da­tion of dreams and wish­es and fairy­tale dust. Hol­ly­wood actors such as Matt Damon urged peo­ple to buy in with catchy slo­gans such as “for­tune favours the brave.” Of course, it doesn’t mat­ter to Hol­ly­wood celebri­ties that the entire busi­ness mod­el large­ly looks like a Ponzi scheme.

The cryp­to pro­mot­ers bragged about nev­er being gov­erned by watch­dogs. It sounds won­der­ful, until you real­ize this makes the indus­try rife for fraud, scams and gen­er­al abuse.

Mr. Poilievre has said that as prime min­is­ter, he would nor­mal­ize cryp­tocur­ren­cies to “decen­tral­ize” the econ­o­my and reduce the influ­ence of gate­keep­ers such as the cen­tral bank. He hasn’t said what he’d do if the indus­try col­lapsed in the meantime.

The man who would be prime min­is­ter needs to be asked a few hard ques­tions about his cryp­to fas­ci­na­tion – and what it says about the kind of judg­ment one needs to hold the most dif­fi­cult job in Canada.

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