What If Your Whole Personality Depended on Low Interest Rates?

Worse—what if your entire social circle, your ideological shtick, your sense of meaning, was just a byproduct of a SoftBank write-down?

That’s the uncomfortable reality a lot of people are facing right now. We’ve spent the last decade living inside a simulation powered by cheap money, where everything went up and to the right because there was nowhere else for capital to go. Now the tide is going out, and a lot of people are realizing that their entire worldview was just a derivative of low interest rates.

The Boom/Bust Theology

Every cycle has its preachers. In times of easy money, Evangelists dominate. They preach the Abundance Gospel—the future is limitless, capital is infinite, and even if they’re wrong, they get to shill another day.

Then the crash comes, and the Apologetics take over. Their role? Surrender agency. “We didn’t fail—you weren’t sufficiently loyal.” These people don’t make for fun company during boom times, but they flourish in busts, usually burying themselves with their own apologias.

It’s a predictable cycle:

• Boom = Malinvestment.

• Bust = Capital reallocation, narrative shifts.

• Evangelists become Apologetics in downturns, but the reverse makes people suspicious. Nobody trusts a bear-turned-bull.

The smart money flips between these roles strategically. The dumb money just rides the wave and hopes for the best.

Tech, TradFi, and Saying the Quiet Part Loud

Tech and traditional finance (TradFi) have always mirrored each other, but with a key difference—TradFi understood subtlety. Where Wall Street used to whisper, Silicon Valley now shouts.

Tech used to promise a clean break from the old world, but now it just feels like an accelerated version of TradFi’s worst instincts, with the same old insider games but fewer safeguards. The venture-backed model of eternal growth never accounted for what happens when the money printer stops.

And the ruling class? They see this. That’s why we’re witnessing wildly successful/unsuccessful institutional hijack attempts—libertarian shamans and techno-utopians trying to steer the ship before it sinks. But the reality is that when the music stops, capital doesn’t seek utopia—it seeks shelter.

The Dark Road Ahead

Tech firms don’t do well in reverse. They can scale, but they can’t shrink gracefully. That’s why every downturn in tech feels like an identity crisis. The companies built for perpetual expansion suddenly face an existential question: what are we when we’re no longer growing?

And right now, crypto looks less like a revolution and more like a fee-sucking machine preying on retail. The “future of finance” pitch doesn’t sound as compelling when the biggest innovations are just new ways to front-run retail investors.

What Collapses First?

Boom times let everything work. Bust times remind people why the state exists—to enforce contracts, adjudicate fraud, and dictate terms.

So the real question is:

What fails first—crypto or the Westphalian nation-state model?

People love the idea of decentralization until they get rugged. Then they want a judge. They want enforcement. They want the boring but functional mechanics of a state that can make fraud actually carry consequences.

And that’s the tension at the heart of all of this: people want freedom in boom times and protection in busts. When capital is abundant, the state is a nuisance. When capital dries up, the state is a backstop.

The Play

Anti-fragility means getting stronger in downturns. Which sector can truly claim that in 2023? The ones that don’t depend on the perpetual motion machine of low rates.

Everything else? Best to wait for the fire sale.