Is the AI bubble about to burst? | Henrik Zeberg

So, don't think you're special. Don't think that you know more than we do. These are some of the statements from the Law of Jante. And I think that is dangerous. I think that is actually driving a common thinking that can bring, you know, hazard outcomes. And today I want to talk about something that may be a little more dry than what we have just heard, which is Bitcoin, crypto, bubbles, financial bubbles. "Bitcoin is a venereal disease." "Bitcoin is rat poison squared." These are not my words. These are the words of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, two of the most prominent investors this world has ever seen. Most successful investors. Five million percent in returns over their investment careers, speaks for itself. So when they talk and speak, and unfortunately, Mr. Munger is dead, but when they did talk or when they they'd speak, we have to listen. And I definitely listen. Bitcoin has, of course, had a fantastic journey and we all need to praise, of course, the amazing returns that that has given over the years. But when we hear about it, of course, we have to wonder why are the two most successful investors in the world talking about it like rat poison? And I can tell this personal story. In 2016, I was close to investing in Bitcoin. Actually buying around maybe 150,000 dollar's worth of Bitcoin, which today would have had a value of around 20 to 25 million dollars. I didn't do it, I didn't get to it because of the difficulties in actually getting the money transferred from a bank to a wallet back then. But one of my friends actually did enter, did take the crypto plunge, and he entered Ethereum, which is another crypto, at a time when it was at 50 cents. And he held on to it until the moment it actually reached around 1,400 dollars. So 2,800 times. And he's not the only one that has done well when it comes to crypto. We've all heard of these Lambo guys, or people that have jumped into something that seems ridiculous, only to see it go up 100 times. I don't know about you, but I definitely can feel the FOMO. FOMO, what is that? FOMO, fear of missing out. Well fear of missing out is something that is very deep in the human mind. It goes back to the times as we lived as hunters and gatherers in groups. Being part of the group ensured food, security, mating, and being outside was dangerous. And that's something we have taken on to us today, also. If we're not part of the group, if we don't think alike, like, the Jante law is also kind of commending. Well then it's dangerous. So fear of missing out, FOMO, is something that is deeply in us, and is something that can make us maybe come up to conclusions or do things we don't necessarily would do if we were just ourselves. And this is not something just maybe I, as a stupid person, or people that don't understand things, do. Sir Isaac Newton is probably one of the most intelligent people that has ever lived. And in the 1700s, he actually were a victim of FOMO. So that was the time of the South Sea bubble. Newton invested in, saw his stock rise, earned a good money, got out, but saw his friends actually staying in and becoming even more rich. He FOMO-ed in, invested more, actually a lot. And the bubble burst. He famously said afterwards, "I can calculate the movement of heavenly bodies, but not of the madness of men." So FOMO can make us do things we don’t want, that can be against what we actually -- what is good for us. And that is actually also very visible, that crowd dynamics that is a part of, when we talk about what is called the smoked room experiment. This is an experiment from 1968, where a group of applicants to a job is invited in to a room. Eight of the nine applicants are actors. They are told to stay seated, just work on their assignment no matter what happens. One person is a real applicant. All of a sudden, while they do their application, smoke comes through the door. When there are other people, the other eight actors are in the room, 90 percent of the time people stay seated and do not report on the smoke, on the potential hazardous event that is unfolding. But when that person, the applicant is alone, 75 percent of them got up and actually reported on the smoke. So crowd dynamics is something that changes the way we think. And that is what actually also is part of why we see financial bubbles developing. If we look at financial bubbles, then we saw one of the largest financial bubbles back in the 1630s, which was called the Tulip Mania. It was at a time where the tulip had been introduced from the Ottoman Empire, and for some reason, it became the center of attention. People start buying it, and market rose up, and people kept buying this tulip or the tulips, not because of its utility, but because they thought they could sell it off the next day to earn money. The bubble burst at the peak of that hype, of that mania, and that's just to explain how mad it can become. One tulip bulb had the price of a house at that time. Then we can fast forward to the 1840s Britain. And this was at a time where a fantastic technology came out. Steam engine, the locomotive, promised to change the world, and it certainly did. But the thing was, everybody thought that this is now changing ways, also, we will earn money, and everybody FOMO-ed in. Thousands of companies rose up, were established. People thought this is a cannot-lose opportunity. And again, we saw how a bubble burst, and a lot of people actually lost money. And this was still because, even though there was a really fantastic technology that changed the world. We can then fast-forward to the roaring '20s and try and imagine, that was the time where we have just seen the end of the first World War. We saw the electrification, we saw the technology of a car. We saw radio coming out. Try and imagine sitting there in your silent home, all of a sudden you can turn on the radio and you can hear people speaking to you. That was quite something. Turning on the light, getting yourself into the car and driving instead of having horses. We think we have seen leap in technology. Well, I can tell you, that was special. And what happened then? Again, we saw people FOMO into it. Because this is, of course, a new world, this new time, forget about the old world. And a massive bubble unfolded. Again it burst. And as we probably know, as we heard from school, we saw the stock market crashing, we saw the large depression in the US and elsewhere, because of this FOMO. And then we can fast forward to something we may be able to remember, at least some of us with a little more gray hair. So that was dot-com bubble. And this was at a time where another new technology came out, just like the steam engine and the radio. And now we had the internet, and everybody again FOMO-ed in. What's not to like? Fantastic opportunity. The world is new, new economy, they called it. And it's no longer about how much you earn. It's about how much you spend on marketing. And there was a fantastic support to this. Wall Street were all behind it, media were all behind it. There were media darlings like Webvan and Pets.com. So the media were all over this. Everybody was praising this new, fantastic and brave world. Did the internet change the world? Absolutely. But is that the same as a promise that you cannot see that the market can crash, or that people get exuberant? No. So now I want to talk about Bitcoin. Because I think Bitcoin is the very definition of this financial bubble we have at this point. AI and crypto bubble. But before I do that, now we talked about Jante, but I'm from Denmark. In Denmark, we have a famous fairytale teller, Hans Christian Andersen, who had the story or told the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” And this is the story, for the ones who don't know it already, of course, this is about the emperor who lived in his empire. And one day, two fraudsters came to town. And those were tailors. They would be able to make the most fantastic clothes that he had ever seen, so he could stand out really nice. He was very vain. And he, of course, got intrigued. There was, however, this one caveat to it. That if people were especially stupid or were not good at what they do, they would not be able to see the clothes. And the emperor thought that was interesting, and he sent them off and they started to work, the two fraudsters, on their looms, weaving and making the clothes. The emperor got impatient and sent off his best advisor and said, "Can you go to check on how it's going?" The advisor came to the fraudsters and couldn't see the clothes. And he thought, "What is that going to tell of me if I can't see the clothes? I'm not going to do that." So he went back to the emperor, said, “Oh, that’s amazing, sir. You love it, it's fantastic." And then the emperor thought, “OK, I’ve got to go see myself.” And he went. And again, he couldn't see the clothes. And he thought, "What is that going to tell my people about who I am?" Oh, sorry about that. There we go. "And how I run the country." So what he did was, again, like his advisor, to simply just keep silent. And the day came where he was supposed to walk down the street, as we do when we get new clothes, we like to show it off. And the fraudsters helped him put on the clothes and he walked down the street. And everybody, all in the crowd, were saying how fantastic this was, especially the elite. "Wow. Amazing garment." Until a little boy cried out, "But why isn't he wearing any clothes?" Now why am I saying that? What is the moral? Of course, that sometimes it takes an innocent mind, naive mind maybe, to point out what is obvious. And now I want to turn to Bitcoin, because, as I said, we currently have the largest financial bubble that we have ever seen. I have just told you about four massive bubbles, and I'm claiming we have one that is even bigger. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger had a way of looking at that. That is the market capitalization to GDP ratio. Let's just put it there. The higher it is, the bigger the bubble. In 1929, 89 was the number there. 2000, massive bubble. We laughed at it afterwards. It was 136 percent. 2007, it was at 107 percent. These are the two lumps you see there. This is where we are today, 226 percent. And we can just look at some of the businesses that are doing well today. As I said, a crypto and AI bubble. Nvidia, Palantir. It looks like the Tulip bubble to me. I mean, you don't need to know much about finance to see that 94,000 percent in a matter of 15 years. That's pretty frothy. Nasdaq, Bitcoin. Bitcoin is up 1.2 million percent since 2012. So now people say, yeah, but, you know, it can keep going up. Well if you have a bubble and it bursts and you can see that Nasdaq and Bitcoin are following each other very, very closely, and you also know that Nasdaq actually tumbled, crashed 85 percent after 2001, in that massive bubble that is way smaller than what we have today. Now guess what is going to happen to Bitcoin. When Bitcoin crashes much, much more, every time we see a decline in Nasdaq. I say Bitcoin is going to crash by 95 percent. That's not what we hear when we hear the media, the academia, the crowd and the emperor’s new clothes talking about this. So ... And then we also have a situation where we have a slowdown in the economy. It's very visible. We don't need to know much about economy to see these rounding bottoms. This is unemployment level in the US. Every time they move up, you get a recession. A recession is where bubbles burst. And when a bubble bursts, you're going to hurt if you have those assets that are crashing. So let's say I'm right. We have a recession coming, and Nasdaq dropped by 85 percent in 2001. And we have a larger bubble this time, much larger. What is going to happen if the economy falls into a recession and we see Nasdaq crashing, in this AI bubble we have? I say Bitcoin, crypto, is a massive bubble. It doesn't take away that there is a technology just like in the locomotive, steam engine, and also what we saw with the radio and so on. But it's not the same as guaranteed returns. And I think we're going to see this in a not too distant future. It's a bubble that is going to burst. I think Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are right. Bitcoin, crypto, is like a venereal disease. Thank you. (Applause)