Look, no one knows what is going to happen with crypto. If you believe any of those crypto-charlatans, then you're the sucker in the room. Hey, maybe Bitcoin will go to Pluto by 2030, but how about right now? Bitcoin hit a new low for 2018 and it's trading at similar numbers from the end of the summer of 2017. That's an important date in the poker world, because it seemed like the poker community was all-in on crypto by the end of the 2017 WSOP. If you weren't invested into Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other shit coins by the start of the series... you were on the bandwagon by the end of the series.

Unless you've been in a coma the last couple of weeks, the crypto world has been watching the market tank. Since the end of September, Bitcoin prices plunged. In early September, Bitcoin traded at $7,000 for the last time. Between mid-September and Halloween, Bitcoin prices stayed within the $6,500 level (never really straying below $6,300 or above $6,800). Then things got weird in November.

• Prices started to trickle downward in early November before a correction on November 14. Bitcoin dropped $600 and dived below $6K. Within a week, the $5K level busted.

• On November 19, Bitcoin took another beating. Prices plunged from $5,600 to $4,800.

• A week later, the $4K ceiling busted and priced headed to $3,850 before a couple brave/foolish souls bought the perceived dip and prices went north of $4K for a couple hopeful days at the end of November.

• A week into December, prices headed south once again. By December 7, Bitcoin hit their year low when prices fell to under $3,500.

Ethereum prices took a real bad beating and I'm not talking about a love spat between Ike and Tina Turner. We're talking about an old fashioned mob beat down. In January of 2018, Ethereum flirted with prices around $1,420. It dipped below $100 today.

Yup, Ethereum headed south of $100 and dropped 50% in value since November 1 when it traded around $200.

Over the last eight months, a portion of professional players and other fringe poker people invested their winnings into crypto. Some even stepped aside to pursue other interests while allowing their crypto investments to give themselves the freedom away from poker. Sure, some investors started crypto poker sites. Other ventured into the gaming, or sportsbetting side of crypto. Heck, even Doug Polk started a news site and pivoted to creating crypto content after burning out of poker.

For the first time since the online poker boom, there was a lot of excitement and uncertainty. But good uncertainty. Everyone knew what the boom was boom was like when money rained down from the sky at the Rio Casino during the first couple WSOPs in their new home away from the ubiquitous urine-stench of downtown Las Vegas.

A year ago in late December, Bitcoin flirted with the $20,000 level. The poker world could not shut up about their accession to the top riding the second boom inside of fifteen years.

Hey, if I was a poker player who had bought a $1 million in Bitcoin when it was like $2K and they were all of a sudden sitting on 500 BTC worth $10 million, of course I would get the fuck out of dodge and as far away from poker as possible. With money comes freedom, right?

Heck, I invested some crypto and I felt like a super baller. When I sold off, I felt guilty and greedy because I wanted more. Now, I have survivor's guilt because I got out before all hell broke loose. It felt like I was one of two people who survived a plane crash. Hey, even a small profit is still a profit. But compared to the bloodbath for everyone else, it feels bittersweet.

I must admit, a year ago, when crypto flirted with $20K barrier, I had monetary orgies inside of my head. I kept counting how much I would make when BTC hit $50,000… which at the rate it was going, would hit by the end of 2018. I couldn't wait to cash out and buy a cabin in Colorado, a brownstone in Brooklyn, a loft in Vancouver (to grind online poker), and a couple of small farms in Northern California to grow marijuana. And that was just with selling a small portion of my BTC. With all my Ethereum free monies, I was going to buy a couple of exotic animals and try to enter a monkey into the WSOP Main Event, just to tilt all the suits at Caesars.

But then something happened. Well, life happened and kicked everyone in the junk, or junkette. Or the nether regions of gender neutral people. Whatever you got down below had to hurt after the plunge.

As soon as prices hit their peak and started to roll back, you got the sick feeling in your stomach that the fix was in. It was like watching the third act of Trading Places, except you were the Duke Brothers and you were about to lose everything while Eddie Murphy gobbled up all the frozen concentrate orange juice contracts for pennies on the dollar.

Crypto prices started their descent in early 2018. It was gradually at first before we chose to notice the trend. Any idiot with a ruler can see that there's a huge downward slope trending from left to right which means that everyone is about to go busto if they are dumb enough to HODL TO ZERO.

So, I don't have a marijuana farm, nor a cabin in Aspen, and I don't have a balla loft in Canada, nor a brownstone in hipster central in NYC. But I still have faith in blockchain technology, whatever it really is, and I bought a book (Crypto for Dummies) about it and I promise it will get read before St. Patrick's Day 2019.

Every day people ask me, is it a good time to buy crypto?

Of course it is, I say, especially if you think prices will go up. And if it goes lower, then you're not the biggest sucker in the world. Heck, there's one born every few minutes. People waste money on far worst shit in their lives. [DISCLAIMER: Never take financial advice from a click-bait gambling site.]

As far as gambling goes, there are far worst ways to lose your bankroll. Like buying into a $10K tournament when you have $10,001 to your name, or losing your shirt betting the Fortune Bonus in Pai Gow, or shooting dice until you max out your credit cards, or trying to hit 10-team parlays at the SuperBook in Vegas.

And don't get me started about slot addicts. Sheesh. I mean, crypto dweebs look like Goldman Sachs vice presidents compared to uber-degen slot junkies.

So, about those poker players who invested in crypto and retired? Yeah, they'll be back to the daily grind. See most of them soon at the local card room where there will be no shortage of crypto bad beat stories.

And yes, I'll listen to your crypto bad beat stories for 0.01 BTC.

Some of the wiser poker crypto wizards and other savvy traders pivoted into the cannabis world. Hey, cannabis stocks were hip this year, but you already missed that boat if you're thinking about blazing up, firing up a Phish bootleg, and buying weed stocks. If crypto was soooo 2017, then canna-stocks were soooo summer of 2018.

So, what's next on the horizon? I heard there's a great way to get rich quick. Lindsay Lohan opened up her own beach club in Greece. I know what you're thinking... "Put down the torch and walk away slowly from the dab rig!"... you're not going to invest in anything involved with Lindsay Lohan, especially a club in Mykonos. Okay, you have a point and I would never actually delve into the shadowy world of the club business, especially overseas. But, you could always boof a brick of blow into Greece and sell it to LiLo for inflated prices.

Maybe you're one of those tin foil hat people that think Jamie Dimon and his cabal of crypto crooks are imploding the market for their own financial gain. Maybe it's not the banksters. Maybe it's the Queen and the lizard people. Maybe it's Chinese hackers. Maybe it's Satoshi? Maybe it's Satoshi's evil twin Tony. Maybe it's the frozen head of Steve Jobs. Who knows?

Is there a dip? Is this the dip? Buy the dip, right? But what if you bought the dip already. Like fourteen dips ago? Then keep buying. It's gotta go up sometime right?

I recently talked to a homeless drunk about a few things including religion and crypto prices. He scoffed at the fearmongers, but he believed in the technology and predicted that the bag holders will become the next billionaires. I told him it takes balls to hold the bag through the bleakness of winter while surrounded by frozen corpses. That's when he blew a snot rocket and sang, "HODL TO ZERO!"

But hey, crypto is way more fun than poker. Right? Forget about mining for crypto. You know the world has been turned upside down when you can make more money cranking out dope crypto memes than running a bitcoin mining operation.