Friday Crypto Pulse: Markets Defy Gravity as Bulls Charge Ahead

Green candles dominate the charts as Bitcoin smashes through resistance levels—just another manic Friday in crypto land.

Altcoins ride the wave: Ethereum flips $4K while Solana whales stack positions. Even the memecoins are mooning (for now).

Wall Street analysts scramble to justify the rally—turns out their ’bear market’ predictions were about as accurate as a Celsius balance sheet.

If this were the price chart of a stock, WOULD you short it? Our standard of living, as measured by world GDP per capita, has been a nearly straight line up.

Directionally correct:

One of the greatest economic success stories of recent decades is one of the least appreciated. Poland’s per capita GDP has more than tripled since 1990, but a recent survey found that only 29% of Poles think their country is headed in the right direction.

Poverty is less common:

The global poverty rate, measured as the share of the world’s population living on less than $2.15 in 2017 dollars, fell to an all-time low of 8.5% in 2024 — down from 38% as recently as 1990.

India’s great escape:

The Economist reports that “extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels,” citing the most recent data from the World Bank — only 1% of India’s households fell below the international poverty line in 2024, down from nearly 50% in 1995. That is such good news, I think it’s worth repeating: Nearly half of India lived in extreme poverty as recently as 1995 and now, almost none do. Incredible — especially considering that 40% of India’s workforce is still employed on farms. (Note: The World Bank’s chart above only goes to 2021.)

Contra Piketty:

The Cato Institute finds that most measures of inequality have rapidly declined in recent decades, with infant mortality and air quality being two unfortunate exceptions. In the case of infant mortality, however, the news is good overall; it’s just that the developed world has continued to improve faster than the emerging world.

Make sure your retirement account is fully funded:

United Nations data shows that average life expectancy ROSE to an all-time high of 73.3 years in 2024 and is expected to keep rising. In the mythologized decade of the 1950s, global life expectancy was less than 50 years. Going further back, the historian Thomas Cahill estimates that in civilization’s golden era of Ancient Rome, only 4% of men lived past 50 (and “far fewer” women did).

Americans are upwardly mobile:

Yes, the US middle class has been shrinking — but only because people are getting richer. Mark Perry cites census data showing that the percentage of middle-income households is down because so many of them are now high-income households. Better yet: Low-income households have been moving up to the middle.  

Contra Malthus:

Thomas Malthus famously reasoned that agricultural production couldn’t possibly keep up with population growth, but the Cato Institute explains that “the more resources we consume, the more we have.” It’s not just about fold, though: “Humans, especially those living in the countries on the frontier of innovation, create knowledge that allows us to grow our resources well in excess of the resources that we consume.”

Traveling is optimistic:

The US government may be turning its back on the world, but Americans are not — a record 21.8% of Americans say they plan to get out and see what the rest of the world is like.

Sustainability is more affordable:

Solar panels have gotten so cheap in Europe that they’re being used as garden fences (simply because they’re cheaper than regular garden fences). In Spain, the electric grid recently recorded its first weekday of 100% renewable energy

Stuff is getting cheaper too:

The “time price of goods” — i.e., how many hours of blue collar labor it takes to buy something — has fallen nearly 81% since 1971 (the year the US abandoned the Gold standard). The time price of power drills, for example, has fallen 93.8%! The full list includes many other garage and mancave necessities, like an 81% reduction in the cost of a mini-fridge (to keep your beers cold, of course). What a glorious time to be a man in this world.

Technology spreads quickly:

Recent US history shows that when big new things are invented, it’s not long before nearly everyone has them. (It’s only slightly longer until we start complaining about them.)

We don’t hear enough about these success stories because they tend to happen slowly — “there’s no equivalent of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 for good news,” as Morgan Housel puts it.

But the good news adds up over time.

Vaclav Smil notes, for example, that in 1800 it took 10 minutes of human labor to produce one kilogram of wheat, and in 2021, it took only two seconds.

A decline of 99.7% in the time price of food is very good news, but it doesn’t make for very good headlines, because most of us won’t click on it. 

But we don’t have to be slaves to our evolutionary instincts — next time you see some good news, give it a read.

We’ll all be better off for it.

Have a great weekend, optimistic readers.

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