Key Takeaways
- Calacanis ranted against bitcoin calling it a futile investment, even though prices are climbing at the moment.
- U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $433 million on Sept. 18, led by Fidelity’s FBTC at $311 million.
- TAO, which Calacanis had postured as a 200x bet in March, is down about 24% while bitcoin gained 15%.
A Million Views and a Ratio
Calacanis, a popular angel investor and co-host of the All-In podcast, opened with “the dead cat continues to bounce,” and attached a one-year chart of BTC down 30.75%, with a cat emoji dropped in the middle.
The post was not a price call but rather a verdict on what bitcoin has slowly turned into, with Calacanis writing:
It’s a boring store of value, trusted as that — which is its biggest value. Institutions took BTC from punk rock to Muzak, and advocates went from pirates to suits in orange ties, awkwardly sharing cringe memes. If Bitcoin were going to reach mass adoption and an important use case, it does better than anyone else, it would have by now.
The thread closed with a string of analogies, comparing bitcoin to CDs in the age of Spotify, as well as a DVD in the age of Netflix.
The Replies Came Quick
Strategy’s top man, Michael Saylor, answered three hours later, saying:
Jason, you’ve watched bitcoin grow since 2011. It’s now a $1.6 trillion success and the world’s most valuable digital asset. Preserving wealth across generations is a bigger ambition than entertaining a dinner party. The orange tie stays.
The tie line drew more than 7,600 likes, about 4.6 times the original post. Saylor’s firm holds 845,050 BTC, so the “suits in orange ties” jab was never going to go unanswered.
Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, joined in on the party but kept her response sharp but curt. “Bitcoin is not a dead cat, Jason! It has many lives ahead,” Wood replied, before plugging Ark’s latest Bitcoin Brainstorm session on artificial intelligence (AI) and bitcoin.
Lastly, investor Fred Krueger went further, claiming that bitcoin has turned the corner. “This is not a dead cat bounce,” Krueger posted, arguing the last bull market started in December 2022 and ended 11 months ago at 7.3x.
What the Chart Leaves Out
Calacanis’ screenshot is accurate as far as it goes, as bitcoin’s price sits near $81,079, roughly 36% below its $126,080 peak from October 2025. However, the “boring” label is harder to square with the flow data.
U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) pulled in $433 million yesterday, with Fidelity’s FBTC taking $311 million and Blackrock’s IBIT $108 million. That was the same day as the dead cat post.
There is also Calacanis’ own track record this year. In March, Bitcoin.com News covered Calacanis’ case that Bittensor’s TAO could deliver a 200x rally from a $2.5 billion market cap. TAO closed at $336.60 on March 24 on Binance and trades near $262 today, down over 20%.
None of that settles the adoption argument, which was the real point of the post. Payment usage and user experience are fair targets, something bitcoin maximalists have spent years justifying.
