What a 100-year-old shoe-shiner can teach you about Bitcoin
Shoe-shiners and discount barbers taught me more about bitcoin than a thousand economists.
OPINION BY RON GIBORI, ENTREPRENEUR
AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR, IDEA BOOTH @RONGIBORI
INC.
JAN 26, 2018

[snip]

Recently, I went to my usual barbershop. I was chatting with my barber as he gave me the usual cut. Then, the conversation flowed to the topic of cryptocurrencies.

He explained to me, as he tidied my sides, his insights on Bitcoin and why he was getting into some altcoins. I don’t know if he notices but this gave me goosebumps. It had dawned on me that I was reliving an old cautionary parable of the business world.

The Story of Joe Kennedy and the Shoeshine Boy

What I was eerily reminded of is a Wall Street urban legend involving a shoeshine boy and Joseph Kennedy Sr. Yes, of that Kennedy family. This Kennedy is the father of our 35th President; he’s the patriarch of Camelot. As a young man in the early 20th Century, he began building his family fortune in the stock market and in commodities trading. He also went on to make a killing during and after the prohibition by securing distribution rights for Scotch and other British spirits. Clearly, he was a man of foresight.

As the story goes, one day in 1929, Joe Kennedy is getting his shoes shined. The boy began to give stock tips as he polished Kennedy’s oxfords. In that moment, it struck Joe that he needed to leave the market. He reasoned, famously, if shoeshine boys have an opinion on stocks, the market is clearly, dangerously popular. Supposedly, he pulled out not long before the stock market crash, which led to what we know today as the Great Depression.