The cover is not a curse; the cover is a symptom of a bubble.

Author: Kuri, Deep Tide TechFlow

In recent days, Bitcoin briefly reached $60,000, marking the largest single-day drop since the FTX collapse.

Michael Saylor's company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) holds 713,000 Bitcoins at an average price of $76,052. As of last night, the unrealized loss is $6.5 billion. The stock price has fallen from a high of $457 last year to $110, evaporating more than three-quarters of its value.

However, a year ago, Saylor graced the cover of the well-known magazine Forbes. The headline read:

The Bitcoin Alchemist. At that time, Bitcoin was priced at $104,000, and Saylor's net worth was $9.4 billion.

Now, a picture is circulating on Twitter that lines up three Forbes covers, with Bitcoin's candlestick chart layered underneath. However, each cover is precisely printed at the moment of a significant drop.

And these three individuals: one has been to prison, one is currently in prison, and the third has just lost $6.5 billion.

The cover, captured during a time of great excitement

The first crypto figure to appear on the Forbes cover was CZ.

In February 2018, Forbes published an issue titled "Crypto's Secret Billionaire Club," with CZ standing in the center, wearing a hoodie and exuding a streetwise vibe. The small print on the cover read:

From zero to billionaire in just 6 months.

At that time, Bitcoin had just fallen from nearly $20,000 at the end of 2017, hovering around $7,600. Forbes estimated CZ's net worth at least $1.1 billion. Binance had only been live for six months and was already the largest exchange by trading volume globally.

After the cover was released, Bitcoin briefly rebounded to $10,000. Then there was no further rebound.

By December 2018, Bitcoin had dropped to $3,156. From the day the cover was published, the decline was:

58%.

Everyone knows CZ's story afterward. In Forbes' 2025 global billionaire list, CZ's net worth is $62.9 billion, the highest in the crypto industry.

But he hasn't appeared on the cover again.

The second person to grace the Forbes cover was Sam Bankman-Fried.

In October 2021, Forbes released the 40th Forbes 400 list, with SBF as the cover star. Under 30 years old, with a net worth of $26.5 billion, he was the 41st richest in the U.S.

On the cover, he wore that iconic gray T-shirt, with curly hair, looking like a college student who just pulled an all-nighter playing League of Legends.

The tone of that magazine issue, looking back now, seems very surreal. Forbes called him "the most powerful person in the crypto industry," stating that he was building an exchange while donating to charity, a blend of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

When the cover was released, Bitcoin was around $60,000, just a step away from its then-historical high of $69,000.

Thirteen months later, FTX collapsed.

SBF misappropriated over $8 billion of customer funds to cover the losses of his other company, Alameda Research. In November 2022, a wave of withdrawals led to FTX's inability to meet obligations, transforming from the third-largest exchange globally to a bankrupt entity within a week. Bitcoin plummeted from $20,000 to $16,000.

In the end, SBF was arrested in his luxurious apartment in the Bahamas.

All seven charges were upheld, resulting in a 25-year sentence. Forbes later created a "30 Under 30 Hall of Shame," with SBF prominently featured.

From cover to handcuffs:

13 months.

The third is Michael Saylor.

On January 30, 2025, Forbes featured him on the cover with the title "The Bitcoin Alchemist." Bitcoin had just surpassed $100,000, and Saylor's net worth had skyrocketed from $1.9 billion the previous year to $9.4 billion, nearly a fivefold increase. His company MicroStrategy's stock price had risen 700% in a year and had just been included in the Nasdaq 100 index.

A detail recorded in Forbes' article noted:

On New Year's Eve, Saylor hosted a 500-person party at his estate in Miami. Dancers waved Bitcoin orange light balls, and outside was a 154-foot yacht named Usher, responsible for bringing institutional investors and crypto industry bigwigs in.

At that time, Saylor told Forbes:

"We placed a crypto reactor in the middle of the company to draw in capital and then spin it. Volatility drives everything." This statement was, of course, sincere. Saylor's alchemy, to put it simply, was just one thing: issuing bonds to buy coins.

When the Forbes cover was released, Bitcoin was at $104,000. Today, one year and six days later, it is at $63,000. The decline is:

40%.

Saylor stated in a financial report conference call that Strategy has built a "digital fortress."

The last crypto mogul to call his company a "fortress" was SBF. That was in June 2022, and five months later, FTX went bankrupt.

The cover is both praise and a curse

There is an old concept on Wall Street called the "magazine cover indicator":

When a trend appears on the cover of a mainstream magazine, that trend has often reached its peak.

The reasoning is simple. Forbes editors are not prophets; like all retail investors, they only notice a story when it is at its most exciting.

The moment a magazine feels "someone in a certain industry deserves to be on the cover" is precisely when market enthusiasm is at its peak.

The cover is not a curse; the cover is a symptom of a bubble.

However, there is a brief exception to this rule.

In March last year, Sun Yuchen appeared on the Forbes cover with the title "The Crypto Billionaire Who Helped the Trump Family Make $400 Million."

When the cover was released, Bitcoin was at $87,000, and instead of collapsing, it rose all the way to $126,000 in October, a historical high.

Did the curse fail?

Not entirely. When Sun Yuchen appeared on the cover, it was only two months after Saylor's. One cover in January, another in March; the frequent appearances of crypto figures on mainstream magazine covers signal that the narrative of the entire industry has heated up to the point where even Forbes editors feel one issue is not enough.

When covers start to appear in clusters, looking back in hindsight, there may be a checklist of symptoms at the peak of a bull market:

Forbes releases a cover, taxi drivers talk about crypto, relatives ask how to open an account… if two out of these three signals appear, it’s time to reconsider your position.

So, the real question is not "Is the Forbes cover accurate?" but rather:

When everyone around you is telling the same story, when that story is so good that even those who don’t trade crypto have heard of it, when mainstream media starts to deify a figure in the industry…

Are you the one still buying, or the one already selling?

Bull markets do not end in panic. Bull markets end on the cover.

Only, the big shots on the cover can change, but the long bear market is always on my tab.

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