Has he heard of Tether? It might be worth telling him that the entire cryptocurrency market it being propped up by 10 billion “dollars” of what is essentially Monopoly money.
If I create 100 billion FakeCoins and sell one to my grandmother for $10, suddenly FakeCoin has a 1 trillion dollar market cap. It doesn’t mean there’s anywhere near that much money actually in the market to support that valuation.
Doesn't that make it much worse? Only a certain amount of the tether is real, making it a tiny chunk, that's propping up a small chunk, that's propping up the large chunk.
If the tiny chunk goes, it all goes tumbling down?
There is zero money "in there" market cap for a non-backed currency is meaningless value. No amount of bitcoin buying will ever put money "into" anything. The money goes to whoever sells its just a trade.
Tether would account for 7.8% of all Bitcoin.
Not sure if that would count as being propped up. It's significant but not entirely propped up, there is a ton of real money in there too.