A tiny man who rocked America with Onions

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.

You want to learn something, anything?

Look back in history and it will surprise you just how eerily relevant it can be even in modern times.

With the advent of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Tech titans and startups, you get all sorts of happenings like Tulip Mania, recessions, Feds stepping in, market manipulations and so on.

Truth is, these things has been happening throughout history all along.

They just manifest in different forms over the different eras.

Did you know the U.S. government put forth the Onion Futures Act to make it illegal to trade onion futures.

Yep.

Of all things in the world, ONIONS.

Why?

It is the direct response to what Vincent Kosuga did.

In the 1950s, an onion farmer names Vincent, who was rather short at 5 foot 4, decided to start buying up all the onions in America.

Long story short, he cornered the ENTIRE onion market in 1955 but secretly stockpiling onions, buying it up from all other farmers, buying up futures contracts on onions being planted.

Essentially, at one point, he and his gang of friends, had total domination of the entire onion market in America.

That seems to be a huge problem right?

Sure it may just be onions, but when you have complete control over the supply of a single commodity that is readily used by every household, you have power beyond measure.

He manipulated prices, forced others to buy his onions (it was a ruthless monopoly at the point) and later dumped all the remaining onions in Chicago.

“He took what onions he had left in storage and trucked them to the Chicago Board of Trade, literally flooded the market and streets with onions. Onions, worthless at that point, were dumped into the Chicago River. This action devastated fellow onion farmers left with a worthless and perishable product. Bankruptcies and suicides were reported. Kosuga made millions of dollars.”

Brilliant farmer or madman?

Reminded me of Thanos.

History is literally littered with examples of greedy people manipulating the economy and markets.

It happened with Onions, cryptocurrencies and it will continue to happen.

Wherever money flows, you can bet greed will follow.

Control the supply and you control the market.

That is what gives value to most cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21M.

No matter what anyone does, the code is fixed and no more BTC will ever be made.

It will only get scarcer over time, and that restricted supply contributes to its rarity and value.

Tokenomics gets complicated quick, so let’s leave it for another day.

The crazy thing is that Vincent and his friends got away scott-free.

Shockingly, they didn’t break any law and there was nothing to prosecute.

I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.

Vincent went on to set up a restaurant “The Jolly Onion Inn” and work there as a chef.

And yes, I just googled it, The Jolly Onion is still running and doing fine in New York!

Gotta respect the hustle Vincent put in.

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Do you agree that history repeats itself?

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