In one of the oddest stories I’ve encountered in recent times, a ‘bitcoin astrologer’ has been accused of accepting kickbacks from Celsius Network to post favourable content for the disgraced, bankrupt crypto lender to her 237,000 Twitter followers.
Maren Alman’s YouTube videos use astrology readings to make bitcoin and ether price predictions, but even she was unable to predict that spectacular collapse that left thousands of Celsius Network users billions of dollars out of pocket.
“My error was trusting Celsius,” she recently told CoinDesk, adding that her Celsius promotions were akin to “me doing a fashion ad for a company”.
Her US$15,000-per-month contract with Celsius was uncovered in newly surfaced court documents.
Bitcoin and astrology, together at last – Photo: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarenAltman
In her defence, she made no predictions on the price of Celsius’ CEL token- she merely lent her name to the lender.
Uncovered is also a heavy word- She listed Celsius as an “affiliate” in the relevant videos.
We can, and should, argue the murky ethics that live at the cross-section of financial advice and paid promotions, something that gets far less coverage than it should.
But what of using star signs to make cryptocurrency predictions?
I’ve seen some pretty ridiculous technical analysis charts in my time; is droning on about bollinger bands and stochastic oscillators really less absurd than assuming a bitcoin rally is on the horizon because mercury is in retrograde?
Finding patterns where there aren’t any? Predicting the future based on prior data? Astrology may have more in common with technical trading than first glance may suggest.
Or as one of my favourite YouTubers The Plain Bagel once said: Technical analysis is the astrology for investors.
