Laser Eyes Twitter: '$100K by December' - It Didn't Happen
Everyone put laser eyes on their profile pic. Bitcoin crashed 50% instead.
In early 2021, a movement swept crypto Twitter: add laser eyes to your profile picture to signal your conviction that Bitcoin would hit $100,000. Celebrities, politicians, athletes, and influencers all joined. Senator Cynthia Lummis had laser eyes. Tom Brady had laser eyes. NFL players had laser eyes. Elon Musk teased laser eyes.
Bitcoin hit $64,000 in April 2021 and everyone thought $100K was weeks away. Then it crashed 50% to $30,000. The laser eyes stayed on. Then Bitcoin recovered to $69,000 in November. Still not $100K. Then it crashed again to $15,500 during the 2022 bear market.
The laser eyes crowd got wrecked in ways beyond just price. Tom Brady lost an estimated $30 million on his FTX equity stake. Matt Damon's "Fortune Favors the Brave" Crypto.com ad became a punchline. Countless smaller accounts that added laser eyes were leveraged long and got liquidated during the crashes.
Bitcoin did not hit $100,000 until late 2024, over three years after the laser eyes prediction. By then, most of the laser-eye prophets had changed their profile pictures back, blown up their portfolios on leverage, or moved on entirely.
The laser eyes era captured crypto's toxic relationship with price predictions. The conviction was right but the timing was catastrophically wrong. Being directionally correct does not matter if you are leveraged 10x and the price drops 50% before going up 300%. The graveyard of crypto is full of people who were right about the destination but wrong about the route.
The Aftermath
Bitcoin reached $100K in late 2024, vindicating the direction but not the timeline. Many laser-eye advocates were liquidated long before the target was hit. Tom Brady lost $30M+ on FTX equity. The movement is now shorthand for reckless conviction.
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