Thai crypto investors turn to tarot cards, divine signals to predict market

A Thai fortune teller once purportedly predicted when the crypto market would recover last year, claiming they were told by the god of the dead.

Crypto and stock investors have always found interesting and sometimes bizarre ways to predict the market’s ebbs and flows. 

Some have suggested that our unconscious minds can predict the stock market through “precognitive dreaming,” while others have recently been turning to the advice of artificial intelligence chatbots.

However, in Thailand, there appears to be a growing group of investors turning to divine powers and astrology to predict market movements, including crypto — as recently highlighted in a r/cryptocurrency thread on Reddit.

One astrologist, who goes by “Pimfah,” has a 160,000-strong Facebook group where members ask for and send tarot card readings, with some even asking for help on what their readings mean for the crypto market.

Another self-proclaimed fortune teller, Ajarn Ton, has a YouTube channel with nearly 26,000 subscribers where he’s uploaded hundreds of videos attempting to predict the price of various cryptocurrencies using astrology.

Ton’s most recent focus is predicting that Terraform Labs’ collapsed crypto Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) will see a surge of nearly 50,000% — saying it could hit $0.029.

So far, however, it’s trading at less than $0.000055.

Occasionally, these predictions turn out to be somewhat accurate.

High-profile fortune teller Mor Plai made local headlines earlier in 2023 for her August 2022 prediction of a crypto market recovery starting that November — which turned out to be somewhat accurate, ignoring the crypto retrench around FTX’s collapse.

“Color me skeptical”

Commenters on the Reddit post were largely doubtful about the so-called method of prediction.

“Put out enough vague predictions, and you gotta be right eventually,” one Redditor commented.

“If a hamster can perform better than most adults I don’t see why we shouldn’t try astrology,” another joked.

However, while spiritual beliefs would likely attract skeptics in the West, it is not considered out of the ordinary in Buddhist-majority Thailand.

A September Pew Research report said just over 80% of surveyed Thais believe in God, deities or spirits and nearly half believed spells, curses or other magic influenced people’s lives.

Related: Binance collaborates with Royal Thai Police to seize $277M from scammers

Even in parts of the Western world, self-described astrologers have been using signals from the stars to divine price movements in crypto.

During the 2021 crypto bull market, the United States-born TikTok astrologer Maren Altman gained a following of millions for her astrology-backed Bitcoin price predictions.

Altman told Magazine in January she was “familiar with financial astrology, so it just made sense to apply it to cryptocurrency.”

Didi Taihuttu, a Dutch-born Bitcoiner and “Bitcoin family” patriarch — who sold all their assets in 2017 and lived off Bitcoin since — has a homebrew market indicator that considers moon cycles alongside directional trading data to flag buy and sell opportunities for Bitcoin.

I received many questions about the Bam Bam #bitcoin Indicator and why also moon cycles are part of it. It’s another confirmation that gives you help with deciding when to sell and buy. This research article is a good explanation. https://t.co/hQfhzeXSoG

— ₿ Didi Taihuttu ₿ ALLIN (@Diditaihuttu) July 13, 2023

One Redditor postulated that there could be an indirect relation between astrology and prices, as belief in it could cause traders to “act accordingly” — thus causing a shift in prices in itself through a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As for what lies in store for Bitcoin in the near future, the pseudonymous crypto-focused astrologer “Crypto Damus” claimed in an Oct. 18 X (formerly Twitter) post:

“Mars is lining up to make a favorable sextile to [Bitcoin] natal Mars over the next several days (with Mercury cazimi),” which is assumedly positive as they claim it shows strength and will “pump the market.”

However, the “transit of Mars in Scorpio generally hasn’t been that good for BTC,” they said — whatever that means.

Magazine: How to protect your crypto in a volatile market — Bitcoin OGs and experts weigh in