This is the question on the mind of everyone who is familiar with the ambiguous "tradition" of the magazine.
The appearance of prominent figures from the cryptosphere on the cover of Forbes has long been a superstition. And for good reason - just look at what happened to the price of bitcoin after the issues with "cryptocelebrities".
The history of these coincidences is a fascinating one. Changpeng Zhao - the first swallow of the "cover curse" - appeared on Forbes in February 2018. By then, the bear market had already begun its march, with bitcoin losing more than half of its value from its December 2017 highs. But that was just the beginning of the drama - ahead of it was another drop, this time by as much as 60%.
The next "lucky" person was Sam Bankman-Fried, whose face appeared on the cover in October 2021. As if at the snap of a finger, the market plunged into a bear cycle, and a year later, bam! - the FTX bankruptcy rumbled on. Bitcoin has collapsed a whopping 77% from its November 2021 peak.
January 2025 - and already Michael Saylor is looking at us from the glossy cover. It's hard to say for sure whether the bear cycle started then, but the fact remains that after this issue the market went into correction. Bitcoin has sagged 30% from its January highs.
And now, in March 2025, Justin Sun took up the baton....
You can, of course, dismiss it all as an amusing coincidence. You can argue that Forbes is just a barometer of popularity, recording the peak interest in a person. And peak interest often coincides with local market highs - a pattern as simple as two times two.
But isn't it interesting how this strange correlation works? It's as if the editors of Forbes have an uncanny knack for timing - right before a market crash. Or maybe it is the market itself that reacts to the appearance of another crypto-deity on the cover? The question is rhetorical, but definitely entertaining.
Statistics are stubborn things: three out of three cases were accompanied by a significant drop.
Will Justin Sun be the fourth in this unhappy sequence or will he be able to break the "cover curse"?
