Back then we were taking sharp investment advice from people who predicted unprecedented returns on plush stuffed animals with names like Nip the Cat, Inky the Octopus and Bongo the Monkey. They knew what they were talking about, as evidenced by my three mortgages and the 37 large plastic bins filled with Beanie Babies that I call my “attic-based retirement.”

But now the bitcoin craze is buoyed by even-more reliable people: con artists. Chief among them, of course, is President-elect Donald Trump, who has made a fortune and become leader of the free world by persuading people to spend $30 on cheap-looking red hats.

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If you can’t count on Donald Trump for investment advice, who can you trust?

Trump is all in on crypto, and he touted the bitcoin news Thursday on his social media site, Truth Social: “CONGRATULATIONS BITCOINERS!!! $100,000!!! YOU’RE WELCOME!!!”

Over the first three quarters of this year, Truth Social made $2.6 million in revenue while losing $363 million, and its stock was trading Thursday at about $34 a share compared with the $66-per-share high in March after it hit the stock market. Needless to say, I will walk through fire to follow Trump’s rock-solid instincts and investing advice.

Trump ally Elon Musk, famous both for paying way too much for Twitter so he could destroy it and for creating the overpriced electric car presently burning in my driveway, is also a strong crypto advocate, and he doesn’t seem at all weird or volatile.

If Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy tell me to buy bitcoin, I’m in!

Same with Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has paired with Musk to form the made-up Department of Government Efficiency, which is an acronymic reference to “Dogecoin,” which is another type of pretend currency I don’t need to understand to believe in.

The fast-talking Ramaswamy doesn’t sound at all like someone who would show up on a late-night informational and try to sell me a “forward mortgage” to go with my “reverse mortgage,” or a knockoff ShamWow.

So you better believe I’m going to follow the lead of these not-at-all-self-serving billionaires and ignore the so-called experts and Nobel-prize-winning economists out there saying bitcoin is wildly risky.

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Just because bitcoin sounds like a scam and looks like a scam …

Did the U.S. Justice Department seize more than $112 million linked to crypto investment schemes last year? Perhaps.

And did federal prosecutor Martin Estrada say in a statement at the time: “Using the methods of traditional con artists, high-tech fraudsters have taken advantage of the publicity and hype surrounding cryptocurrency to encourage an untold number of Americans to invest in get-rich-quick schemes.”

Yes, sure. But that overlooks my desire to get rich quick, which inherently requires a get-rich-quick scheme. Duh.

Primary currency used by criminals? Where do I sign up?!?

Did Eric Maskin, a Harvard professor and winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in economics, recently tell the Miami Herald that cryptocurrencies are “very far from being a safe investment”? And did he also say: “Cryptocurrencies are a very good way of conducting criminal transactions and hiding them under anonymity”?

Don’t threaten me with a good time, Prof. Maskin! When you say “far from being a safe investment,” I hear, “I don’t want you to invest in this great investment so there’s more of it for me to invest in, sucker.”

Nah, I’m going to go with the guys who will benefit from me believing everything they’re telling me. It’s high time I sink my life savings into a thing that doesn’t technically exist.

And if anything goes wrong, I’ve always got my attic full of Beanie Babies to fall back on. Those things are going to be worth a fortune any day now.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk