[hn_throwaway_99]

I think that is key. It's similar to the .com boom (and bust) in the early 2000s. You had lots of examples where super-inflated company A bought company B, and paid for it with their super inflated stock. While the "values" reported won and lost where in the billions (trillions?), the fact is that relatively little of it was actually converted back and forth to real dollars.