[sulam]

I understand the point you’re making about Bitcoin being mechanically different from “Internet”. However the average consumer was investing in “Internet companies” in the same way people today talk about investing in Bitcoin. There was very little deeper knowledge about the complexities of what they were putting their money into. The motivation then and now was simply greed and “wow this is big!”

My grandfather, who sold cars for a living, called me up out of the blue to ask me what he should invest in after Netscape went public. I was 24 and we’d never talked about the stock market in my life. I had no business experience (I was about to get a lot, it turns out, but had none then) and while I was doing a ton of Internet-related work, it wasn’t making anyone money. Yet suddenly I was an Oracle to a man in his 60’s who really should have been putting his money into the bond market if anything. Instead he invested it in Spyglass, on my half-hearted “well this is a company like Netscape I guess”, and then proceeded to tell me all about how it was doing for the next 5 years. If he were still alive today, I could imagine the same thing happening with respect to Bitcoin (except this time I would tell him I have no idea, and to put his money into something that generates cash).