[jcburnham]

Yeah, and like I said, that's a lazy answer, because it raises the question "Why, actually, was there demand for beanie babies?" It was actually a really complex and fascinating phenomenon (I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Great-Beanie-Baby-Bubble-Delusion/dp/...) from the early days of the Internet and e-commerce. Likewise with the Tulip Mania and the South Sea Bubble (which people often compare crypto to); they're a lot more complicated than "people are greedy/stupid speculators", and are in fact important moments in the development of modern finance and the joint-stock corporation.

[jshen]

It really isn’t more complicated. People were told beanie babies were investments that would make them money. They were fed stories about people who made a lot of money from beanie babies. They got fomo and bought in, then it inevitably dropped.

Crypto is only more complicated because it also has other groups, like anarchists/libertarians that see crypto as subversive to government, taxes, and regulation. They buy in out of a mistaken philosophical view that it furthers their political ends.

[jcburnham]

> They were fed stories > They got fomo and bought in.

But the key factor is that they were they fed stories via a new information medium: The Internet. And the Internet is also where beanie babies could be bought (via ty.com) and resold (via Ebay). An argument could be made that Ebay might not even exist today without the beanie babies phenomenon which gave it early traction.

[jshen]

If you’re suggesting that we need garbage that exploits people to have things like eBay … well, let’s just say I don’t agree.

[jcburnham]

I'm suggesting that a large part of the phenomenon you're describing as "garbage that exploits people" is caused by the asymmetry of information found in new market technologies, and that as those technologies mature, those asymmetries dissipate. And that many market technologies we today recognize as good and wholesome started had that kind of bubble phenomenon when they first appeared.

[jshen]

Nope, it’s human nature.