re: #195 wheat-dogg, raker of forests, master of steam

I’ve heard the comparison of tulip mania to the dot-com bubble, the real estate bubble, and now crypto bubbles before, so I took it as a matter of historical fact that the Dutch were speculating like crazy on tulip bulb prices. Turns out some historians and economists think tulip mania is more of an urban myth, based on the analysis of one writer in 1841.

Prices did soar in a very short time, but it was not because the entire population was nuts about tulips. It was fat cats manipulating the market in their favor.

slate.com

So, tulip mania was more like the 17th century version of the modern-day manipulation of the gold and silver markets or the LIBOR.

Or bank deregulation of the 1980s.

It sounds like any situation where someone bought in at a high price, thinking it would keep going up, and then it didn’t. Which still fits the dot com and telecom bubbles, the housing markets, and gold and silver. And I still think crypto fits into that.