The most common comparison to what is happening now in the cryptocurrency world is made with the dot-com bubble, where between approximately 1997 and 2001, a period of excessive speculation and exuberance, coupled with a significant growth in the usage and adoption of the internet, fueled a frenetic feeding frenzy. Investors and venture capitalists poured money into companies, many of which operated at a net loss, to harness the network efforts and to build market share. The network effort was a great sell because the more something was used, the more value it had due to the users on the network. Any company with a domain name ending in .com, or with the promise of eCommerce, was having money thrown at it, even if the business model was flaky, sketchy, or even nonsensical.
Compare this to early 2014 to 2016, where companies only had to mention the word "blockchain" in their pitch deck to have investors throwing cash at them. Existing companies would pivot...
