When vast amounts of money are swirling around, people get so frantic, they become irrational: Tulip mania in the 17th century collapsed the Dutch empire, or France’s Mississippi Land Scheme in the 18th century that crashed the French empire. The phenomenon this time around is crypto. Crypto perfectly fits the Ponzi scheme mold, except in its case there's no product: nobody is offering a good or service, and investors are totally dependent on a private entity to deliver on a too-good-to-be-true promise. Plus, it’s easy to deduce that crypto prices fall if there isn't a constant stream of new rubes getting in; and the fact that there are so many fly-by-night crypto providers is also an easy tell; not to mention there’s no where to use it. However, because crypto is supposedly anonymous, it does have some value to contract killers, drug cartels, child traffickers, blood diamonds, and the ever-cryptic tax evasion.
