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The first bubble I witnessed was the poker bubble 2003 when Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP. He won his ticket in a Satalit tournament and turned his buyin of 11$ into a couple of millions.
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Shortly after that everyone was playing poker online. Live tournaments were popping up left and right and everyone was talking about odds and outs and the worst bad beats they had to take, a younger Flipstar as well.
Some people put a lot of effort and time into learning strategy while others just wanted to play and trusted their guts.
In my experience the ones who took the strategy route did a lot better and the others needed to reload their accounts pretty regular.
Money was made seemingly very easy and this went on for quite a while. It was too good to be true.
The games slowly tried up and the players got better and better while winrates got smaller and smaller.
If you compare the online poker scene to the one 5 years ago you would think they are playing a different game.
What was considered optimal yesterday is a sign you are a fish today. The game developed fast.
Some people could not or did not want to keep up with the game and went from being winning player to being break even and often ended up becoming loosing player.
The crypto madness many of us witnessed 2017 reminds me a bit of that. Everyone seemingly made a lot of money without a lot of effort.
Steemit posts went into the thousands and a picture of your cat was "worth" 100$. Everyone was a trader and talking about triangles, moons and lambos.
Again it was too good to be true and like poker most people had no idea what they were actually doing.
"Poker is a lot like sex, 99% think they are the best player when in reality they suck"
You can still make a lot of money in poker but it requires a lot of work. The times were it was fishing in a aquarium are over though and they probably never come back.
Will we see the madness of 2017 again in the crypto space? I doubt it. Should we see it again? I doubt that as well. A 100$ cat picture does not solve anything.
Is blockchain the spearhead of technology? I think so. From what I can tell some of the smartest people in the world are working very hard on it.
My big mistake was going in a bit too deep and getting caught in the hype and if the thought came up "did poker stay as easy?" pushing it aside.
Poker is far from dead and so is crypto.