Certainly I am not the only to notice the social phenomena that is Bitcoin. I am not talking about the financial growth and explosion but the explosion of the social aspect of Bitcoin. We have found ourselves gripped by a mania that surrounds this currency. It is all that we can talk about. We can look no further than all the post that exist on the platform speaking about the subject to see the grip it has taken upon all of us. It consumes our media and dominates our conversation.
I have been thinking about this and I was curious about some historical events that we look at would be in some ways similar to this event. The ones that come to mind, are the massive gold rushes experienced in the not so distant past in California and Alaska. News flowed daily from these area for fortunes picked up from the very waters that run from the mountains. It was on the tongues of of every person, it was hyped to a fever pitch. People risked everything for a chance at making it big and attaining fame and fortune.
Now today, we experience this at the speed of light. News doesn't take days to reach the population centers, it is instantaneous. The frenzy comes to a boil at lightening speed. Every spike in the price bring collective elation while every dip brings news of doom. For anyone that has say through an Econ class, this is those principles but with rapid cycling bi-polar syndrome.
I have no allusions of being able to give some kind of prescriptive solution to the problem or even if it is a problem at all. This might be the reality of the world that we live in to day and as technology progresses, hyper-economics and the social economics will be have wide ranging effects on market forces. We are in the middle of our generation's gold rush, it is just exists in the digital environment.