??Market Mania Is Unavoidable, But Crypto Must Get Past It

The historical context behind those centuries-ago events is also important: they were a direct, almost unavoidable side effect of the invention at that same time of limited liability companies, stock markets and derivatives, some of the most game-changing financial innovations of all time.

If crypto-assets, smart contracts and blockchain technology fulfill their potential to decentralize the economy, the change they promise could be just as profound, if not more, as that sparked by those inventions during the Dutch renaissance.

As I've noted elsewhere, if you examine moments through history when a new, general-purpose technology upended the economic order, they were almost always accompanied by periods of intensified financial speculation.

The Venezuelan economist Carlota Perez has even argued that the social phenomena of bubbles and speculation are necessary elements in how societies fund and build the infrastructure upon which transformative technologies become entrenched in the economy.

Tracing every moment of hype and speculation that has been associated with a new technology will not at all find that it's always associated with the successful deployment of a powerful new technology.

Are ICOs just enabling scammers and founders of doomed-to-failure projects to get rich on the greater fool theory of bubble-nomics? Or is this truly the killer app of blockchain technology, the one that emancipates capital from Silicon Valley gatekeepers and creates a global market for ideas?

Was the recent enthusiasm for Cryptokitties a fad, a crypto Beanie Babies moment, or will it go down as the vital use case that proves the value of digital scarcity and fosters markets in which producers of unique creative works can monetize them.

Answering these questions comes down to how the technology itself is integrated into the wider economy.

That notion itself can refer as much to a new type of market as any other kind of technology.

Regardless, there still has to be broad-based value to society if the technology is to survive and prosper.