FOMO is real when I hear people talking about crypto. I feel the hype and I notice it in others too. Cool names flying around, there's a new type of coin for every coffee break we're having, the graphs go high, memes churned out every second. Colleague makes tenth of his salary with his GPU. Hard to remain neutral.

Brilliant point. I agree. Cryptocurrencies are fueled almost exclusively by FOMO. Tether is a joke and probably a scam, yet somehow has a $60B market value. SMH.

this used to be called the "greater fool theory" of investing. i think the funniest thing about crypto is that its touted as the ultra complex, high tech mathy panacea, but in its actual function and utility to people, its most similar to beanie babies or baseball cards.

This is similar to my recent realization - as much as I believe it's a complete ponzi scheme, a near complete scam, as long as there's enough people who don't know better who can be conned to buy into it, it will keep getting propped up. In this age of mass media and the internet where everyone is so infinitely, immediately connected, there's no shortage of more suckers to buy in, there's no shortage of propaganda techniques to sucker more people in. As long as there's more suckers, it can keep getting propped up, no matter how unsound it actually is, no matter how much of a scam it actually is. It reminds me of the quote "the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".

A good start would be pointing out this obvious fact that all crypto is a speculative investment — it derives value from (hopefully) being worth more to someone else later than you paid to acquire it. The coins have little or no intrinsic value.