STREET DOGS: Why the cryptocurrency sell-off may be a good thing
Once the cryptocurrency bubble bursts, there may be real innovation and a solid valuation case for many coins. – Arjun Kharpal, CNBC Investors who lost money in the 2008 crash will find it hard to agree, but at the time New Scientist editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury argued speculative bubbles were a good thing. "In bubbles investors’ money is used to build infrastructure that can’t possibly repay its upfront costs but that nevertheless ends up being beneficial for consumers in the long run, after more efficient companies pick up the pieces on the cheap. "Investors in dotcoms, for example, lost big time in 2000 but their money built the software and infrastructure that runs today’s internet. "A stock-market bubble in the 1840s rendered shareholders in train companies penniless but left Britain equipped with the world’s best railway network." Didier Sornette, then a risk specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, agreed: "It is only during the reckless abandon of bu...
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