I would say brand recognition among amateur investors. Amateur investors, just like in the dot-com era, drive huge upsurges in prices, and tend to be indicative

I would say brand recognition among amateur investors. Amateur investors, just like in the dot-com era, drive huge upsurges in prices, and tend to be indicative of the late stages of a bubble. Even Richard Shiller though, a really brilliant economist, does not even try to attempt when bubbles will "pop", but a good rule of thumb is they don't last longer than 10 years. It's hard to argue when this all started, but if you date the rise of the "start-up era" (which I am lumping in here with bitcoin) to say 2010, that gives you about 2 years max. BTW this was all very common in the 90's with the rise of day-trading. People would literally give a company 50k and they'd be given a terminal at some rent-a-office to start trading (but with their own money not the firm's!!!). One guy lost so much money, he killed as many people as Columbine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton. I wonder if this will happen again.