>simply because the ecosystem surrounding it is so much fun for a non-negligible swath of people? Sure, and also: 1) You can probably get away without paying

>simply because the ecosystem surrounding it is so much fun for a non-negligible swath of people? Sure, and also: 1) You can probably get away without paying taxes on it for now 2) It probably inherited some enthusiasm from the 2008-2017 Silicon Valley investors being a technical product 3) it's a new financial product that's not wrapped in 37 layers of redirection or rebundled existing products (like synthetic CDOs as they were explained to me by The Big Short). If you're bored of spreadsheets, learning Bitcoin was probably a breath of fresh air