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I visited Seattle a few weeks ago, and had the pleasure of learning about their involvement with the Yukon gold rush. Seattle branded itself as "the gateway to

I visited Seattle a few weeks ago, and had the pleasure of learning about their involvement with the Yukon gold rush. Seattle branded itself as "the gateway to the Yukon" where thousands of miners would outfit themselves, and depart - by either boat or trekking through Canada (usually some combination of the two). It was pretty fascinating to see all these historical archives. Some companies that were born out of this frenzy (Nordstrom for one) are still around! Anyway - I couldn't help but the whole time imagine being in the year 2078. And viewing a museum (of course a VR digital-museum) about the Crypto rush of the 2010s. Likewise digging up old messaging board posts about striking gold in Ethereum. Outfitters claiming their boards could mine faster than the competition! The wild-west mentality, and the crime that occurred around it. You press a button on a wall and hear an audio recreation of someone leaving their job to strike it rich.

nostrademons 8y ago
Same with San Francisco and the California gold rush. The city grew from 1000 to 25,000 between 1848 and 1849, and companies born out of this include Levi Strauss, Ghirardelli chocolates, and Wells Fargo. I was initially skeptical of cryptocurrencies because I looked at the motivation of their biggest evangelists and was like "They're just bitter because other people are rich and they are not". I changed my opinion after realizing that "other people are rich and I'm not" is perhaps the biggest motivation in history. Aside from creating Seattle and San Francisco, it's also responsible for the settling of the Americas, the original gold rush.