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Also mentioned: The south sea company was basically a huge banking bubble scam. It is quite an interesting tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8 htt

• arcticbull 8y ago
  Hello? Bitcoin? Is that you? Nah just a ghost of poor banking decisions past. Spooky.
  • 0xname 8y ago
    Although many can see Bitcoin as a scam, I think the South Sea bubble is in a different league altogether. Financial schemes such as introducing crazy loans, coupled with the (essentially) full backing of the government at the time lured in even people like Isaac Newton. Bitcoin in comparison does not even match the hype the South Sea had at the time (nor will it have the power to carry a nation in debt for more than 100 years)
  • fsloth 8y ago
    I think Bitcoin resembles the Mississippi company a bit more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company TLDR: Scottish gambler becomes the most influential financial state official in France and uses his power to create an impossible financial scheme, makes everyone crazy for stocks for a colony that is mostly composed of colonists dying of hardship, resulting in an implosion of French Economy. Scottish, oh how they've been around. This is a funny sidenote to one of the founding fathers of US, Alexander Hamilton, who was as well of scottish heritage but created a financial system that did not implode.
    • VintageCool 8y ago
      Scotland agreed to merger with England in 1707 after the country was financially ruined by another crazy scheme in the Americas. They had tried to create a colony in Panama, in an area which is "virtually uninhabited" today.