Yes this would be my answer as well. The phenomenon OP is referring to is "hype" and it has existed for as long as money has existed. Specifically, once leverag

Yes this would be my answer as well. The phenomenon OP is referring to is "hype" and it has existed for as long as money has existed. Specifically, once leverage (debt financing of investment) gets involved, you enter what we now call the "Minsky moment", after Hyman Minsky's financial instability hypothesis (FIH), specifically the third phase, what Minsky called the Ponzi phase, after famed scam artist Carlo Ponzi. The first recorded example of a Minsky moment is the so-called Tulip Mania of the 1630s. ETA: OP specifically mentions "tech" - so the first appearance of consumer tech is in the 1920s (cars, radios, etc.), a decade which was, in fact, characterised by Ponzi-esque overleveraged speculative investing. In reality, this wasn't investing only in tech specifically, but a massive spike in consumer tech purchasing was one of the key signals for investors at the time. This ended with the now very famous Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression.