TTL 47
Not every bubble is created equal.
Some inflate prices without building anything that lasts — tulip mania in 1637, or today’s collectible frenzies. When they burst, the only trace is a higher receipt.
Others accelerate reality.
The dot-com bubble mispriced the future, but it also built it: fiber, data centers, protocols, payments, logistics, browsers, cloud infrastructure. The companies were overvalued; the fundamentals weren’t. Two decades later, the internet’s real value makes the highs of 1999 look small. The bubble died. The infrastructure stayed — and compounded.
AI looks similar. Maybe there is a bubble, maybe not. But whether prices inflate or correct, the data centers don’t disappear. The chips, the cooling systems, the power build-outs, the tooling, the MLOps practices, the talent being trained right now — all of that survives any market cycle. Those foundations will support whatever comes next.
Crypto is a hybrid case. Markets overheat, scams happen, speculation dominates the headlines. But underneath, the technology keeps maturing: public-key cryptography, distributed consensus, programmable money, new rails for tracking, auditing, and moving value. Much of today’s blockchain adoption has little to do with coin speculation.
A simple way to read the landscape:
- Pure speculation: when prices fall, nothing of substance remains.
- Productive acceleration: prices were wrong, but the infrastructure was right.
And who captures durable value?
The people who benefit most are usually those building the foundations — the equivalent of picks and shovels during a gold rush. The vendors who provide chips, power, networks, cloud platforms, and developer tools keep earning long after the frenzy ends.
Hype is temporary. Infrastructure is permanent. If you can’t predict the peak, invest your attention in what endures.
Here’s a link for a deeper dive, let me know what you think!
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I also publish on paolo.blog and monochrome.blog.
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