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Entry 236 of 240Economic

The Dot-Com Crash

2000 CE/North America/United States
Today The United States (Silicon Valley)Span Dot-com era · late 1990s–2000

As the internet arrived, investors poured money into any company with '.com' in its name, bidding valuations to dizzying heights untethered from profits — until the bubble burst and trillions in paper wealth evaporated. The technology was real and world-changing; the frenzy around it was the oldest story there is. It was a brand-new invention wrapped in an ancient human pattern: the tulip-and-South-Sea curve, repainted in fiber optic.

◆ Worth knowingAt the peak, a company could add hundreds of millions to its value just by tacking '.com' onto its name — and one startup burned through a fortune promising one-hour grocery delivery, a lesson relearned, expensively, twenty years later.
◆ The mechanismMania & panic

A speculative belief detaches asset prices from fundamentals; the belief breaks and prices collapse.

Also: Information-medium revolution

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