I was re-reading Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd” the other day.
And in it there is an interesting story about an even that “occurred” in the Crusades. During the Siege of Jerusalem, when all the warriors were gathered outside preparing for battle, St. George ostensibly appeared on the walls of the city and urged them to go forth and lay waste.
Everyone saw that and it was just widely accepted as fact. It was a huge thing.
Obviously, our vanishing Saint wasn’t there and at best this was a public hallucination, picked up by all the exhausted fighters gathered outside the walls. Having said that, someone had to see it first and “spread” the hallucination. That could be a delirious drunk footsoldier for all we know, that person is lost to history.
Le Bon uses this example to make the argument:
Crowd in a state of expectant attention + Suggestion = Public hallucination.
Put simply: it only takes one lunatic with a silly comment for everyone to go nuts. Now imagine this same effect multiplied dozens of times by the internet. Heck, let’s apply this to Blockchain. It’s a thing many lunatics are actively talking about. Some quite high profile, too.
Are you still surprised by the market going nuts, thinking from that perspective?