Comment by yellowapple

> Crypto currency wasn't a new thing. There has been digital currencies going back decades. They had all failed and become worthless.

That didn't make them unreasonable bets. Lots of smart ideas fail to gain traction in spite of being smart ideas, for a variety of reasons. The electric car market (for example) had its share of false starts, too, in the late 19th Century and throughout the entirety of the 20th Century - and yet the people betting on EVs weren't irrational in doing so before the 21st Century, and still weren't irrational to do so afterward. It ain't like the problems with fossil fuels were completely unknown before 2000, after all.