Cryptocurrency: The bubble is over, here comes the boom

Like the early stages of the dot com boom, the initial speculative crypto bubble is over. Expect waves of rapid evolution next, as maturity kicks in and serious players emerge and scale.If you're thinking cryptocurrencies have been an embarrassing speculative fad full of shady offshore players you'd be largely right -- but we are also now arguably at the end of the beginning and moving into a far more interesting era. If you're also old enough to remember the early stages of the dot com frenzy in the mid 90s, you'll remember a similar scenario: Outrageously ambitious business plans based on unproven new technology and markets, endless hand waving self promoters and scammers confusing perceptions of reality, cliques of technology experts, and VCs and suits pumping up their market segment positions.

The naked greed and quick buck speculative atmosphere around cryptocurrencies resembles the rapid rise of the web 1.0 dot com era -- from ugly, confused, and often corrupt beginnings rose the industry that today dominates the world and the financial markets. Just look at mid 1990s print magazine articles and TV shows -- before everyone was on the internet -- for evidence.