While it would be easy to say this is all new, a consequence of the internet’s revolutionizing effect on capitalism, history shows that speculative booms and bust are a recurrent, endemic part of the economy. This is especially true for items that provide little “use-value,” as Marx referred to it in Capital. Cryptocurrencies are overwhelmingly purchased as a speculative asset rather than a means of exchange in the United States. Only 4.4% of crypto users actually use it to purchase other things, with 92.6% keeping it as a speculative asset, Business Insider noted. Crypto is nothing more than another permutation in a centuries’ long metamorphosis of financial flim-flam.