History has a funny way of repeating itself — just with new costumes. In the mid-1800s, prospectors stampeded west for gold. They sold their farms, left families behind, and endured brutal winters in the hope of striking it rich. Most didn’t find treasure. But the suppliers — the Levi Strauss jeans sellers, the shovel makers — got wealthy.
Fast-forward to today: crypto and speculative tech stocks have sparked a new kind of fever. Only this time, the “miners” are devs with laptops, the “claims” are tokens, and the “shovels” are GPUs and cloud servers.
The parallels are too sharp to ignore:
- Hype draws the crowd. Then, as now, the dream of quick riches seduces more people than sober strategy.
- Most claims fizzle. The majority of tokens and moonshot startups won’t survive.
- The picks-and-shovels play wins. Nvidia and TSMC are today’s Levi Strauss. They sell the infrastructure behind the dream.
But here’s where it gets interesting: in the Gold Rush, maps were scarce, and whispers in saloons could start stampedes. In our market, we’ve got too many maps — endless analyst reports, Substacks, Twitter threads — all echoing each other. Which means the real risk isn’t ignorance but saturation: too much noise, not enough clarity.
When I hear people talk about “digital gold,” I think they’re half-right. The fever is the same. The dream is the same. What’s different is the speed — speculation doesn’t trickle westward on horseback anymore. It ricochets across Discord servers and trading apps at light speed.
So what do you do with this lesson? Maybe don’t be the prospector chasing the next big vein. Instead, ask yourself: who’s selling the shovels today?
🔗 Related: History.com’s Gold Rush overview
🔗 Related: Nvidia’s role in powering AI and crypto mining — The Verge
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