# Tulip Mania was actually a Dutch shitposting meme of the 1600s



## neger psykolog (Feb 12, 2018)

(Making this its own thread because Tulip Mania is like the 1st favorite thing for people to bring up when talking about cryptocurrency and it turns out its just a fucking historical meme)

http://theconversation.com/tulip-ma...-dutch-financial-bubble-is-mostly-wrong-91413

_Right now, it’s Bitcoin. But in the past we’ve had dotcom stocks, the 1929 crash, 19th-century railways and the South Sea Bubble of 1720. All these were compared by contemporaries to “tulip mania”, the Dutch financial craze for tulip bulbs in the 1630s. Bitcoin, according some sceptics, is “tulip mania 2.0”.

..._

_Tulip mania wasn’t irrational. Tulips were a newish luxury product in a country rapidly expanding its wealth and trade networks. Many more people could afford luxuries – and tulips were seen as beautiful, exotic, and redolent of the good taste and learning displayed by well-educated members of the merchant class. Many of those who bought tulips also bought paintings or collected rarities like shells.

...

Prices could be high, but mostly they weren’t. Although it’s true that the most expensive tulips of all cost around 5,000 guilders (the price of a well-appointed house), I was able to identify only 37 people who spent more than 300 guilders on bulbs, around the yearly wage of a master craftsman. Many tulips were far cheaper. With one or two exceptions, these top buyers came from the wealthy merchant class and were well able to afford the bulbs. Far from every chimneysweep or weaver being involved in the trade, the numbers were relatively small, mainly from the merchant and skilled artisan class – and many of the buyers and sellers were connected to each other by family, religion, or neighbourhood. Sellers mainly sold to people they knew.

...

No one drowned themselves in canals. I found not a single bankrupt in these years who could be identified as someone dealt the fatal financial blow by tulip mania. If tulip buyers and sellers appear in the bankruptcy records, it’s because they were buying houses and goods of other people who had gone bankrupt for some reason – they still had plenty of money to spend. The Dutch economy was left completely unaffected. The “government” (not a very useful term for the federal Dutch Republic) did not shut down the trade, and indeed reacted slowly and hesitantly to demands from some traders and city councils to resolve disputes. The provincial court of Holland suggested that people talk it out among themselves and try to stay out of the courts: no government regulation here._

...

_*Why have these myths persisted? We can blame a few authors and the fact they were bestsellers. In 1637, after the crash, the Dutch tradition of satirical songs kicked in, and pamphlets were sold making fun of traders. These were picked up by writers later in the 17th century, and then by a late 18th-century German writer of a history of inventions, which had huge success and was translated into English. This book was in turn plundered by Charles Mackay, whose Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds of 1841 has had huge and undeserved success. Much of what Mackay says about tulip mania comes straight from the satirical songs of 1637 – and it is repeated endlessly on financial websites, in blogs, on Twitter, and in popular finance books like A Random Walk down Wall Street. But what we are hearing are the fears of 17th-century people about a 17th-century situation.*_​


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## LocalFireDept (Feb 12, 2018)

I can't buy McDonald's with tulips _or_ buttcoin. Checkmate cryptonerds .


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## Skeletor (Feb 13, 2018)

If tulip mania wasn't a thing, what caused the crazy run up and crash in price?


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## de_DEVIL_tails (Feb 13, 2018)

Skeealator said:


> If tulip mania wasn't a thing, what caused the crazy run up and crash in price?



Isnt it obvious? *The jews*


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## CrunkLord420 (Feb 13, 2018)

It's a lazy comparison, a fundamental misunderstanding. Right along with curing cancer with proof of work.


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## carltondanks (Feb 13, 2018)

so now that this is been established to be largely exaggerated and untrue, are we going to see cryptos and scryptos compared to beanie babies now?

also btw, thanks for pointing this out. i really appreciate it


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