Four Bubbles I've Lived Through, With One Exception

technology hype metaverse nft crypto ai opinion

2025-04-29

Working in technology means riding wave after wave of hype. Some waves reshape the landscape; others crash on the shore, leaving behind damp sand and confused investors.

I've been around long enough to have lived through many hype cycles, inflated with breathless promise, often to be deflated just as quickly.

I've been thinking about the recent past, and the bubbles built more on speculation and wishful thinking than substance. And then there's the current AI bubble, which feels fundamentally different.

Metaverse

Remember when the Metaverse was the only thing anyone talked about for a few months? The hype was so intense it renamed Facebook (researching this article, I had to clumsily search for the phrase "Meta Metaverse"). Tech pundits told us all to prepare for the imminent future living and working in virtual worlds.

Looking back, it feels like a product born less from genuine demand and more from the specific pandemic anxieties. We were physically isolated, craving connection, and the idea of a persistent virtual space held a certain appeal. But the reality was underwhelming: low-fidelity graphics, awkward interfaces, and a profound lack of compelling reasons to be there beyond novelty. A solution looking for a problem, heavily pushed by a tiny handful of corporates rather than any organic interest. The hype evaporated almost as quickly as it appeared.

NFTs

Non-Fungible Tokens. The promise was digital ownership, verifiable scarcity for digital assets on the blockchain. What it became, almost instantly, was a frenzy of pure speculation detached from underlying value. We saw JPEGs selling for millions, driven by celebrity endorsements and a pervasive "get rich quick" mentality that felt eerily reminiscent of historical bubbles like the Dutch tulip mania.

People weren't buying digital art they loved (digital art can be loved!); they were buying assets someone else would possibly pay even more for later. When the music stopped, the market crashed spectacularly, leaving many holding effectively worthless tokens. It was a traditional speculative bubble, plain and simple. FOMO.

Crypto (The Coin Launch Grift)

Blockchain technology itself might have long-term potential. The bubble we lived through was the relentless churn of new coin launches, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), and meme coins. This wasn't about revolutionizing finance; it was a grift, deeply entwined with social media influencer culture.

Celebrities, tech personalities, podcasters and opportunistic politicians shilled their dubious tokens to their followers, promising astronomical returns. Twitter and Discord became echo chambers amplifying the hype. Fortunes were made (mostly by the insiders and early promoters) and lost (mostly by everyone else). It felt less like technological innovation and more like a digitally-enabled pump-and-dump scheme playing out on a global scale. It's the future textbook example of global legislation being unable to keep up with innovation.

AI

And now we have AI. The hype is undeniable – venture capital is pouring in, valuations are soaring, and the coverage is intense. On the surface, it has all of the hallmarks of a bubble.

But the crucial difference is utility.

If the stock market hype around AI vanished tomorrow, the VC funding dried up, and the headlines stopped – I would still open my Claude Code window the day after and get to work. I use AI tools every single day to help me write code, draft documents, debug problems, organise information, and perform evaluative work. Tangible value, right now.

I'm not alone. Software engineers, writers, designers, teachers, counsellers, and consultants are quietly integrating AI into their daily works. They're using it to brainstorm, create images, research, and write boilerplate code. Unlike the Metaverse, people want to use these tools. Unlike NFTs, the value isn't based purely on speculation. Unlike the crypto coin frenzy, there are real-world applications happening now. AI does drive productivity.

Certainly, AI company valuations are inflated. There will be a market correction and AI companies will fail. But the underlying technology isn't going away, because it works. It solves problems and provides value in a way the previous bubbles simply didn't.

The true test of a technology isn't the high water-mark of the hype; it's whether people keep using it when the water calms. This wave feels different because, beneath the froth, there's a genuinely useful tool.