The worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few people as possible escape the common misfortune. The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited for volume of trading to return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next 24 months. The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.
The rumors in China about malevolent foreign influence on the market also echo the 1929 crash. Galbraith again:
What was perhaps the last word on the policy of reassurance was said by Simeon D. Fess, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee: "Persons high in Republican circles are beginning to believe that there is some concerted effort on foot to utilize the stock market as a method of discrediting the Administration. Every time an Administration official gives out an optimistic statement about business conditions, the market immediately drops."
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp/...
By far the greatest force for sobriety was the New York Times. Under the guidance of the veteran Alexander Dana Noyes, its financial page was all but immune to the blandishments of the New Era. A regular reader could not doubt that a day of reckoning was expected. Also, on several occasions it reported, much too prematurely, that the day of reckoning had arrived.
Indeed the temporary breaks in the market which preceded the crash were a serious trial for those who had declined fantasy. Early in 1928, in June, in December, and in Februrary and March of 1929 it seemed that the end had come. On various of these occasions the [New York] Times happily reported the return to reality. And then the market took flight again. Only a durable sense of doom could survive such discouragement. The time was coming when the optimists would reap a rich harvest of discredit. But is has long since been forgotten that for many months those who resisted reassurance were similarly, if less permantently, discredited. To say that the Times, when the real crash came, reported the event with jubilation would be an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it coverted it with an unmistakable absence of sorrow
- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash 1929" http://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp/...
The major popular currencies are very sticky and very difficult to stop believing in them.
Whatever you might think about the US declining compared to China and other issues, there's still a $21T economy with the economic activity of 330M people behind it.
And if you're doing business in this country the US government will demand that you pay your taxes in USD. There's a lot more inertia in the USD than people into crypto give it credit for. Everyone in the country could, in theory, wake up tomorrow and all decide to use something different, but in reality that won't happen.
Crypto can (and most likely will) crash hard and while its getting big enough now that the damage will likely ripple through the economy a bit, but the US economy will go on.
And I'd strongly recommend Galbraith:
https://www.amazon.com/Money-Whence-Came-Where-Went/dp/06911... https://www.amazon.com/History-Financial-Euphoria-Penguin-Bu... https://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp...