This will probably sound all too familiar to you, but let's explore it anyway.

People had always had this thing, but some enterprising individuals a while back decided

that people needed a new version of it.

This version was better, then because the public began to be attracted to it, it also became

more and more expensive.

At the peak of its popularity, some of these things had become so expensive that, to buy

one, one would need to pay roughly 12 times their annual salary, not for a bunch mind you,

but for one single example.

All sorts of variations were created too, with all sorts of creative names, and people

would nuts for them.

Investors got involved too, and all of a sudden there were a lot of forgins writing

on this wave.

And then, it collapsed.

All those ledgers that were swimming and extra zeros were suddenly in the red, that

bright new economic hope, the investments of the future had been reduced to just another

mundane curiosity.

Lives were ruined, businesses failed, and an entire culture was left with a bitter taste

in its mouth.

This thing, this object of desire, was not some cryptocurrency as you might have assumed.

No, it was a humble flower.

The tulip brought to the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century.

But even though the event is known as tulip mania only lasted a little more than three

...