Crypto investments are not a question of economic rationality

...or irrationality.

The famous quote from (otherwise personally not that admirable) economist John Maynard Keynes says:

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

The concept of economic rationality as such is a terribly misleading one, as we talk about uncertain future and not any calculative system whose rules we are able to know for certain ex ante. In theory, this holds for all decision-making in the complex and interconnected world that cannot be captured by quantifiable variables within our limits.

Another concepts of subjective value and entrepreneurial judgment support challenging mechanical rationality: entrepreneurs imagine opportunities and put effort on materializing them. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they don't. However, there is no actual way anyone could have calculated probability distribution or impact of success ex ante, that is, if the venture was "rational" or not.

People tend to attach rationality to analysis of stable conditions which generate outcomes that lie within a recognizable distribution like games whose rules are predefined. Even in stock investing through financial models people rely on the subjective belief of durability of recent historical patterns. In such mentality, game changers are at most unprobable risk that should be managed, but not exploited.

In a way it would fit into the category of this illusion of rationality to build a thorough model of fragility and disruption. However, such approach would be too complex and still limited, too unrewarding to appeal an analyst that is better off focusing on explaining and utilizing stable conditions that prevail most of the time and time and again. What happens in between is a black box or maybe even a black swan.

Cryptocurrency ecosystem is a perfect case for the clash of mentalities. Traditional "rational" financial analysts may in fact be underestimating the people who are currently riding the wave. I do not say that there would not be people involved who operate at a primitive level by having just fear of missing out. Taken into account that a vast amount of early adopters who have followed the emergence for years have not been cashing out the markets to death, there appear to be people with more than just blind faith.

At least people should be consistent. Reflections of past experiences against recent news together with subjective beliefs are the same elements that drive entrepreneurs in general. It is a black box, but the current trend of "rational" and professional talking heads giving bold comments show little effort in trying to get inside it in this case.