CLASSIC: Were Tulips Really The Bitcoin of the 1600s?

Summary

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Ridiculous History – "CLASSIC: Were Tulips Really The Bitcoin of the 1600s?"

Podcast: Ridiculous History
Hosts: Ben Bowlin, Noel Brown
Episode Date: October 14, 2025
Topic: Exploring the history—and myths—of Tulip Mania in 17th-century Netherlands, often cited as the first economic bubble and compared to modern phenomena like Bitcoin.

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Episode Overview

Ben and Noel take a deep dive into Tulip Mania, the legendary Dutch frenzy for tulip bulbs in the 1600s, questioning if it truly was the first “Bitcoin”-like speculative bubble—or if history’s retelling has wildly exaggerated events. They trace the origin of tulips in the Netherlands, detail how the market got out of control, and explore myths versus reality with engaging banter and historical insights.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Tulips Arrive in the Netherlands

• The tulip gets its name from its resemblance to a turban ("tulbant" in Turkish) ([03:46]).
• Tulips were introduced from Western Asia, with the first known Dutch cultivation by Johan Heinrich Herwart in 1559 ([04:48]).
• Quote:

  "It came from western Asia, from Turkey...they were just growing wild beforehand." — Ben ([04:48])

2. Tulip Popularity and Early Horticulture

• Carolus Clusius, prominent botanist, introduced tulip culture to the Netherlands with his influential garden at the University of Leiden, starting a trend among wealthy horticulturists ([08:34]).
• Tulip trading shifted from strictly among the learned to the nouveau riche merchant class, who saw owning rare bulbs as a status symbol.

3. Tulip Mania and the Speculative Bubble

• Prices for rare tulip bulbs soared throughout the 1630s. Speculation was rampant, with contracts being made for future bulbs not yet grown ([11:54]).
• "Futures" trading concepts emerged: buyers would pay for bulbs to be delivered once dormant ([11:54]).
• Quote:

  "You’re not buying tulips today, you're buying tulips tomorrow." — Ben ([11:54])

• Scarcity and unpredictability (caused by viral "flaming" patterns like the prized Semper Augustus) fueled the craze ([14:16]).

4. Excess, Market Infrastructure, and the Crash

• Trading happened in back rooms, with informal localized markets. Price information was slow to spread, contributing to local bubbles ([19:01], [20:10]).

• Reported cases included properties being traded for handfuls of tulip bulbs; records suggest 40 bulbs sold for 100,000 guilders—more than a skilled laborer’s lifetime income ([14:15], [20:21]).

• Quote:

  "In 1633, a single bulb...Semper Augustus...was worth 5,500 guilders." — Ben ([14:15])

• By February 1637, contract prices reached absurd heights (10,000 guilders for a single Semper Augustus bulb) before demand suddenly disappeared, leading many to renege on contracts ([21:00–22:16]).

• Notable comparison:

  "It’s sort of like subprime mortgages...all those bets you made, you got to pay them, but nobody has the money to pay them." — Noel ([26:04])

5. Exaggeration and Mythmaking

• The classical story comes from Charles Mackay’s 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, itself based on earlier, possibly biased sources—anonymous anti-speculation pamphlets from 1637 ([25:36]).
• Research suggests far fewer people were ruined than legend claims, and much of the economic carnage was probably theoretical—prices collapsed, but few had truly paid peak rates ([33:45]).
• Many "ruined" investors may have never actually traded real money, just paper promises ([33:45]).
• Quote:

  "Some researchers have found fewer than half a dozen people who experienced financial trouble in that time period during the tulip boom and bust." — Ben ([33:45])

6. Modern Parallels and Groupthink

• Bitcoin, Beanie Babies, and pogs are cited as modern analogues for speculative mania ([26:56–27:43]).
• Casey shares a personal story about exiting Bitcoin too early, underlining the unpredictable nature of such bubbles ([27:11]).
• Discussion about how groupthink and fear of missing out drive speculative manias in every era.
• Quote:

  "We have to be very cognizant and very self-aware of group think and group panics. Something like this will come along every so often." — Ben ([35:45])

7. Scarcity, Futures, and Economic Lessons

• Increased supply eventually destroys scarcity-driven value ([36:28]).

• Modern day futures markets (like oil) have safeguards—but the tulip mania market was more chaotic, similar to the "Wild West" ([23:35], [37:17]).

• Comparisons:

  • Aging scotch and wine use similar investment/futures strategies ([34:48]).
  • OPEC's manipulation of oil production serves as a relevant modern example of market control ([36:47]).

8. Dutch Culture, Gambling, and the Plague

• Cultural context: Dutch proclivity for gambling, risk-taking, and the short life expectancy during the 1600s (due in part to plague) amplified the mania ([32:53]).
  • "It was kind of like YOLO...let’s do this." — Noel ([33:45])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It's not about tulips pursed together...the name comes from the resemblance to a turban." — Ben ([04:36])
• "Tulips take a really long time to grow...bulbs only take three or four years, maybe even two years." — Noel ([10:50])
• "And you have to wait until the summer when they go dormant...so people had to buy the promise of a future tulip." — Noel ([11:12])
• "They would sprinkle the soil with pigments...they didn't know what they were doing." — Noel ([14:49])
• "This sounds like some sort of Dr. Seuss parable...but the real effect was people's lives were ruined." — Ben ([23:35])
• "The Dutch more or less invented the model for the modern stock exchange." — Noel ([32:14])
• "It's actually really cool that we got to do this story..." — Noel ([34:48])
• "Don't buy tulips for too much money. You know what I mean?" — Ben ([35:45])
• Ending with a Monty Python "Lupins" homage to underscore the absurdity of flower-based speculation ([38:08]).

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Important Timestamps

• [03:46–04:48] — Origins and etymology of "tulip"
• [08:34–10:50] — Historical emergence of tulip mania
• [11:54–12:29] — Futures market and speculation explained
• [14:15–15:15] — Semper Augustus and "flaming" tulip value
• [19:01–20:21] — Exchange mechanics and informal Dutch markets
• [23:35–25:36] — Crash, aftermath, and debt disputes
• [25:36–26:37] — Propaganda origins of the mainstream tulipmania myth
• [27:11–28:11] — Bitcoin and cryptocurrency parallels
• [32:14–33:45] — Dutch stock exchange, national context, and the role of gambling/plague
• [33:45–35:45] — Myths vs. reality: who actually lost?
• [36:28–37:17] — Supply, scarcity, and modern commodity parallels
• [38:08–39:02] — Monty Python "Lupins" outro

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Conclusion

Tulip Mania was real but likely overstated—a compelling cautionary tale about speculative bubbles, groupthink, and the social drivers of financial mania. The story persists because it’s so colorful—a perfect example of “ridiculous history”—but the truth is subtler, involving a handful of ruined fortunes rather than a nation gone mad. The episode cleverly parallels tulips with Bitcoin and other speculative crazes, ultimately suggesting that human nature, more than any particular asset, is what inflates and pops bubbles through the centuries.

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Transcript

[Ben]

Fellow ridiculous historians, we are on the high seas and as a result we are doing a run of classics here. Guys, remember cryptocurrency back when it was tulips?

[Noel]

Whoa, that's very meta, Ben. I'm having to parse that one out. Yeah, it's still around, but this certainly was a time where it was the Beanie Baby of our era. And now the Beanie Baby of our era is Labubu. So I don't even know where to start with all of this stuff.

[Ben]

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Noel, back in 2018, you and I asked each other what happened with the Dutch Republic and tulips. It's often used as a textbook case in marketing classes the world round. But is this tulip mania truly an economic boom and bust? We're going to find out.

[Noel]

Yep, let's talk about speculative flowers on ridiculous history. This is an I Heart Podcast.

[Casey Pegram]

Is.

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[Sacred Scandal Promo Voice]

Sacred Scandal is Back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Alena Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season, she's telling her story.

[Elena Sada]

When I first joined the Legion of Christ. I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marcia Almaser, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a call.

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Surviving meant hiding. Escaping. Took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred Scandal, the many secrets of Martial maciel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.

[Ben]

And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough. I didn't kill him.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

From Revisionist History, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartrad. Originally it was called the Dull Band because of its so called resemblance to a turban. And then it was called the Tulbint in Turkey, and then it was called the Tulipe in France, and then in the 1570s it was called the Tulpe. Today we call it the Tulip Ben.

[Noel]

So you're telling me it's not because it resembles tulips pursed together?

[Ben]

Apparently. You know, all this is in the eye of the beholder, Gnoll, but in this case, the name comes from the resemblance to a turban.

[Noel]

That's right. Because it came from the continent of Asia, right?

[Ben]

It did. It came from western Asia, from Turkey. And the earliest known instance of a tulip from flowering in cultivation, they were just growing wild beforehand. Is in 1559, a guy named Johan Heinrich Herwart grew the tulip. I don't know if you're a fan of flowers or if our super producer Casey Pegram is a fan himself.

[Noel]

Well, Casey Pegram is a flower in the desert as far as I'm concerned.

[Ben]

A rose in the concrete.

[Noel]

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

[Ben]

So what about you, Noel? Are you. Would you say you're pro flower?

[Noel]

Well, I am, but I kill them, so I am more of a succulent guy because they're a little more. A little more sturdy, shall we say, AKA a little more resilient. And I don't kill them quite as often, but I still manage. I still manage.

[Ben]

Yeah, succulents will be more hardy for sure. I always thought one of the toughest flowers to grow was the orchid. I only know one person who has a magic touch with orchids, and that's my mother. I don't know how she does it.

[Noel]

Because she's made a magic, Ben.

[Ben]

She's made a magic, perhaps. And she would be making a mint, allegedly, had she gone into the tulip game at a certain point in time. Because nowadays it's pretty easy to buy tulips. You could go to your local nursery, you can go to your local. Even a hardware store will have some tulips for sale often.

[Noel]

Yeah, like, I think a dozen or so bulbs I found online for about $18 or something. And, you know, that's for every possible type of variety you could think of. We are talking about a time where the price of tulip bulbs just went completely bonkers. Absolutely bananas.

[Ben]

So I propose we tackle today's episode in the following way. Let's tell the story that's most familiar to everyone, and then let's, after that, see how much of this stacks up. You know, what the fact and the fiction actually are.

[Noel]

That's the only way to do it, Ben.

[Ben]

Yeah. All right. So in the early 17th century, the Dutch Republic experienced what a lot of people will tell you was the first example of an economic boom and bust. Right. We know about this kind of stuff here in the US today with the housing bubble that burst in 2008. We know about this in various other points in time. But people will tell you that the Dutch Republic in the early 17th century, the 1600s, experienced the very first recorded economic bust, and it was called Tulip Mania.

[Noel]

Tulip Mania.

[Ben]

Tulip mania. So what happens exactly?

[Noel]

Well, it all revolves around the idea of speculation. Speculation being predicting what something will be worth in the future and placing your bets that it will be worth that or more. And then the bottom drops out, potentially when that speculative price reaches completely disproportionate heights with the thing itself. Does that make sense?

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah. It all of a sudden becomes overvalued, or people realize it's overvalued for a.

[Noel]

Series of reasons that we'll get into.

[Ben]

Yes, yeah. For a series of reasons that can vary depending on the specific cases. In the case of tulips, essentially the way you'll hear this story pitched is that people in the Dutch Republic went absolutely bonkers for tulips, began paying exorbitant rates for them, that it gripped the country, and then eventually, that's the sound of a bubble popping. But how did we get here? What made tulips so popular?

[Noel]

Well, it starts earlier than this fellow, but he's kind of the main dude that really introduced tulip culture into the Netherlands. His name was Coralus Clusius, and he created a very, very influential garden at the University of Leiden. And that was in the late 1500, started this kind of tradition among horticulturists, which became kind of a gentlemanly pursuit of trading, you know, clippings and seeds and all kinds of, you know, tulip related things, bulbs between each other, in the interest of kind of spreading this tradition around. But it was within a very small set of very particular types of learned individuals. Right. But then it kind of started getting a little bit out of control. And instead of just doing trades, these folks who had the tulip bowl bulbs started charging money for them. And then members of the merchant class, for example, who wanted to flaunt their newfound wealth because this was kind of a relatively new class of people that could afford the finer things in life in this part of the country. They were experiencing boom times. They decided they wanted to get in on this craze because these flowers were very beautiful. And some of them in particular, that had kind of miscolored discolorations almost, they were even more desirable.

[Ben]

They were like rare pogs or Pokemon.

[Noel]

Exactly.

[Ben]

And you have to catch them all. Yeah. So this, this guy, Carolus Clusius, got this whole craze going around 1593. And tulips had several strong advantages that made that set them apart from other flowers of the time. First, and we need to emphasize this, as you said earlier, Noel, they had these intense colors that other plants in the area just didn't have. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, it turns out that tulips can grow pretty well in this climate. This area, the Dutch Republic, doesn't have very good soil for, you know, most of the country. And it turns out that tulips love what is called poor soil. So not only can you have these beautiful, striking flowers, but you can actually grow them in a successful manner in a place where, you know, a lot of other flowers wouldn't grow.

[Noel]

Here's the thing, though, Ben and I didn't know this at all. Tulips take a really long time to grow.

[Ben]

It's true.

[Noel]

Yeah. So you can do it with seeds, but seeds, tulips grown from seeds take like up to six or seven years to grow. And then you have, I guess, what would be the same as like making a clone of any other type of plant, but it's a bulb, I guess it's called an offshoot, I believe, Ben. And those only take three or four years, maybe even two years, if I'm not mistaken. And that was what People want it. And here's the thing that's also interesting about this whole story is that it kind of introduced some of the concepts surrounding futures trading, right? Because you're not buying a full grown tulip, because you can't uproot a full grown tulip or it will die. You have to wait until the summer when they go dormant. They literally go back down into these bulbs and only then can you dig them up. So people, these merchants, these aristocrats, these whomever that were just going wild for these tulips had to buy the promise of a future tulip, right?

[Ben]

They would sign contracts before a notary to buy tulips at the end of the dormant season, which was from June to roughly September. That's when you could actually pull them out of the ground. And because of this, the Dutch, who had already developed a lot of techniques of modern finance, created this durable goods futures market for tulip bulbs. And it went insane pretty quickly, you know, because you're not buying tulips today, you're buying tulips tomorrow.

[Noel]

I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today, only the other way around.

[Ben]

And then when you hear that other people in the market are paying increasingly extravagant prices, then you start to move with the market as well. If whether you are selling, whether you are buying, whether you are just trading tulip futures.

[Noel]

Yeah. And let's remember too that these were not native to the Netherlands. And so they were already relatively scarce because they take so long to grow. They weren't just overflowing.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Right.

[Noel]

There was a scarcity and a rare quality to them. And that is what drives that kind of gotta have them all mentality, right?

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Noel]

If anyone could have them, no one would care, right?

[Ben]

Exactly. Kind of like Hammer pants in the 1980s. I don't know. I think we're both too young to really deliver that reference. I just remember MC Hammer. So we said 1593, this is when it starts catching on. The early adopters, right, the learned fans of flowerdom and horticulture start buying up tulips by 1633. In some transactions, tulip bulbs actually replace currency. Historian Mike Dash found documentation of actual properties being sold for what he said were handfuls of tulip bulbs. And then more and more people heard these sort of friend of a friend of a friend stories about someone who got into the market, bought and sold tulips, and now they're set for life. And by that same year, 1633, when this stuff is really escalating, a single bulb of a tulip variety Called Semper Augustus. This was already worth 5,500 guilders.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Noel]

And Semper Augustus is that one with the. With the stripes. It's got kind of red flame like stripes on it. And this is super interesting. It turns out that the. What causes that condition is actually a virus.

[Ben]

Yes. Yeah, that's correct.

[Noel]

And no one knew how to breed them to. I mean, I've known breed's not the right word. Cultivate them to look like that. So they tried all kinds of crazy stuff, didn't they, Ben?

[Ben]

Yeah, they. They tried. They tried a ton of very strange things. They would. Let's see what was one of them. They buried it in a certain type of mud.

[Noel]

Yeah. There was a pigeon dung, I believe, or pigeon guano, whatever you want to call it.

[Ben]

Pigeon poop. Poop.

[Noel]

There you go. That's the right word. That's the science. That's a science word. They also would even tie like a red and a white together and then bury them in the hopes that they would somehow co mingle and create tulip osmosis. Very much so. My favorite is they would sprinkle the soil with pigments that they would hope would somehow seep into the soil. And, you know, there was. They didn't know what they were doing.

[Ben]

No, but they were just trying different things.

[Noel]

Exactly.

[Ben]

I think most people at the time would have made similar attempts. Those are just a few examples we know of. But we know that there were many other techniques, most of which were cartoonish failures. And this just made these failures just made the specific types of high end tulips even more appealing.

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[Elena Sada]

You know how waking up from a.

[Noel]

Dream, a familiar place can look completely alien. Get back, everyone.

[Havoc Town Narrator]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body, and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

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[Ben]

The Devil walks in Abbostown.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988, to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years.

[Ben]

That's how long Elizabeth Senate's family waited for justice to occur.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often suffering worse.

[Casey Pegram]

He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family and apologize. Turn to the left. Tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice. To the right. I'm sorry. To the left. I love you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

From revisionist history, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to revisionist History, the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ben]

Now we see the market exploding. You would think maybe that by 1633 someone would have looked around, seen a simper Augustus bulb and said, I don't think this is really worth 5,500 guilders. But no, the bubble kept growing.

[Noel]

Yeah. And we actually had situations where these deals were being made in back rooms of like inns and pubs and stuff. And it was all pretty organized. They apparently are these smoke filled rooms where people were getting their drink on and their smoke on and they had like these pieces of wood that they would write. They would essentially bid on these tulip lots. And it was like, I don't know, I saw this fantastic video series on YouTube that I was telling you about, Ben, that I think you had seen too, on a channel called Economics Decoded. And the guy, I don't see his name here, he doesn't really announce himself or lower third himself, but he does a fantastic job with illustrations and Sound effects and I really recommend checking it out. He has a three part series on Tulip Mania and he, he likens it to if when we had to go and buy a stock, if we had to literally have a conversation with a bunch of dudes in a smoky room and arrive at an agreed upon price. Because we take for granted how quickly information travels these days and how the price of things are just set. It's understood by algorithm, or they change.

[Ben]

It in almost uniform manner, totally uniform.

[Noel]

Whereas this was like a series of mini markets in different parts of the country that were pretty isolated because you could only get information to another part as fast as a guy could ride there on a horse. Right?

[Ben]

Exactly. That's true. That's something that we can easily forget in the modern age of microsecond transactions and AI quote unquote, helping people trade stocks. So the way the story goes is that this Craze continues. By 1635, you could see records of 40 bulbs, just 40 bulbs being sold for 100,000 guilders or florins. And by way of comparison, at that time in the same year, one ton of butter cost around 100 guilders. And someone who was a pretty skilled laborer, someone who practiced a trade of some sort, like a blacksmith or a farrier or something, they might earn as much as 150 to 350 guilders a year. So this is a massive amount of money involved. And I really enjoy the part in the Tulip Mania series on Economics Decoded, where he walks us through the strange occurrence of February 1637. At this point, the price of a single Semper Augustus bulb that was worth 5,500 guilders in 1633 is easily worth 10,000 guilders. The center cannot hold. Things are going to fall apart. Right. That's not what Chinua Achebe was talking about in his book, but you can see how this applies. And so according to the story, the tulip market crashes very, very quickly and people start to renege on those contracts that they had signed. So someone would say, look, you owe me this much money for these tulips. And they would just refuse to pay.

[Noel]

Yeah. And you got into a real sticky situation where the sellers had the tulips now at that delivery period where they'd gotten them out of the ground, and there's only a limited amount of time before they are going to not be viable anymore that they have to rebury them. But nobody's like accepting them. People are like, no, I don't want them. I'm not going to Pay you. And I think small claims court got involved where they had to essentially get the courts to help them come up with a system of, you know, repayment that was agreeable by both parties and ended up being a small percentage of 3% of the price promised or whatever. Because again, these futures, and again, this wasn't really exactly futures trading. It was sort of like some of the same style of economics as futures trading. But futures trading has protections built in that this just didn't. And this is kind of just like the Wild West. And so you wouldn't pay full price and you'd get like a. You would get a deal because you're taking on risk your tulip might not turn out. And you don't get to just say, oh, my tulip didn't turn out. I'm not going to pay for it. That's technically not allowed, even though that's kind of what these people were doing. But it wasn't about the tulip not turning out. It was more about the whole system kind of falling apart. But you don't pay full price, you pay a little bit less because you're soaking up some of that risk for the grower.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah. And there's an interesting step here that I want to make sure we don't miss. Because of the precipitous rise, the price of tulips, Most speculators by 1637 couldn't afford to buy even the cheapest tulips. And this is what triggered the collapse in demand. And then when the demand disappeared, the flowers quickly became worth maybe 10% of what they had been worth the day or the week before. And this, this sounds funny, this sounds like some sort of Dr. Seuss parable. But the real time effect and the real life effect of this is that people encountered financial catastrophe. People's lives were ruined when the tulip trade collapsed. And as you said, with the courts getting involved, these vicious fights over debt continued for years and years and years. And thus the tulip boom and bust of the Dutch Republic became one of the most well known financial cautionary tales in the Western world until about 1980, when people realized that there might be more to the story. Because it turns out that the story we just relayed to you ridiculous historians is primarily based on a work of a Scottish journalist named Charles McKay. In 1841, he wrote a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He sourced his story about this tulip boom and bust from a guy named Johann Beckmann, who in 1797 wrote a book called A history of Inventions, Discoveries and origins. And then. And Beckman's story, we trace this back, comes from three anonymous pamphlets that were published in 1637, the same year everything went to pot. And they were hit pieces.

[Noel]

Ben is slicing the air like a knife with his hand right now because he feels very strongly about this. And I agree, for good reason. Hit pieces indeed, because he had an axe to grind. He did not like the practice of speculation at all, and neither did McKay. And even today, this idea of futures is considered amoral by many. And it's a lot. A lot of it is felt to be a type of gambling because you're making bets on things that you don't actually own.

[Ben]

Right. You know what I mean? Right.

[Noel]

You're taking this piece of paper that says, I own the idea of this thing, what does not yet exist, and then you're selling it to somebody else for an inflated price based on this imaginary number that keeps getting higher and higher and higher. It's sort of like subprime mortgages, for example, where you keep betting on something and people don't fully understand, you know, what the market is going to do, and then it does a thing that no one quite saw coming. And then all of a sudden, all those bets you made, you got to pay them, but nobody has the money to pay them.

[Ben]

Yeah. The research was not done. And at least in the subprime mortgage crisis, there is overwhelming evidence that several people knew exactly what was happening and just decided to let it happen.

[Noel]

Well, because you can make money. That's the thing about bubbles, right? If you ride it out at the right time, you ride that wave correctly, you can make a lot of money.

[Ben]

And we see other examples of this. Beanie Babies. That's an example. Pogs. I was talking off air a while back with Casey about bitcoin. Casey, do you remember. Do you remember bitcoin?

[Casey Pegram]

I do remember bitcoin, yes.

[Ben]

Are you. Are you involved? Are you a bitcoiner?

[Casey Pegram]

No, no. I got out of bitcoin a long time ago. So, no, I don't have a stake in bitcoin anymore.

[Noel]

But didn't you get out, like, a little too early?

[Casey Pegram]

I did indeed. Yeah. I bought when it was like, maybe like a dollar or something per bitcoin, and then at its height, it was worth some crazy amount, like, maybe close to $20,000 of Bitcoin. But I sold when it was far less than that. There's, like, a lot of people who have parked way too much money in bitcoin who have lost a lot over the last several months.

[Noel]

It's really interesting. It's a really interesting kind of comparison.

[Ben]

And there are more bitcoins on the market, right?

[Casey Pegram]

Oh, yeah. There's, like, ethereum. There's. There's a bunch. Yeah, There's.

[Ben]

There's dogecoin.

[Casey Pegram]

Yeah, yeah. There's. There's all these weird, like, meme coins. And there's one I was reading about called stablecoin, which is literally just pegged to the US dollar. So it's kind of like, what's even the point? But apparently the idea is you can kind of, I don't know, launder money with it or something. So, you know.

[Ben]

Oh, good.

[Casey Pegram]

The world of crypto. Yeah.

[Ben]

So. So we do see an interesting comparison there.

[Havoc Town Narrator]

There's a vile sickness in Amber's town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Elena Sada]

You know how waking up from a.

[Noel]

Dream, a familiar place can look completely alien? Get back, everyone.

[Havoc Town Narrator]

He's got D. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body, and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Havoc Town Promo Voice]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben]

The devil walks in Abbostown.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pull back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Martial Maciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the legion of Christ.

[Elena Sada]

My name is Elena Asada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually, how I got out.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Sacred the Mini secrets of Marcia Almasiel as part of the My Cultura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where A man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years.

[Ben]

That's how long Elizabeth Senate's family waited for justice to occur.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we ought to often make suffering worse.

[Casey Pegram]

He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family and apologize. Turn to the left. Tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice. To the right. I'm sorry. To the left. I love you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

From revisionist history, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ben]

We also know that the tulip story itself, the story of Tulip Mania, may have been a case of people playing telephone throughout history based on essentially works of propaganda that were anti speculative, anonymously published pamphlets. And this means that we have more research ahead of us. There are some wonderful books about Tulip Mania. There are two that are both called Tulip Mania. Right. And the authors of these books will assure you and assure us that the phenomenon was actually exaggerated, that, Contrary to what McKay says, it was not a situation wherein every single person in the nation, from paupers to royalty, were losing their minds and gouging their eyes out to buy more tulips.

[Noel]

Because I learned something in this research, is that the Dutch more or less invented the model for the modern stock exchange. So it would certainly make sense that this was something that happened in their neck of the woods. And they also, you know, were a huge trading empire and they established New York City and all of you know, the Dutch East India Trading Company and all of that. I mean, it was definitely in their national identity.

[Ben]

Right. Harlem is originally a town in the Netherlands.

[Noel]

Haarlem is where the infamous collapse of the market supposedly happened during that auction where nobody bid.

[Ben]

Yeah, that's Harlem with two A's.

[Noel]

That's right. And another thing that I wanna point out too, from that video series we mentioned, the guy in that video series points out something that I think should not be ignored is that gambling was a huge. Another huge part of their public, their national consciousness. People would make bets on the craziest things. I think he points out one about a guy who bet that he could ford a river in a tiny wooden barrel or like a trough or something like that. And I believe it was Rembrandt, the famous painter, who bet on whether he'd be alive the next year or not. So, I mean, it was definitely a thing that was very popular. So it's almost like, why not let's bet on tulips. And also, we haven't mentioned the fact that the plague was a big part of this and people's life expectancy was very short, around 40. Yeah. It was kind of like YOLO. Oh, let's do this right. You know.

[Ben]

Yeah. And with these important instrumental pieces of context, we can unpack a little bit of the fact versus fiction around tulip mania. We mentioned people did have their lives ruined financially at the time, that is true. But it may have been far fewer people than McKay would have us believe. In fact, some researchers have found fewer than half a dozen people who experienced financial trouble in that time period during the tulip boom and bust. And you'll hear people argue that although prices had risen, money had not actually changed hands between buyers and sellers. So the profits were never realized for the sellers unless they had made other purchases on credit, expecting their tulip money to come in sometime between June and September. So the collapse in prices, the argument goes, did not actually cause a ton of people to lose real tangible money. Just had a series of interesting, increasingly desperate conversations.

[Noel]

Yeah, it's actually really cool that we got to do this story because I just the other day was asking my girlfriend's stepdad, he's a big Scotch fan, and I was something I've always wondered, I asked him was how is it sustainable to have these scotches that you age for 20, 30 years or whatever and have that be viable when you need to be selling stuff, selling product right away. And I think I'm explaining this right, but it was another form of futures where you have a certain elite that are investing in barrels, investing in particular lots or whatever of the good stuff, the really long aged, kind of fancy stuff that they do in smaller batches in order to finance the quicker turnaround product? And I just thought that was really interesting. This is a very similar example to that. Like how do you take something that requires years to actually generate a tangible thing and make that a market where people are actually going to pay into it and that's, that's how you do it. It's very similar to with whiskey.

[Ben]

Yeah. Wine would be another great comparison. I believe this story, while it does seem to have a cautionary aspect to it, and while it does seem to be sort of a, a morality tale, we know that it's been exaggerated, it hasn't been completely made up. This really did Happen. And I would say that this means it's still functions as a crucial lesson in these, our modern days. Don't buy tulips for too much money. You know what I mean? And don't we have to be. We have to be very cognizant and very self aware of group think and group panics. Something like this will come along every so often.

[Noel]

Oh, and another interesting little tidbit I picked up along the way is that what happens when you start increasing supply over years in a market that relies on scarcity to create the actual value of the thing itself, all of a sudden it ain't so scarce anymore. And then people are like, well, well.

[Ben]

Here'S another example that's tangentially related. And that's a good point, Noel. OPEC recently met to reduce production of petroleum. And they did that not because they were worried about running out of reserves, but because the price globally of oil fell too low for their liking. And now, technically speaking, the US is how you measure it out. The US Is the world's largest producer. Interesting, right?

[Noel]

And that's where futures really come into play today is with things like oil, like absolutely necessary, tangible goods.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

[Noel]

As opposed to tulips, which are kind of like frivolous. And have you heard that, that Monty Python sketch about the Lupins? Oh, yeah, Dennis Moore.

[Ben]

I think Gabe had reminded me of that one too.

[Noel]

Maybe we should go out on that because it's such a fun reminder of how absurd this whole story really is.

[Ben]

Let's do that. That's a good idea. Thank you so much for tuning in, everyone. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. We want to hear your opinions on other economic crazes. And if you had fun listening, let us know. In lieu of sending us tulips one, why not head over to our Facebook page, ridiculous Historians, or drop by Apple podcast and give us a rating.

[Noel]

Right now, my fine friends.

[Ben]

Now, false moves, please. I want you to hand over all the lupins you've got. Lupins? Yes, Lupins. Come on, come on. What do you mean lupins? Don't try and play for time.

[Noel]

I'm not.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

You mean the flower Lupin?

[Ben]

You see. That's right. But we haven't got any lupins.

[Noel]

Honestly.

[Ben]

Look, my fine friends, I happen to know that this is the Lupin Express.

[Noel]

You need to have your tiny mind.

[Ben]

Get out the coach. Well, so much for the Lupins. Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore galloping through the sward Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore and his horse Concord he stays from the range and gives to the Mr. Moore. Mr. Mo. I'll be back, Mr. Moore.

[Noel]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Havoc Town Narrator]

There's a vile sickness in Apostown. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Havoc Town Promo Voice]

From iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sacred Scandal Promo Voice]

Sacred Scandal is back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths. Truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Alena Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season, she's telling her story.

[Elena Sada]

When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marcia Almasel, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a calling.

[Sacred Scandal Promo Voice]

Surviving meant hiding. Escaping took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred Scandal, the many secrets of Marcial masia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988, to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.

[Ben]

And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough. I didn't kill him.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

From Revisionist History, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, this is an iHeart podcast.