From Tulips to Bitcoins: 400 Years of Market Bubbles and Busts
I just finished reading “From Tulips to Bitcoins” by Torsten Dennin, and I have to say - this book is a wild ride through 400 years of people losing (and making) fortunes on commodities and crypto.
So I decided to do something with it. Over the next several months, I’m going to retell this book chapter by chapter. Think of it as my notes, thoughts, and takeaways from each story. Not a dry summary - more like me telling you about it over coffee.
What’s This Book About?
Torsten Dennin put together 42 stories of major commodity and cryptocurrency market events. Starting with the Dutch tulip mania in 1637 and ending with the Bitcoin crash of 2018. In between? Oil wars, gold rushes, copper scandals, wheat manipulation, diamond crashes, and a whole lot of greed.
The basic pattern is always the same: prices go up, everyone gets excited, more people pile in, prices go crazy, then everything crashes. The names change but the story doesn’t.
What You’ll Get From This Series
Each week I’ll cover one chapter. Here’s a taste of what’s coming:
- Tulip Mania - when flower bulbs cost more than houses in 1637 Netherlands
- The California Gold Rush - 100,000 people chasing fortune in 1849
- Rockefeller’s Standard Oil - how one man controlled 90% of the oil market
- Silver Thursday - the Hunt brothers tried to corner silver and lost everything
- The Bre-X Gold Fraud - the biggest gold scam ever, set in the jungles of Borneo
- Hurricane Katrina and Zinc - yes, a hurricane moved the zinc market
- Bitcoin’s Rise and Crash - from $1,000 to $20,000 and back down 80%
And 35 more stories like these.
The Book Details
Title: From Tulips to Bitcoins - A Journey Through the Greatest Financial Bubbles in History
Author: Torsten Dennin
ISBN: 978-1-63299-227-7
Publisher: River Grove Books, 2019
Let’s Get Started
The first post in this series covers the book’s introduction - setting the stage for why commodities matter and how these boom-bust cycles keep repeating.
Next up: Why Commodities and Crypto Keep Repeating the Same Mistakes
This is part of my From Tulips to Bitcoins book retelling series. New posts every week.