A $200,000 pet-rock NFT shows how crypto is relapsing into FOMO

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Meanwhile, the market capitalization of a cryptocurrency called Pepe — a meme coin based on a cartoon frog — doubled in just a few weeks. And even the price of the FTT token, which was created by the FTX exchange and currently has no real utility, has tripled in the past month on hopes that Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange will return from the dead.

Everywhere you look, there are signs that the wacky excesses of the crypto market — and fear of missing out on them — are making an unlikely comeback. As expectations of an imminent approval of a spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded fund pushes the oldest and biggest cryptocurrency ever higher, the hype has also lifted other boats — even those considered among the least seaworthy.

This latest rise of digital junk follows a nearly two-year long crypto winter that saw the value of thousands of dubious projects slide — some to nearly zero — to the delight of critics and even some industry insiders. Aggressive actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission marked some crypto coins as illegal and chased some promoters away from crypto. Now it appears that the cleansing was only been temporary.

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“As prices rise, investors on the sidelines think they need to get in,” said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University. “Many will violate the number-one rule of investment: Understand what you are investing in. Many will also violate the number-two rule by