In 1848 two fat gold nuggets were found at a mill in northern California owned by John Sutter, within a year tens of thousands of men, called the '49ers flocked to the area to strike it rich.
So here are some comparisons:
The gold rush brought in miners from around the world, especially Asia, by 1852 more than 25,000 immigrants from China arrived.
Prospectors fought for profits and there were alot of tensions between the Chinese and American miners.
In 1848 there were about 160 thousand people in California, by the early 1850's the population ballooned to more than 300-thousand.
Of the thousands of people flocking to California to make their fortunes in the Gold Rush almost none of them were women.
In 1852, 92 percent of the people prospecting for gold were men. Most of the women that did arrive worked as prostitutes, ran brothels, made food and worked in the saloons.
Ten years into the gold rush, in 1860 there were fewer than 10,000 women—just 19 percent.
After the initial gold discovery, the majority of the men that did get rich were the very early miners, those first on the scene got all the easy gold, it took progressively more labor and time to pull more gold out.
The men that got really rich were from the business' that sprung up to support the prospectors and growing population.
Two guys name Wells and Fargo opened the first banks, (exchanges) that regularly got robbed (hacked).
There are hundreds of products, like mining machines, wallets, tech's supporting blockchain with more products appearing daily.
John Studebaker made wheelbarrows for miners, Phillp Armour, made a fortune operating the sluices that controlled the flow of water into the rivers being mined.
German-born tailor Levi Strauss arrived in San Francisco in 1850 with plans to open a store selling canvas tarps and wagon coverings to the miners, he quickly turned to make sturdy work pants for miners.
The funnest fact is it took two years for the government to get involved: In 1850, the U.S. government purchased (?)the land and California became the 31st state in the Union, it took another two years for the state to start in with rules, regulations and taxes.
So the lesson may be; get in, make big money, get out, create an ancillary to profit off the blockchain explosion, make your $$$ before the government sticks its snoot in and if history repeats it will be years before large numbers of women enter the cryptoscape
(photo courtesy Getty Images)