People tried to use tulips to read the future in the 17th century. When financial bubbles can’t be explained by material conditions, people adopt religious language to justify their investments.

It will be interesting to see how things will change once token prices rise to meet computational costs.

Look up private equity and corporate raids.

Short version - Layoffs increase short term profits, then you let the business die to sell off the assets. This is generally considered a safer strategy than long term investing because it doesn’t require expertise and you get paid quicker (compared to buying a company and waiting 5+ years to turn a profit on the purchase).