During the 1920s, the U.S. had a dream: that one day, anyone could become rich through investment in the stock market, and no one believed in that dream more than Charles Edwin Mitchell, a celebrated financial genius who, in his advocacy for the democratization of investing in the stock market to the masses, also subsequently singlehandedly triggered the Great Depression. "It became fashionable to invest in the stock market — a fad — and a new generation of unsophisticated investors entered the market eager to make their fortunes," Frederick Lewis Allen said of the decade, often nicknamed the Roaring '20s. Fast-forward a century later to the 2020s, and cryptocurrency has arrived as a global phenomenon proclaiming a future where wealth, once locked behind banking gates, would be open and democratized for all. Crypto advocates painted blockchain as not mere technologies, but instruments of "financial freedom." No more gatekeepers, no more intermediaries, just the retail masses empowered to control trade and multiply wealth at the fingertips of their smartphones. "Blockchain technology