How do destroy value

Step 1: Innovation creates technology that greatly boosts productivity, and thus creates extra wealth and value in society.

Step 2: Wealth and value is first generated bottom up, but due to winner-take-all effects, eventually one or a couple gain an oligopoly over the market.

Step 2.5: Other adversarial competitive forces effectively funnel wealth into a few middle-men (the ones selling shovels and building platforms). Like advertisers or banks in the current iteration.

Step 3: The excess generated wealth is siphoned into a few players, who begin to speculate on another kind of technology of the same calibre as in Step 1. The speculation turns into debt as time progresses.

Step 4: There is more debt than the original value of the technology, more-over, the debt is incestuous and leveraged.

Step 5: Eventually, the speculation fails, as new world-changing technology cannot be expected to happen. The debt cracks and the illusion of value vanishes. The market implodes, we are back to square 1, but this time with a new gadget.