When bubbles turn supernova

It’s like watching a plane crashing into a stricken ship in slow-motion: several tech and finance bubbles are about to pop and it’s only a matter of when. I’ve seen this film before, usually from a front-row seat at some overpriced trade show in Las Vegas or a smoky pub in Soho. I started covering this beat when the “portable” computer was the size of a suitcase and required a gym membership to carry. I saw the dot-com boom turn into a crater, and I watched the 2008 crash wipe out the “safe” bets. Now, in 2026, the air is getting thin again, and the smell of ozone is unmistakable. We are currently juggling four distinct grenades, and the pins have already been pulled.

The AI Bubble: A Trillion-Dollar “Maybe”

The first and most explosive is the Artificial Intelligence bubble. We are currently witnessing a capital expenditure binge that would make a Victorian railway baron blush. In 2025 alone, the “Magnificent Seven” and their ilk dumped an aggregate of $400 billion into AI infrastructure. They are building data centres the size of small towns, filled with Nvidia chips that cost as much as a suburban semi-detached house.

The problem? The ROI is currently a ghost. While Nvidia’s market cap hit a dizzying $4.59 trillion earlier this month, the actual enterprise adoption is a shambles. Recent data suggests that nearly 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots are failing to deliver measurable impact. Companies are laying off thousands of support staff to fund the “AI revolution,” only to find that the chatbots can’t actually do the jobs of the people they replaced. It is the classic “SaaS” (Software as a Scam) transition, where every company is forced to pay a “computing tax” for technology that mostly just hallucinates its own usefulness. When the quarterly reports finally admit that the productivity miracle isn’t coming, the “Great Rotation” out of tech will look less like a correction and more like a stampede.

Crypto: The Four-Year Itch

Then we have the crypto-sphere. As of early January 2026, the total cryptocurrency market cap is sitting around $3.12 trillion. On paper, it looks like a titan. But look closer, and the structural integrity is that of a wet biscuit. We are at the tail end of the traditional four-year cycle, and the “institutional adoption” everyone promised is looking more like “institutional leverage.”

Well over 100 publicly traded companies now hold crypto on their balance sheets, with more than 1 million Bitcoin held by just 50 of them. This creates a massive point of failure: if a bear market triggers a forced sell-off to cover other losses (say, in the AI sector), the resulting liquidity crisis will be a bloodbath. The retail market is already exhausted; your average bloke on the street has been burned too many times to jump back in. It’s a closed loop of whales eating smaller whales, and the water is getting shallow.

The Smart Gadget Fatigue

The third bubble is the one currently gathering dust in your kitchen: the smart gadget market. For a decade, we’ve been told that everything needs a chip and a Wi-Fi connection. The global smart home market was valued at $147.52 billion in 2025, with US household penetration reaching a staggering 77.6%.

We have reached “Peak Gadget.” There is no longer a “must-have” device; there is only “I suppose I’ll replace my toaster because the old one won’t talk to the fridge.” Innovation has plateaued into incremental software updates and intrusive subscription models for doorbells. Consumers are finally waking up to the fact that they don’t want to “interact” with their appliances; they just want them to work. The industry is facing a massive inventory glut and a “replacement cycle” that is lengthening by the month.

The Finance Bubble: Uncle Sam’s Credit Limit

Underpinning all of this is the grim reality of the US finance bubble. As of January 2026, the US national debt has ballooned to $38.43 trillion, representing a debt-to-GDP ratio of 124%.

Much of the recent private investment and corporate debt has been fueled by the desperate hope that AI would soon become valuable enough to outrun the interest rates. We’ve seen $141 billion in AI-related corporate credit issuance in 2025 alone – debt that was taken on with the assumption of infinite growth. If the AI ROI continues to falter, we aren’t just looking at a few tech firms going bust. We’re looking at a systemic debt crisis – when the biggest economy in the world is essentially betting its future on a chatbot that can’t reliably count to ten, you know the endgame is near.

The tech industry has spent forty years promising us the future, but right now, it’s mostly just promising us more debt and more hype. The fundamentals have been replaced by “vibes,” and the vibes are turning sour. So, for everyone who has not a horse in the race: get your popcorn out, it’s gonna be a ride!