And they used to be running on bartering, gold and silver.
Things change.
I wonder how "running" cyprus is now :P
I'd say the fundamentals could be found looking in the weaknesses in government/central bank fiat and the controls put in place on how freely people can obtain and receive goods/services.
But yeah, this is a bubble, but if you look at the fundamentals that governments/central banks are running on now, it just takes one country with a overly bloated private banking sector and dieselboom to apply his templates… :P