Cathedrals were not built during "gruseome times." Europe's age of cathedrals was roughly between 1000 and 1350, a period of relative peace and prosperity. Some of the main cathedrals were already completed by the time the Plague hit Europe around 1350. After that, the pace of construction slowed considerably. A few major objects such as Rouen, Ulm and Cologne were only completed in the late 19th century. In the case of Rouen, it took 850 years from start to finish.
The cathedrals cost a great deal of money, and as far as I know not a single cathedral token went "to the moon". Sure, the artisans building cathedrals were generally well paid, but no-one became rich building cathedrals.
Yes, any social movement requires some "faith and mystique" - religion is of course perfectly suited for this, as it almost by definition deals with stuff you cannot prove. So that's what one has to be careful about: the "cult" part has to be based on something vague, like "decentralisation" or "cryptocurrencies", rather than on technology which keeps evolving.
Speaking of faith: what about greed? If you're looking for historical parallels, the California Gold Rush comes to mind more readily than the building of cathedrals...
You are nitpicking.
From Wikipedia: "The Pisa Baptistery of St. John: Construction started in 1152 to replace an older baptistery, and when it was completed in 1363, it became the second building, in chronological order, in the Piazza dei Miracoli, near the Duomo di Pisa and the cathedral's free-standing campanile, the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa."
On the other hand: "The Black Death arrived in Italy by sea, first making landfall in Sicily in early October, 1347. By January 1348 it had landed in Venice and Genoa. A few weeks later it appeared in Pisa and from this foothold it moved rapidly inland, east through Tuscany and south to Rome. By the time it died down in the winter of 1348 more than a third of Italy’s population had perished." source
Whether anyone became rich is mostly irrelevant, I chose to focus on the outcome, the cathedrals themselves, which are still here several centuries later.
And here too, you are mistaken: by enhancing their status, the cathedrals greatly enriched the priests, cardinals and more generally the Catholic Church (though not the artisans). Someone did became immensely rich, just not the ones most people were looking at.
Anyway, you better start blogging rather than merely criticizing :-P