Wasabi was technical debt. Like all forms of debt, there is productive and unproductive technical debt. Productive technical debt actually give some return on that debt. Unproductive technical debt doesn't. Given the fact that Wasabi lasted 10 years (and the company seems to have made a bunch of money because of it) and because Wasabi gave them the ability to adjust to market factors, I'd say the payoff from this technical debt was highly justified.
All technical debt decisions should be made based on what the business hopes to get from the debt. Considerations for the alternatives, when the debt is retired, etc should all play a part. To globally say "this is a terrible idea" like so many in this thread are doing totally ignores these types of factors in favor of "It's a bad computer science" idea and thus miss the point of technical debt in the first place.
It's not even remotely a bad CS idea, however. It's taking long established praxis with a sound theoretical background and applying it to a problem that that practice was intended to solve.
All technical debt decisions should be made based on what the business hopes to get from the debt. Considerations for the alternatives, when the debt is retired, etc should all play a part. To globally say "this is a terrible idea" like so many in this thread are doing totally ignores these types of factors in favor of "It's a bad computer science" idea and thus miss the point of technical debt in the first place.