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Overpriced collectibles were around in 2008 and well before. Beanie Babies anyone? Tulips? A fool and his money are soon parted. Only difference here is “digi

Overpriced collectibles were around in 2008 and well before. Beanie Babies anyone? Tulips? A fool and his money are soon parted. Only difference here is “digital”.

blunte 6y ago
The tulip reference is worn out and simply not fitting with the modern scenarios it is compared to. In the 1600s, if you bought anything that didn't come from your village or region, that was a big deal. Tulips were an exotic distant foreign luxury (as frankly any flower would be if you could not grow it in your garden already). People who bought them were not average, they were privileged and wealthy. Surely no peasant was duped into investing their half-month's worth life savings into tulip futures. Also, Amsterdam was the first stock and commodities exchange in the world as far a we know (or at least in the west, as written by westerners). So peculiar investments should have been more likely. Ironically, we now live in a world where non-physical creations with non-physical provenance fetch huge sums because... ? (because there is a lot of excess wealth accumulated by a few people who can piss it away without consequence, or because they can buy it with un-tax-reported currency).
- megameter 6y ago
  I think the key difference is exactly what you're getting at - there isn't a physical scarcity to be had here, so a digital token primarily expresses speculative value by default. Speculation always comes and goes with the hype of a bubble. Lasting value beyond speculation appears when there is use value. But how do you apply a use value to a token? Well, you can't do it by locking down the nominally encoded asset - that's just a sticker pasted on it. These things do not gatekeep well. The use value comes from someone declaring that the bearer of the token is now entitled to something - a song, a poem, a noble rank. Anyone can do that for any token at any time. That is a thing that a unique, uncensored digital asset could be very relevant towards. So the interesting part has not really come yet.

Overpriced collectibles were around in 2008 and well before. Beanie Babies anyone? Tulips? A fool and his money are soon parted. Only difference here is “digital”.

blunte 6y ago

The tulip reference is worn out and simply not fitting with the modern scenarios it is compared to. In the 1600s, if you bought anything that didn't come from your village or region, that was a big deal. Tulips were an exotic distant foreign luxury (as frankly any flower would be if you could not grow it in your garden already). People who bought them were not average, they were privileged and wealthy. Surely no peasant was duped into investing their half-month's worth life savings into tulip futures. Also, Amsterdam was the first stock and commodities exchange in the world as far a we know (or at least in the west, as written by westerners). So peculiar investments should have been more likely. Ironically, we now live in a world where non-physical creations with non-physical provenance fetch huge sums because... ? (because there is a lot of excess wealth accumulated by a few people who can piss it away without consequence, or because they can buy it with un-tax-reported currency).

megameter 6y ago
I think the key difference is exactly what you're getting at - there isn't a physical scarcity to be had here, so a digital token primarily expresses speculative value by default. Speculation always comes and goes with the hype of a bubble. Lasting value beyond speculation appears when there is use value. But how do you apply a use value to a token? Well, you can't do it by locking down the nominally encoded asset - that's just a sticker pasted on it. These things do not gatekeep well. The use value comes from someone declaring that the bearer of the token is now entitled to something - a song, a poem, a noble rank. Anyone can do that for any token at any time. That is a thing that a unique, uncensored digital asset could be very relevant towards. So the interesting part has not really come yet.