4 ms·

>But I also find sneaker and stamp collectors equally perplexing, People for the most part don't get rich off of stamps. Is more of a hobby than an investment.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
andybak 5y ago
I know people who made a decent living from sneaker trading though.
- altdataseller 5y ago
  Same. Know a handful of ppl making well into 6 figures a year selling on StockX.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Yeah I grew up in the hood and some of the more successful people from my area started their financial life by sneaker trading.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  you can make a decent living in all kinds of nonsense if you can either find a way to predict collective mood swings or just get lucky. with millions of people scheming at blockchain stuff there will be thousands getting lucky over and over thinking they are smart
  - bl4ckcontact 5y ago
    But at what point do we qualify something/someone as “smart”? I’d argue that someone that’s getting lucky over and over again are clearly on to something. As the saying goes: “You create your own luck”.
    - pooper 5y ago
      > But at what point do we qualify something/someone as “smart”? That's a good point. We can only give our guess based on what we know. For example, people regarded Alan Greenspan as "smart" before 2008. I now think he is an idiot at best and a horrible, malicious person at worst (the truth is probably somewhere in between). Maybe things will change in a few decades and people will then recognize him as "smart" again? It is pretty silly trying to predict the future. > I’d argue that someone that’s getting lucky over and over again are clearly on to something. As the saying goes: “You create your own luck”. I present Sir Isaac Newton as a counterexample. Clearly a smart person but just because someone is smart does not mean he was right about everything. In fact, we know now that his nonsensical "work" with alchemy killed him. I am positive that this fad will fail. I am just annoyed that now the name web3 is taken by this nonsense.
  - everfree 5y ago
    Most of the entertainment industry is about predicting collective mood swings.
  - jboy55 5y ago
    People made good money selling Beanie Babies, Baseball Cards and other fads... at the beginning of those.
everfree 5y ago
For many people, NFTs are also a hobby not an investment. You just hear about the investors because they are the loudest.
- chii 5y ago
  > NFTs are also a hobby not an investment. You just hear about the investors because they are the loudest. Or the only voice, because no one else is interested in looking at a hash for fun. The real artwork is easily digitally duplicated and so if your hobby was to look at the art, you do not need to purchase the NFT.
  - everfree 5y ago
    Spending a few dollars on NFT "ownership" is worth it to me to have my name next to something, just like spending $10 on a League of Legends skin is worth it to some people to have their name next to a piece of artwork in a video game. I am literally interested in looking at a hash for fun, since it shows up online in NFT viewers with a little picture of it in my account. $10 is such a small amount of money to me, if I didn't spend it on an NFT then I may have bought a CS:GO skin or hypothetically some Candy Crush lollipop hammers, spent it at the arcade or put it into a slot machine or something. The NFT sparks better conversation. That's before getting into the fact that if I buy an independently drawn NFT, that $10 doubles as a donation to help support the artist's work, and the NFT becomes public proof that I helped financially support the artist.
    - hooande 5y ago
      so NFTs are Candy Crush lollipops, but not attached to a particular game?
      - everfree 5y ago
        That's probably the weakest of my examples, since lollipop hammers are at least valuable for their utility within a video game. I would think of art NFTs as more like character or weapon skins - completely useless except that it's visually appealing and you can show off your "ownership" of it to other people within the game. With art NFTs, the "game" so far is just NFT viewing tools, social media profile pics, etc. Actually, premium Steam profile borders might be an even more apt analogy, since they aren't tied to any game and are also useful solely for vanity. Of course, then you have NFTs that actually do represent usable in-game items like with Axie Infinity or Gods Unchained, but that's an adjacent topic.
jboy55 5y ago
Beanie Babies, Baseball Cards, Comic Books all had period of rampant speculation whos markets were destroyed once people who "invested" tried to turn their assets back into cash. Hobbyists just suffer through these periods. Anecdote time, I was at an Xmas party and people were talking about what crypto they were investing in. I said I speculated a bit, then got spooked and got my money out of Crypto.com. (which wasn't easy). This got everyone interested, they had no idea how to turn their Crypto back to dollars. The market is going up, because there's a one way flow of money.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

andybak 5y ago

I know people who made a decent living from sneaker trading though.

altdataseller 5y ago
Same. Know a handful of ppl making well into 6 figures a year selling on StockX.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Yeah I grew up in the hood and some of the more successful people from my area started their financial life by sneaker trading.
gameswithgo 5y ago
you can make a decent living in all kinds of nonsense if you can either find a way to predict collective mood swings or just get lucky. with millions of people scheming at blockchain stuff there will be thousands getting lucky over and over thinking they are smart
- bl4ckcontact 5y ago
  But at what point do we qualify something/someone as “smart”? I’d argue that someone that’s getting lucky over and over again are clearly on to something. As the saying goes: “You create your own luck”.
  - pooper 5y ago
    > But at what point do we qualify something/someone as “smart”? That's a good point. We can only give our guess based on what we know. For example, people regarded Alan Greenspan as "smart" before 2008. I now think he is an idiot at best and a horrible, malicious person at worst (the truth is probably somewhere in between). Maybe things will change in a few decades and people will then recognize him as "smart" again? It is pretty silly trying to predict the future. > I’d argue that someone that’s getting lucky over and over again are clearly on to something. As the saying goes: “You create your own luck”. I present Sir Isaac Newton as a counterexample. Clearly a smart person but just because someone is smart does not mean he was right about everything. In fact, we know now that his nonsensical "work" with alchemy killed him. I am positive that this fad will fail. I am just annoyed that now the name web3 is taken by this nonsense.
- everfree 5y ago
  Most of the entertainment industry is about predicting collective mood swings.
- jboy55 5y ago
  People made good money selling Beanie Babies, Baseball Cards and other fads... at the beginning of those.

everfree 5y ago

For many people, NFTs are also a hobby not an investment. You just hear about the investors because they are the loudest.

chii 5y ago
> NFTs are also a hobby not an investment. You just hear about the investors because they are the loudest. Or the only voice, because no one else is interested in looking at a hash for fun. The real artwork is easily digitally duplicated and so if your hobby was to look at the art, you do not need to purchase the NFT.
- everfree 5y ago
  Spending a few dollars on NFT "ownership" is worth it to me to have my name next to something, just like spending $10 on a League of Legends skin is worth it to some people to have their name next to a piece of artwork in a video game. I am literally interested in looking at a hash for fun, since it shows up online in NFT viewers with a little picture of it in my account. $10 is such a small amount of money to me, if I didn't spend it on an NFT then I may have bought a CS:GO skin or hypothetically some Candy Crush lollipop hammers, spent it at the arcade or put it into a slot machine or something. The NFT sparks better conversation. That's before getting into the fact that if I buy an independently drawn NFT, that $10 doubles as a donation to help support the artist's work, and the NFT becomes public proof that I helped financially support the artist.
  - hooande 5y ago
    so NFTs are Candy Crush lollipops, but not attached to a particular game?
    - everfree 5y ago
      That's probably the weakest of my examples, since lollipop hammers are at least valuable for their utility within a video game. I would think of art NFTs as more like character or weapon skins - completely useless except that it's visually appealing and you can show off your "ownership" of it to other people within the game. With art NFTs, the "game" so far is just NFT viewing tools, social media profile pics, etc. Actually, premium Steam profile borders might be an even more apt analogy, since they aren't tied to any game and are also useful solely for vanity. Of course, then you have NFTs that actually do represent usable in-game items like with Axie Infinity or Gods Unchained, but that's an adjacent topic.

jboy55 5y ago

Beanie Babies, Baseball Cards, Comic Books all had period of rampant speculation whos markets were destroyed once people who "invested" tried to turn their assets back into cash. Hobbyists just suffer through these periods. Anecdote time, I was at an Xmas party and people were talking about what crypto they were investing in. I said I speculated a bit, then got spooked and got my money out of Crypto.com. (which wasn't easy). This got everyone interested, they had no idea how to turn their Crypto back to dollars. The market is going up, because there's a one way flow of money.