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I would love to know how much of that is real money, as in actually dollars. So much of the cryptocurrency world is based on terribly inflated prices and it ha

I would love to know how much of that is real money, as in actually dollars. So much of the cryptocurrency world is based on terribly inflated prices and it has always been unclear to me how much money was actually put in by real people who aren't just self-dealing and wash trading. I am sure the answer is in the billions but I'll bet that it is much lower than some people would have you believe. Luckily crypto is still fairly well firewalled from the economy at large.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Where do you draw the line? For the clown that paid $2.9 million for the first tweet, do you care if it was 300,000 that he invested into bitcoin and cashed for the 2.9 million? If it bubble money too, does it "count"?
- coldpie 4y ago
  > For the clown that paid $2.9 million for the first tweet He didn't pay for the first tweet, he paid for someone to create a hash of the URL of the first tweet. The distinction matters: the NFT scam works by tricking people into thinking they own the thing, instead of just a copy of a pointer someone made to the thing, which is what they actually "own."
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    "He didn't pay for that Picasso, he just paid for some canvas and paint!" 99.9% of people don't care about the technicalities of how NFT's work, they buy them because they are valuable to them and everyone else believes they are valuable. Every single digital item anyone has ever bought, from Ebooks, to in-game items, to movies, is just a pointer to some bytes on a disk.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      But none of the things you mention besides NFTs are considered investments.
    - Doxin 4y ago
      He didn't pay for that Picasso. He paid for a receipt stating he owns that Picasso signed by crazy uncle Eddie. When you buy an e-book you don't pay for "proof of ownership" like with an NFT. When you buy an e-book you get an actual file containing the data of the book. With this file you can read the book. With "proof of ownership" you can do exactly nothing.
jrmg 4y ago
This is a really good point. If I ‘have’ $1bn because I spent $100 on crypto that rose, held it, and then the price just crashed again, nothing has actually been lost. But if I sold that crypto at the inflated value, the buyers have lost big time. Unfortunately I suspect much of the real money came from uninformed non-rich people who believed the hype - and not just the ‘massive gainz!’ hype (maybe they even saw that for what it was), but the general excitement in that media over crypto in general.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

Where do you draw the line? For the clown that paid $2.9 million for the first tweet, do you care if it was 300,000 that he invested into bitcoin and cashed for the 2.9 million? If it bubble money too, does it "count"?

coldpie 4y ago
> For the clown that paid $2.9 million for the first tweet He didn't pay for the first tweet, he paid for someone to create a hash of the URL of the first tweet. The distinction matters: the NFT scam works by tricking people into thinking they own the thing, instead of just a copy of a pointer someone made to the thing, which is what they actually "own."
- TimJRobinson 4y ago
  "He didn't pay for that Picasso, he just paid for some canvas and paint!" 99.9% of people don't care about the technicalities of how NFT's work, they buy them because they are valuable to them and everyone else believes they are valuable. Every single digital item anyone has ever bought, from Ebooks, to in-game items, to movies, is just a pointer to some bytes on a disk.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    But none of the things you mention besides NFTs are considered investments.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    He didn't pay for that Picasso. He paid for a receipt stating he owns that Picasso signed by crazy uncle Eddie. When you buy an e-book you don't pay for "proof of ownership" like with an NFT. When you buy an e-book you get an actual file containing the data of the book. With this file you can read the book. With "proof of ownership" you can do exactly nothing.

jrmg 4y ago

This is a really good point. If I ‘have’ $1bn because I spent $100 on crypto that rose, held it, and then the price just crashed again, nothing has actually been lost. But if I sold that crypto at the inflated value, the buyers have lost big time. Unfortunately I suspect much of the real money came from uninformed non-rich people who believed the hype - and not just the ‘massive gainz!’ hype (maybe they even saw that for what it was), but the general excitement in that media over crypto in general.