Why do people keep acting like this phenomenon is confusing?
Like gee maybe people are really into mini Jpegs now. Or wow I guess if people really like spending buy-a-house money on a Twitter avatar this will be a thriving sector of the economy.
I mean people really like gambling.
Actually they fucking love it. Like they’ll build an entire city in the middle of an uninhabitable desert just to do it. They’ll give up their kids future for it. People making $7.25 an hour will spend hundreds of dollars a week on scratch off lottery tickets in order to participate in it.
An endless demand for new ways to gamble is the least fucking confusing cultural development to ever happen.
Put people in a prison and they’ll do it with cigarettes. Give a bunch of construction workers a lunch break and they’ll bet on which pigeon is gonna to take off first. Hand a group of people a round ball or a deck of cards and they’ll figure out how to do it.
Beanie babies, little ceramic figures, baseball cards, coins. The desire for people to speculate on synthetically created scarcity is boundless, spanning generations.
Speculation is common to every culture in every era of human history.
NFT’s are a gambling fad, an extension of the more general crypto gambling fad. People will do it until it’s banned, matures, or gets replaced by the next gambling craze.
Specifically, the discussion of the "pogs" craze in elementary schools in the US in the 90s.
"Basically, a nice little gambling ring was growing amongst us starry-eyed 2nd graders."
The OP would certainly read differently if he wrote, "How I won $50K in 3 days with NFTs", rather than saying how he "made" $50K.
Also the Gordon Gekko quote from "Wall Street":
"Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred –- from one perception to another. ... I create nothing. I own."[1]
NFT’s are a gambling fad, an extension of the more general crypto gambling fad.
I agree with you to the fullest, very well summarized.
The issue around crypto at the moment is that because it is poorly understood by both the masses and the evngelists (the tech, the economics, and often both) you have a lot of people who don't want to be left out of the "next big thing" and so they've pivoted their careers to convincing people that crypto and related assets are part of a healthy portfolio. This may or may not be true in the long run, but nobody walks around thinking scratchoffs are part of a good portfolio allocation. The same is not true for these other assets, and we've seen in each cycle when people get hosed and lose it all, they are genuinely shocked because they don't view it as gambling.
So many people think gambling is the preferred investment that they’ll not only use all their own available cash and assets, they’ll surreptitiously make use of the cash and assets of their family and friends.
This comment is meant to be only mildly humorous, unfortunately.
Comments
Why do people keep acting like this phenomenon is confusing?
Like gee maybe people are really into mini Jpegs now. Or wow I guess if people really like spending buy-a-house money on a Twitter avatar this will be a thriving sector of the economy.
I mean people really like gambling.
Actually they fucking love it. Like they’ll build an entire city in the middle of an uninhabitable desert just to do it. They’ll give up their kids future for it. People making $7.25 an hour will spend hundreds of dollars a week on scratch off lottery tickets in order to participate in it.
An endless demand for new ways to gamble is the least fucking confusing cultural development to ever happen.
Put people in a prison and they’ll do it with cigarettes. Give a bunch of construction workers a lunch break and they’ll bet on which pigeon is gonna to take off first. Hand a group of people a round ball or a deck of cards and they’ll figure out how to do it.
Beanie babies, little ceramic figures, baseball cards, coins. The desire for people to speculate on synthetically created scarcity is boundless, spanning generations.
Speculation is common to every culture in every era of human history.
NFT’s are a gambling fad, an extension of the more general crypto gambling fad. People will do it until it’s banned, matures, or gets replaced by the next gambling craze.
Your comment reminded me of this excellent post, best read with its fun accompanying illustrations, "How Money Forever Changed Us":
https://moretothat.com/how-money-forever-changed-us/
Specifically, the discussion of the "pogs" craze in elementary schools in the US in the 90s. "Basically, a nice little gambling ring was growing amongst us starry-eyed 2nd graders."
The OP would certainly read differently if he wrote, "How I won $50K in 3 days with NFTs", rather than saying how he "made" $50K.
Also the Gordon Gekko quote from "Wall Street":
"Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred –- from one perception to another. ... I create nothing. I own."[1]
[1]: https://amontalenti.com/2011/12/16/wall-street-the-movie-25-...
Well said
That’s profound, thanks for the link
I agree with you to the fullest, very well summarized.
The issue around crypto at the moment is that because it is poorly understood by both the masses and the evngelists (the tech, the economics, and often both) you have a lot of people who don't want to be left out of the "next big thing" and so they've pivoted their careers to convincing people that crypto and related assets are part of a healthy portfolio. This may or may not be true in the long run, but nobody walks around thinking scratchoffs are part of a good portfolio allocation. The same is not true for these other assets, and we've seen in each cycle when people get hosed and lose it all, they are genuinely shocked because they don't view it as gambling.
No no, you’ve got it backwards.
So many people think gambling is the preferred investment that they’ll not only use all their own available cash and assets, they’ll surreptitiously make use of the cash and assets of their family and friends.
This comment is meant to be only mildly humorous, unfortunately.
The most truthful and enlightening thing anyone has written about cryptocurrencies / cryptoassets yet.