Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

fermienrico

Is it just me or recently in last year or so I am noticing more and more of ... I don't know what to call these:

- Baseball/pokemon card auctions

- Bitcoin and crypto in general

- Meme stocks

- and now this NFT stuff

It is all exploding. Usually, this was limited to much smaller stage and scale, besides may be the art world. Ofcourse auctions are older than the dust, I am just noticing increasing pyramid-schemes/tokens/scarcity-driven-value-stores and personalities such as deepfuckingvalue/elon/chamath/etc.

Is there an underlying pattern here?

View on HN

Uneducated guess: Quantitative easing of the US dollar has led to some people to accumulate an outsized proportion of the money and are now seeking higher/easier returns where they can. In my mind, recklessly.

Everytime i read "quantitative easing" I chuckle, because this thing is stuck in my head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k

Growing distrust of institutions. General increase in postmodern philosophy, deconstructing concepts of inherent value. Stock market valuations increasingly decoupling from underlying business to the point that everyone realized we were just betting on abstract entities. Large portion of the population not earning enough for traditional investment vehicles to net returns that would meaningfully impact their lives, so instead going for YOLO meme investments for a marginally slim chance at completely changing their lives. I'm sure there're more reasons.

I'm starting to believe that both or even all sides are in the game now. Rich have more money than places to put it. People distrusting markets look at this thing and feel FOMO. And then you have some average guys with extra money and time to look at things they are nostalgic about.

It's basically MLM's but instead of tupperware they're peddling FOMO.

I really lean towards the view that it's just because people are stuck inside. I'll be a lot more concerned about the trend if it persists into 2022.

There's definitely evidence of huge pools of liquid capital and probably an expression of bad economic policy i.e. QE vs. minimum wage.

I suggest there's a time for both, but the time as long since passed for a minimum wage hike or other, better demand-side initiatives instead of the supply side economics that have dominated for the last 40 years.

I'm note speaking politically or ideologically, just pragmatically.

That we have people holding 3 jobs with no healthcare in an economy where people are paying $500 for shoes and 'digital art' and other speculative things is just not healthy.

> 3 jobs with no healthcare in an economy

> $500 for shoes

Why are they mutually exclusive? Should people give up luxuries?

? Yes. Paying $500 for shoes you won't wear is less important than food, or making sure that your kid is supported and shows up to class so that we don't have to blame it on the schools.

Isn’t that individual responsibility? How can you even stop someone from spending on whatever they want?

We cant. But we can try to make sure that surpluses are spread rationally, at least to the extent non-market interventions are concerned i.e. supply-side (QE) vs. demand-side fiscal/monetary policy and governance.

That there are huge markets for useless things at the same time people are struggling without healthcare is not a positive sign.

Financialization of everything until tokens themselves become financialized.

Isn't "tokens themselves become financialized" basically Bitcoin?

Maybe all those old baseball cards I have will finally be worth something...maybe...

There is probably some value in those. Large part of market is nostalgia. I would personally now sell any of them that have risen substantially. They might go up more, but eventually they go down when the generation who have nostalgia is gone... It's common pattern that can be seen with things like cars, outside the very special ones.

While collectibles are superior to fiat currencies as a store of value ($2T was just printed from nothing without any limit to do it in the future), Bitcoin is divisible, which gives it a great liquidity advantage. I expect most collectibles to decrease in value compared to BTC in the long term.

Currency was never meant to be a value store, ever. The US gold backing was a silly thing to start with. A currency's function is to be a glue, a common denominator.

,,Currency was never meant to be a value store, ever. ''

It's not that simple. If people wouldn't use it for store of value, seignorage wouldn't be so profitable for banks.

Gold backing was also very profitable for banks, as they could sell the gold and lie to people about the gold still existing. It wasn't like people wanted it: gold was taken away by force and by shaming people who hoarded it.

It looks like the idea of money got completely detached from a useful value. Probably due to the world scale corruption. This is not going to end well.

> Is there an underlying pattern here?

Fiat money printing.

It causes speculative bubbles.

Inflation. People have too much money, and nothing to invest into.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com