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Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

I think there are few things.

1. There are some people who struck it megarich with crypto and now have so much "f-u money" that they are willing to spend it on conspicuous consumption. It is the same sort of thing that comes from "look at how much money I lit on fire" posts being given social credit in places like WSB.

2. There are other people who already had a gazillion dollars and are also interested in conspicuous consumption.

3. NFTs are trendy and trends in the crypto space attract people seeking to make money on a trend. A bunch of people are surely buying these things hoping to leave somebody else holding the bag.

4. It is crypto, so some degree of fraud and crime is involved.

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5. TINA's revenge. Years of anemic interest rates have forced more and more money into the stock market, real estate, and crypto. This made some investors very wealthy, but also very aware they're sitting on a bubble.

How do you shield your gains when every traditional asset is either losing to inflation or looks like a bubble? You start reaching out for non-traditional assets.

NFTs have some marketable aspects for someone looking for an alternative investment vehicle. They're self-contained and require no real ongoing costs to just hold and flip later (compared with, say, opening a McDonald's franchise). They're also fresh and new with the promise of getting in on the ground floor of future exponential growth (as opposed to, say, buying an existing Van Gogh or a bag full of Krugerrands).

Now, in no way does this make them not bullshit (what ownership is actually conveyed? Do you now even own the copyright on the work, so you could monetize it later?) but that might be why it looks briefly compelling.

> 4. It is crypto, so some degree of fraud and crime is involved.

some degree of fraud and crime exists in regards to anything of value. Money laundering existed before cryptos. Most banks caught laundering money, did it at a massive scale in comparison to the value of the Bitcoin network. Fraud and crime are directly connected with value

If my bank has insider fraud, I usually don't lose my deposits

But sometimes you do. See: Cyprus in 2008

Yeah, in shady tax haven jurisdictions. It's the wild west factor.

In other jurisdictions the banking system is protected from such failures with taxpayer money, so you still end up losing some of it.

Exactly, also there was this bank that went bankrupt in the 1800s and everyone lost their money too!!!!! You can't trust the system!

2008 was barely a decade ago but if that comment made you feel smart good for you.

Plus this argument is ignoring that the way the banking system is protected from such failures is with taxpayer money, so you still end up losing some of it.

Sure but one bank went under in 2008 versus how many crypto exchanges that stole or “lost” deposits since then? The scale of issues is not even the same order of magnitude, likely at least 100 to 1 given how many banks there are and how many crypto scams there have been

That is, sadly, not how it works in many countries -- if the money is gone, it's gone.

Sure. Fraud and crime have been part of art sales for centuries. I'm not saying that crypto is unique here. Only that it is a force that cannot be discounted when analyzing an ecosystem.

Yeah, but the crypto world is dominated by fraud. Things like Tether where they print billions of 100% unbacked tokens claiming they're backed and then use the money to wash-trade between exchanges all day.

Not to mention that centralized exchanges are an exit scam waiting to happen.

Most people could not participate in blockchain without dealing with a criminal onramp. (Bitfinex, for example.)

And sadly, to your point Rule35, this is why I feel cryptocurrency will never transcend into a truly legitimate investment vehicle beyond gross speculation. There are too many charlatans tied to this industry and they are wide-eyed seeing all the possibilities to hoodwink people out of hard earned dollars whenever they can.

If it ever becomes worth anything to the world as a whole it will be because decentralized tools finally took over.

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