NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are a phenomenon that appears to have come out of nowhere, and something that I just can't grasp.
I watched
Down The Rabbithole on DomainSherpa about NFTs to try and get a better grasp of them after the Booth (
@JamesBooth) brothers spent $1.3m (400 ETH)
to acquire the most unique Bored Ape Yacht Club ape.
Andrew Rosener brought up a good point on the Podcast that humans are innate to collect. To that, I say that humans are also prone to repeat history hoping for a different and sometimes better outcome. In other words, we all have a bit of crazy locked up in us too.
Both Andrew and I lived through the TY Beanie Babies rush. Speaking for myself, I can say at this moment that at the time TY looked like an escape from poverty. And, quite possibly, had I, or my mother, entered and exited at the right moment, it would have been a means to an end for our family.
Though, we all know what happened to the TY rush.
If not, you can watch its steep incline in value, priced by those invested in the fad, and faster than incline, decline,
in this Beanie Baby mini-doc posted in the comments section of the above article by
@MapleDots. It illustrates that the people who set the prices for the Beanies were also those that were invested in them, creating books and guides, also selling them.
Sounds strikingly similar to NFTs to me...
Andrew also stopped by to comment "have fun staying poor" to those that don't participate in the NFT trade.
Shane Cultra chimed in to say that people called us, domain name investors, idiots for putting our money where our mouths were to buy and sell domains. While this might have been true at one time in the early days, it has shown itself to be a well-oiled environment for investing over the past two to three decades, while we have months — even though the ability was created years ago — on NFTs.
I just can't understand a $1.3m purchase of a JPEG —
I would rather have a Ferrari F50.
Yeah, I've seen the "boomer" comments about people not understanding this in almost every comments section on NFTs. The problem with this sentiment is that I'm a millennial, and for the most part, the older people on the millennial side of the age scale are in this space, at least from the domaining atmosphere. And, we have children, children that we could have taught not to repeat the same mistakes of collectibles as a means of investments, especially after the CHIP phenomenon... remember that one?
Luckily I got out at the peak.
At least with NFTs, we can see both the
wallet of the Booth brothers (0xe32acfcedfa8bda1d0ed03cafa854219ce0c9cea) to see what else they're buying and selling as well as follow the
transactions on their $1.3m ape to see if it works out in their favor.
I wish them, and everyone else in the space, all the of luck in their ventures and hope that it works out in their favor; I have no ill-will towards anyone to want them to fail. However, much like Dogecoin, I will be sitting this one out.
I'll probably end up eating these words and
stay poor for now (I'm better off than as a child, of course). I just don't have that risk tolerance, otherwise, I would participate in
options on the stock market much more, something that can give 100% gains overnight, or take them just as quickly, because it's at least something proven and something that I can understand.
At least we have a good record of where things were in 2020/2021 for investing — Probably something that we can all agree on now: A crazy two years of our history that no one will probably understand 20 years from now.
