https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book_collecting This looks all awfully similar to the market behavior around crypto "currencies". Alts are the new issues, the X-mens of the world. They might be better, faster, cheaper but they are not rare. There are too many of those. Old, slow, crappy Bitcoin is rare because they aren't making more of it
"The first CCG, Magic: The Gathering, was developed by Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast in 1993 and its initial runs rapidly sold out that year.[4] By the end of 1994, Magic: The Gathering had sold over 1 billion cards,[8] and during its most popular period, between 2008 and 2016, it had sold over 20 billion cards.[9]Magic: The Gathering's early success led other game publishers to follow suit with their own CCGs in the following years.[4] Other successful CCGs include Yu-Gi-Oh![10] which is estimated to have sold about 35 billion cards as of January 2021,[11] and Pokémon which has sold over 34 billion cards as of March 2021.[12] Other notable CCGs have come and gone, including Legend of the Five Rings, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, and World of Warcraft. Many other CCGs were produced but had little or no commercial success.[13]" That's the problem with real world scarcity like playing cards. The companies behind it have a vested interest in printing as many as possible and screwing all holders. Digital scarcity is different though, because the code is immutable and can be verified. The total supply cannot be changed. Its a major reason why NFTs are the future
In a lot of ways, the fact that there are 8000 crypto "currencies" (they are not really currencies for the most part) is actually beneficial to coins like BTC. Because that is inflation and markets when faced with inflation seek refuge in things that cannot be inflated, like historical items. There was massive inflation in comics in the 90's, so where the value was at? In things that could not be repeated like old comics that got damaged easily and where the paper was destined to be more easily destroyed over time (genuine scarcity) I'm sure that if the comic book companies tried to reprint the classic editions with the same exact covers and pretty much identical copies, none of that would matter. Markets see through this kind of bullshit. The old ones will always be the valuable ones, even if they look old, look worse and are of worse quality. The serial numbers or other indentifiers and the quality of the paper would give it away
https://fortune.com/2016/07/10/martin-shkreli-magic-the-gathering/ "On Friday, a user took to a Reddit forum devoted to the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, with a simple request for advice. “I am a collector of wine, art and other goods. Can someone give me some resources on collecting rare cards?” Here is what is interesting. Skrelli also owned a Picasso, the one of a kind Wu Tang album and suprise surprise, Bitcoin https://www.marketwatch.com/story/w...-his-investing-tips-and-strategies-2017-09-07
Here is the Magic the Gathering company promising not to print more cards https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/official-reprint-policy-2010-03-10 They sound like a central bank
https://www.echomtg.com/groups/magic-reserve-list/ "The Reserved List was the result of Magic card collectors protesting after a lot of their cards had been devalued with the release of Fourth Edition and Chronicles. The Reserved List, by law, says Wizards of the Coast will never reprint any cards on the list in order to preserve their value. The Reprint Policy featuring the Reserved List was first published by Wizards of the Coast on March 4, 1996, and was revised in 2002 and 2010."
"Coins of interest to collectors often include those that circulated for only a brief time, coins with mint errors and especially beautiful or historically significant pieces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_collecting In other words, things that are genuinely scarce
When Taleb says "I support cryptocurrencies but not Bitcoin because it has no utility and its too volatile". He couldn't be more wrong. Its like saying "I support cars but not the first car created and driven by Henry Ford, its too slow". He is completely missing out on the historical value of the asset, its genuine scarcity
Novogratz is hanging out with a lot of these NFT kids and is seeing the same things as me. If ETH were to drop 90% tomorrow on no significant news tech wise, it would hurt but I would be better off. That means I can now buy NFTs at a 90% fiat discount. I would be able to own crown jewels NFTs like Punks, Founder Cryptokitties at bargain prices. That would also mean I would be able to buy land in digital economies at a huge discount. The amount of things inside the digital world that will be connected to Ethereum will only increase. Effectively, ETH might become the M1/M2 of the Metaverse. USD+EUR+ a few other major coins are worth over $50T. How much would the money of the metaverse be worth? I dont know, but it will be a lot. How much is the insurance industry worth? I dont know but its a lot, and some of that will move to ETH. Lots of things will move there and due ETH burning, a lot of that value will accrue to Ethereum the asset My biggest mistake on ETH will be selling too soon. I hope I have the balls to never shutdown my ETH validator and withdraw, because it has such a huge potential On BTC, it being a digital pet rock that works as a homage to Satoshi Nakamoto and the historic significance of his discovery, I cannot see it being worth more than $10T, not rationally. If it goes to $15T or so, its a full blown bubble and I dont want to own any of it. But with ETH. I can see it being worth more than that and not being a bubble at all
This is not to say that ETH can and will be the only winner. Its possible that Cardano, DOT and some others will have part of the market share. I own some Cardano, Polkadot, Luna, etc. But I its more of a hedge than anything else. Good thing is, if they go worthless big deal, if they work out, they can be multi trillion dollar assets so its a decent bet. But I think ETH should be the Windows of the metaverse, there might be Mac OS and Linux, but ETH will own most of the market This NFT craze is only increasing its dominance, more and more people are getting used to Metamask, ETH transactions, ETH prices, how to mint NFTs, etc. And they will teach other people that. If they all of the sudden have to learn a whole new way to do things, its annoying. I split my hair out dealing with the DOT validator system, so much so that I gave up on it and will earn no interest on my DOT. I bet lots of people will have no patience to learning whole new systems Its funny, Cardano used to be the "eth killer" now they incorporated the ability to port ERC-20 code into Cardano so people dont have to learn Haskell. Thus further increasing the relevance and reach of the Solidity language It reminds me of when Steve Jobs allowed Microsoft to develop Microsoft Office for MacOS. He didnt had a choice, people were used to it and businesses needed instead of learning a whole new office suite but it further solidified Office as the office suite for the world