If we’re talking about the 1% of people (I’m being generous) in the modern world who are evolutionary, thermodynamically, haphazardly and providentially inclined to notspend their lives suffocating on lovelessness, hopelessness, disenfranchisement and poverty only to die unfulfilled and forgotten, then I totally agree with you. BTW, I think I was the first person to like your first comment in this thread. I’m very much into the open mind thing.
But still, a 1K NFT is, like any other lottery ticket, only an “opportunity” if it does not turn to shit tomorrow, most people can barely gamble with that sort of money once and if they did it en masse we’d have civil war in every country with internet access. Success stories are only fun to the successful and few people trust in complete strangers.
A friend of mine made $400k in 2 weeks with a crypto punk NFT. Apparently because his had a hat or something made it worth extra money. Pretty insane if you ask me.
Opportunity doesn’t require outcome, otherwise it would be a certainty and there would certainly be no opportunity left for the rest of us.
It’s a disparaging take to have in general and while I agree base needs are always a higher priority I do think there is opportunity everywhere. I’ve spent a lot of time travelling (almost a full 8 years / 80 countries) and have seen some horrific stuff along the way. Walk into a cafe in Kathmandu and walk out to see a small child (no older than 6) covered in dust with no arms and no legs just… set there, with a collection cup in hopes of getting a tourists pity and yet our local friends say any money going to him goes directly to the ‘mafia’ and will never help him in any way. The world can be dark, depressing, and full of pain in many places but it can also be wonderful. People with much less than us can still be much happier than us, and people almost everywhere are generally friendly and good hearted. The ability to have a chance to turn time, or money into something far greater is a gift that very few generations before of us had so close at hand whether through social structures or nepotism/plutocracy the modern world requires much less than it ever has to allow an opportunity at good fortune. Twitter is the new resume for many and I have seen many friends hired directly off of twitter with world class VCs or world class orgs without a single ounce of traditional credentials, straight from places like India, Nepal, Kenya with much less. You can focus on the negative side of things and how life is meaningless for most and most are condemned to mediocrity at best, or you can embrace the structures that allow those constructs to be broken/weakened/moved. I remember back years ago when Sebastian Thrun founded Udacity it was probably the single startup I’ve been the most excited about simply due to the 20-year rolling implication that ubiquitous high quality education could have on the world, but most specifically on areas where it’s the hardest to access. Watching a new wave of engineers, scientists, etc. come out of countries where hard work is everywhere but access to opportunity is not was incredibly inspiring. It hasn’t quite panned out that way as the platform fell more into credentialism and the need to monetize but I think anything that moves us closer to that equal access is a great thing. We’re never going to change the fact that some people have $1,000 disposable dollars and others do not, we can lessen it but largely that fact will never change. What we can celebrate is the fact that someone with very little money and access to the internet has more of a chance now to completely transform their life than they ever have in human history and that trajectory is accelerating, not decelerating. At the end of the day whether it’s cards or NFTs of course these things are an absolute luxury, I think we can all very clearly agree on that. The fact of the matter is you (the royal you) are already here, which means you’ve already better off than 90% of the world and it’s up to you to decide what to do with it from there. Nothing is going to be perfect, and certainly not overnight, but things have and continue to trend pretty strongly to a better quality of life for the majority of the world and significantly better access to opportunity. Anything that accelerates that is a good thing imho
I get where primo is coming from - it’s more risky to be on the sidelines than playing the game from a making money point of view. Or in other words too big to ignore.
Primo, let me start by saying that you are 1000% correct in everything you’ve said in this thread. However, I think you underestimate how hard it is for someone who works a 9 to 5, maybe paycheck to paycheck, with a family, to turn their money into a digital currency they don’t understand, then move to an NFT platform they don’t understand, and then buy an ugly JPEG of a rock and imagine that it’s going to sell for $100,000 or that a picture of an ape will sell for $1,000,000. Even relatively simple concepts like BTC are so far out of the realm or reality for most people. The opportunity is there, without a doubt, and I would love to learn from you if you ever had time, but I feel like even just the concept itself of a jpeg rock to put on your Twitter for clout versus a home, a stock account or even a pokemon card is just night and day.
Crypto is not the great class wealth transfer / climber it claims to be, much as no one would claim winning lottery tickets have lifted more people out of poverty than anything else. In order to make speculative money in crypto you need to a) have funds to invest and b) be in a financial situation where you are comfortable losing everything invested. Which by default rules out a massive amount of the population.
Incredibly high demand for good people within the space, pay is second to none (top engineers @ exchanges making $1m+/yr atm). You could create a useful tool (Blockfolio, just for tracking portfolios – acquired for $400m) or something as simple as a 12 year old drawing weird whales and sharing them with the world (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/12-year-old-coder-made-6-figures-selling-weird-whales-nfts.html).
I know this 12 year old is probably a shadowy super coder who was only getting into it for the good money laundering opportunities, but it’s still nice to see the little guys win sometimes!
But timmy made 200k selling whales so obviously all the poors need to do is put $10,000 of their ultra-high-risk investment funds into ape jpegs and we’ve solved poverty
It’s just wild, you guys who are completely exterior to the space are making insane judgements as if you know the space and all of it’s participants. I have very good friends who were completely broke, homeless with drug problems into 8 figures and having taken care of their entire extended family. I have friends who started a side project while learning to code through tutorials on the web who again, now have millions. You can apply this same twisted logic to literally everything, it’s so easy to write off anything as a ponzi scheme when the # goes up. All of this has been said about your space outside looking in and people colored pokemon as shady influencers selling boxes at 1000% markup and saying cards were going to infinity while they were actively unloading their supply. All of those people completely overlooked all of the wonderful, passionate people who genuinely care about collecting and about the space itself and yet… you blindly do the same to something else that you have had no more than a light trsyt with and fail to even attempt to understand or get to know the amazing people within the space. It’s some of the most closed minded negative behavior I’ve seen anywhere and I honestly have absolutely no idea how you guys live your life like that it must be utterly miserable to spend all of your life judging others and assuming the worst of everything. There are people who suck everywhere, and people who are wonderful everywhere and given that the entire world recently took this view on pokemon recently and you of all people knew the truth of the core community it’s just embarrassing to see that be the defacto stance as you embrace the same narratives outwards. I have no idea how you guys do it but it drives me insane. I hope outside of this forum you are a happy person and have an ounce of optimism for the world
Insightful, difficult, entrancing, and incredibly educational.
Opportunity is on a spectrum and I see primo’s point and people on the forums point too. Not everyone will have 10k to drop into NFT’s but seeing the opportunity to turn your $200 into even $500 or more with educating through reading twitter threads, checking open sea, and looking at different community discords and interacting are all ways to participate.
Nothing is guaranteed in this space, and if the concern there may be too much risk, only put in money you can truly afford to lose. if its still too high of a barrier, learning more about the space and understanding why certain projects, communities or trends occur can be a way to participate without the financial risk.
In pokemon terms, just because you are priced out of a 97’ Pikachu, it is still helpful to know why there is value associated with that pika trophy and where it ranks among the early cards to the way it has shaped cards and trophies today, that all helps in judging value for the cards you are able to afford and continuing to build a collection that way.
Congrats on the sale Primo. appreciate everyone sharing their takes today and the discussion.
