The Swamp

Fuck all this noise.

Growing old sucks, but the crypto whatever thing is definitely making me get off my lawn old.

In case you are wondering what old-man-yells-at-cloud is yelling about and have managed to stay blissfully unaware, Defector has a primer:

https://defector.com/nba-top-shot-story/

I’ve had a running ... something ... with a friend about whether this is “the new direction of sports cards” or “the dumbest possible bubble”. But also I just can’t wrap my head around the concept.

I think it legitimately pisses me off.

At least that was better than the article I read earlier that tried to explain NFTs.

“So for $80,000, I’d own the copyright?”

“Oh no, absolutely not.”

“But this would be the only version so it would be like one of a kind?”

“Nope. Over a hundred others out there.”

“... ... ...”

mister d wrote: ↑Mon Mar 01, 2021 8:54 pm “So for $80,000, I’d own the copyright?”

“Oh no, absolutely not.”

“But this would be the only version so it would be like one of a kind?”

“Nope. Over a hundred others out there.”

“... ... ...”

This is dumb but I mean it's not like there's only one Mickey Mantle card.

Right, but having one from 1965 is an inherently limited asset which is the bulk of the value. A new video of Mickey Mantle, one that is on the internet anyway but now says Topps in the framing, wouldn’t (shouldn’t) have inherent value, right?

It’s the dumbest thing.

Jesus, my impression was based on stuff that doesn’t include “you can’t withdraw your earnings”. I had read a defector article maybe a week ago hit but not the one linked.

Been listening to Sports Cards Nonsense on The Ringer Podcast Network and they mentioned this Top Shot thing and I just can't wrap my head around the point of it. Actually sports cards (amongst many collectibles) are having a surge right now.

This is what Mark Cuban has to say about it.

Fundamentally because the next wave of everything is going to be Blockchain, and this is a Blockchain asset (like cryptocurrencies), it is therefore worth money.

Soooooo... it's NBAHighlightCoin? That's about the best I can come up with.

But on the blockchain thing, when IBM is utilizing it for Supply Chain Management related things, you know that's a big deal. But that makes sense because it's a means of oversight, production, and all other intricate facets of logistics.

The thing that they mentioned on the 31 Thoughts hockey pod was that the fact that the league or teams can get paid every time one of these changes hands might be a way for the league to ensure that they get a piece of the secondary ticket market revenue. Thought that was interesting.

But why can’t you withdraw your money?

I am so lost on this.

Probably a few weeks away from the first lawsuit.

Someone going to wonder why they spent $40,000 on a clip of a Kawhi Leonard jump shot.

Love it.

Well, more specifically, I love its potential as a collector’s market. As a securities market, not so much. I’ve been less than impressed with the execution so far, but somebody out there is going to get the concept right eventually.

Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 2:50 am Been listening to Sports Cards Nonsense on The Ringer Podcast Network and they mentioned this Top Shot thing and I just can't wrap my head around the point of it. Actually sports cards (amongst many collectibles) are having a surge right now.

This is what Mark Cuban has to say about it.

Fundamentally because the next wave of everything is going to be Blockchain, and this is a Blockchain asset (like cryptocurrencies), it is therefore worth money.

Soooooo... it's NBAHighlightCoin? That's about the best I can come up with.

But on the blockchain thing, when IBM is utilizing it for Supply Chain Management related things, you know that's a big deal. But that makes sense because it's a means of oversight, production, and all other intricate facets of logistics.

To me, anything that people want to collect is going to have value in that context. I've made myself comfortable that people *might* want to collect Top Shots and so I've stopped asking myself why. It's really not different from why people collect baseball cards--it's exciting to open a pack, sports are fun and make people happy, and you know there are other collectors out there that might pay you for your cards later on.

The part that I struggle with is the closed platform. It's obviously quite different from being able to buy and sell in thousands of hobby shops and card shows. It seems like the potential market of collectors goes away if Dapper can't stay in business or if it can't support its product. That's also the part that leads to a lot of regulatory/legal risk.

As dumb as an idea as this is for sports highlights, it makes a lot more sense for music.

I'm all for anything that can make bands some money and would pay $20 if bands like Lucero or DBT, etc. decided to go down this road for album releases.

Rex wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 11:49 amI've made myself comfortable that people *might* want to collect Top Shots and so I've stopped asking myself why.

This is what I can't do, because you can construct a fake market for literally anything if you want. Like BreweryFans or something where you bid to be a fan of specific breweries and the only thing you get in return is the knowledge that you hold this? And it could just go away and you're out however much money you paid to just be an official, in this little market's eyes, fan? Any of these I make up in my head are dumb, but I struggle to see how it's inherently any dumber than paying money for a video that exists to be seen elsewhere.

You're also describing money

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:12 am

Rex wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 11:49 amI've made myself comfortable that people *might* want to collect Top Shots and so I've stopped asking myself why.

This is what I can't do, because you can construct a fake market for literally anything if you want. Like BreweryFans or something where you bid to be a fan of specific breweries and the only thing you get in return is the knowledge that you hold this? And it could just go away and you're out however much money you paid to just be an official, in this little market's eyes, fan? Any of these I make up in my head are dumb, but I struggle to see how it's inherently any dumber than paying money for a video that exists to be seen elsewhere.

You've also described Green Bay Packers "stock". Completely worthless except for being able to tell people you own it.

Ryan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:23 am You're also describing money

When I can walk into The New Hampshire Map Emporium and buy a map with "Julius Randle Gets Whistled for Travelling" just as easily as I can with money, I'll consider them similar.

brian wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:30 am

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:12 am

Rex wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 11:49 amI've made myself comfortable that people *might* want to collect Top Shots and so I've stopped asking myself why.

This is what I can't do, because you can construct a fake market for literally anything if you want. Like BreweryFans or something where you bid to be a fan of specific breweries and the only thing you get in return is the knowledge that you hold this? And it could just go away and you're out however much money you paid to just be an official, in this little market's eyes, fan? Any of these I make up in my head are dumb, but I struggle to see how it's inherently any dumber than paying money for a video that exists to be seen elsewhere.

You've also described Green Bay Packers "stock". Completely worthless except for being able to tell people you own it.

Exactly what I was going to say. Dumbest waste of money, but I can sort of understand that. I "own" a tiny plot of land at the Laphroaig distillery, but it was free. I wasted the 3 minutes to register on their website, don't think I ever printed the deed. I wouldn't have spent a dollar on that, and never bothered to register more (you used to get a free plot with every bottle purchased). More important, you used to get points for every bottle and I ended up getting a free set of Laphroig Glencairn glasses.

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:38 am

Ryan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:23 am You're also describing money

When I can walk into The New Hampshire Map Emporium and buy a map with "Julius Randle Gets Whistled for Travelling" just as easily as I can with money, I'll consider them similar.

I guess I mean that we would have said the same thing about pieces of paper having value whenever that was decided. Beads, bitcoin, mushroom bisque recipes... No intrinsic value - can be theoretically manufactured whenever the people in charge want to manufacture it. A store could absolutely start selling goods in exchange for highlight videos today if they wanted to and it would make just as much sense to me except one's been around for centuries.

I feel like we had a similar discussion on why people value gold so highly. I think Jerloma brought it up. Where we as a species collectively said "yeah, this particular metal, that while it has some practical applications, we are going to value it higher than others because we can hammer it into jewelry".

I'm not going to get into Top Shots, but I don't necessarily have anything against it. It's a little crass that it was created as a valued collectible, instead of say something like comic books that have other utility, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not really much different than credit default swaps, with a much lower barrier of entry. An intangible item that people are willing to agree that has value.




You know, comparing it to credit default swaps kinda blunts my argument...

Right, metals make total sense to me. Some are rarer than others. Some can be used to make things that are really important (or pretty!). And you just can't print palladium or upload more gold to the cloud or whatever the fuck. A nugget of gold with color streaks that spell "FUCK FACE" on it would be $70 billion. I get that.

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:04 am I feel like we had a similar discussion on why people value gold so highly.

this?

I could have sworn there was what I thought a pretty ugly argument about gold between howard and someone at some point. Maybe it was the discussion with shirley he alludes to there. If so, it may have predated thisSwamp.

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:12 am

Rex wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 11:49 amI've made myself comfortable that people *might* want to collect Top Shots and so I've stopped asking myself why.

This is what I can't do, because you can construct a fake market for literally anything if you want. Like BreweryFans or something where you bid to be a fan of specific breweries and the only thing you get in return is the knowledge that you hold this? And it could just go away and you're out however much money you paid to just be an official, in this little market's eyes, fan? Any of these I make up in my head are dumb, but I struggle to see how it's inherently any dumber than paying money for a video that exists to be seen elsewhere.

I wouldn't focus too much on what the current Top Shot product looks like or what you can do with it, because that will evolve over time. The only question is whether it's something that people might want to collect. I don't think the answer is a definite yes, but there is a decent track record for people wanting to collect sports memorabilia. Totally aside from the investment aspect, there is some sentimental value--"hey, remember these ugly uniforms"--that I think may appeal to collectors.

Full disclosure: I've spent ~$30 on three packs. I don't think I believe in it enough to spend, say, $300, but I'm pretty happy to let my $30 ride.

Maybe that's part of it too, that its not a physical collection. If I want to collect baseball cards and Topps goes out of business, I still have my cards. The market risk is devaluation, not complete disappearance.

I think the market risk is that Dapper & the NBA fail to build a community around the product, either because the website sucks, or they can’t control bots, or they just fail to cater to the interests of casual fans & collectors as opposed to speculators. That’s a real risk. Without the fan/collector element, it just becomes an indirect way to speculate in crypto, and either people will lose interest or the regulators will crack down.

The Football Index crash: ‘More akin to a Ponzi scheme than a betting platform’

Here's how I see this, at it's essense:

1. People have way too much money. This is probably a canary-in-a-coal-mine type of thing for wealth inequality.

2. Most things just have an arbitrary assigned value. Even gold. Who cares if your currency is backed by goal? What if one day people decide gold is stupid?

3. This is like crypto-blockchain stuff but applied outside of crypto-currencies. Blockchain verification of ownership of "virtual" items is probably where a lot of things are going to head in the future as we move more online 'n shit. Yes, this is dumb, but so were onion futures. Eventually it will probably get less stupid.


EDIT: Shit, yinz already talked about gold etc.

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:39 am The Football Index crash: ‘More akin to a Ponzi scheme than a betting platform’

Well, that's a thing that you can't possibly own so it's only as good as the market-makers say it is. Which is definitely going to crash. This isn't the first time this has been offered either - I remember one from like 15 years ago that was cool but quickly fizzled.

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:12 am

Rex wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 11:49 amI've made myself comfortable that people *might* want to collect Top Shots and so I've stopped asking myself why.

This is what I can't do, because you can construct a fake market for literally anything if you want. Like BreweryFans or something where you bid to be a fan of specific breweries and the only thing you get in return is the knowledge that you hold this? And it could just go away and you're out however much money you paid to just be an official, in this little market's eyes, fan? Any of these I make up in my head are dumb, but I struggle to see how it's inherently any dumber than paying money for a video that exists to be seen elsewhere.

I would probably compare it to owning a signature that is actually 100% verifiably authentic.

There will be forgeries out there but in this care there's (I believe) something rather ironclad to prove it.

My issue is still mainly that this is something that had no inherent value one day and then had millions the next, simply because people agreed to it. And while I still get that's how collectibles markets work, I still can't process why that wouldn't just downswing out of nowhere (like the soccer thing) or why the host site/company itself couldn't crash out, leaving no product.

Back to the physical comps, there are trading cards out there that were once hot, then devalued to meaningless and now perking back up. Here, I'm not sure what confidence an owner should have in the devaluation phase not being terminal.

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:41 pm My issue is still mainly that this is something that had no inherent value one day and then had millions the next, simply because people agreed to it. And while I still get that's how collectibles markets work, I still can't process why that wouldn't just downswing out of nowhere (like the soccer thing) or why the host site/company itself couldn't crash out, leaving no product.

That's why I put all of my wealth in Beanie Babies and Pogs. They will never lose value.

Feels like the entire economy is in a bubble and this kind of stuff is the canary in the coal mine. I have a bunch of futures in shorting the Dow and the NASDAQ that keep losing value but think I’m going to move some more money over to buy more because I think we’re in for a crash here eventually.

brian wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:30 pm Feels like the entire economy is in a bubble and this kind of stuff is the canary in the coal mine. I have a bunch of futures in shorting the Dow and the NASDAQ that keep losing value but think I’m going to move some more money over to buy more because I think we’re in for a crash here eventually.

Yup. This is part of the reason why we need to tax the shit out of the rich. Good luck with that though.

P.D.X. wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:24 pm Video clip that anyone can watch online for free sells for $6.6 mil.

I just don't get this whole thing. It's even dumber than investing in BitCoin.

Shirley wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:43 pm

P.D.X. wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:24 pm Video clip that anyone can watch online for free sells for $6.6 mil.

I just don't get this whole thing. It's even dumber than investing in BitCoin.

I am surprised this is your take.