Chain of Fools

This week Chris and Walt delve into the new and developing world of virtual collecting, block chain collecting and even fractional ownership of collectibles like comics, sports cards and more.

Since we recorded this there was a 10 second video that was made as a piece of art that sold for $6.6 million, no tangible asset but a virtual one.

Is anybody participating in this new and developing marketplace?

As always let us know what you thought of the show.

Walter Durajlija
Walter Durajlija

Walter Durajlija is an Overstreet Advisor and Shuster Award winner. He owns Big B Comics in Hamilton Ontario.

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Gerald Eddy
Gerald Eddy
3 years ago

From crypto currency to crypto collections….wow. My daughters exboyfriend current roomate ( don’t ask I don’t) is a card collector and bitcoin dabbler and I will pass this radio…. err podcast, along to him. I heard you explain it… but I still don’t quite get it.

Klaus Shroëder
Klaus Shroëder
3 years ago

Gerald, I almost thought you were going to say… ‘my daughter’s crypto boyfriend…

Charlie
3 years ago

NFTs are exploding right now. In recent news…

Logan Paul creates his own crypto art:
https://dailyhodl.com/2021/02/24/logan-paul-sells-3500000-in-crypto-art-in-just-24-hours-through-polkadot-based-project/

Jack Dorsey sold his genesis tweet for 2.5M recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M87LPh7amvw

And this doofus burned his Banksy and flipped it as an NFT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4wm-p_VFh0

Keep in mind that the Banksy NFT is not original, and not even certified by Banksy, so to me it’s just a digital scan. At least the colour copies sold at comic shows are sold by the artist. I don’t think people are thinking deep enough about what art is, but at the end of the day… the Banksy scan sold for more than the original.

Move over Charizard… we now have Cryptokitties:

Charlie
3 years ago

Oops… I pressed submit by mistake…

Move over Charizard… we now have Cryptokitties:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGfvkjzLrNw

If you’re not up to speed on digital currencies, I highly recommend you at least look into it. Cryptokitties was based off of Ethereum but they said the transactions were too slow and created their own token called Flow… which has more doubled in value recently. The only problem is, we can’t buy any right now due to regulations.

Charlie
3 years ago

Final thoughts. The value of NFTs appears to be mostly centred around celebritism, as opposed to artistic merit. Moving forward, I think the various exchanges and markets will have to pool and standardize according interests. Blockchain is basically what the internet was 25 years ago. It’s hard to say which cryptos and related services will survive, but at this point, it’s pretty clear this new technology is here to stay. The trick now is to try and find who or what the next Amazon, Google or Facebook will be… and HODL for the next 20 years.

Chris O.
Chris O.
3 years ago

Gerald, I don’t quite get it yet either. But I think it’s a good thing to start looking at.

Charlie, great links. Let us know when cryptokitties can be sold. I’m sure there is a joke in there somewhere about cats….

Charlie
3 years ago

Just to be clear, the original line of Cryptokitties are sold out, but are being traded on their respective exchanges. FLOW is the latest and newest digital currency created by Dapper Labs specifically tailored for the transaction of NFTs. Although FLOW is listed the crypto exchange Binance, it cannot be purchased by us right now.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of digital currencies and tokens out there, but almost all of them are managed by companies, with the exception of Bitcoin (BTC). Each currency has it’s properties in terms of it’s utility, but once the dust settles, more than 90% of these will fail and disappear. It’s difficult to distinguish in some case what is a currency vs gaming tokens like RoBucks, as well countries are working to digitize their national currency… and leading the pack is China, which ties in with their recent move against Jack Ma and his Alipay, but is another step toward become the reserve currency of the world. This is why some people theorize that the US is secretly supporting BTC in the background as a push back against all this, but it’s all high level tin foil hat thinking for now.

Enthusiast criticize BTC for having short comings as a currency. While this may be true, these same critics don’t seem to acknowledge that sub systems can be layered in, if/when BTC hits critical mass… in the same way fiat or cash works in conjunction with credit cards or the swift system. But for now, if you subscribe to Metcalfe’s law, that the network with most users will win out, and that in the digital world, it’s basically winner take all or winner take most, examples of this being Amazon, Google, eBay and Facebook who essentially have no competition. If you believe all this… then I would say that BTC and ETH are still the horses to bet on.

Personally, I think digital currency makes sense. If paper, the desktop, dating, shopping, communication and of course media have all become digital… and now collectibles too… why not money? Exciting times.

Check out this stock-to-flow model (S2F, give it a minute to load, you can zoom in). BTC is set to hit 100k by September, up to 300k if it overshoots as it has in the past. Unlike Tesla or Apple, BTC is not managed by a board of directors. It’s spread is… viral. Yes, others have debunked S2F for having built in assumptions or missing data… but much like the 2nd wave that we’re currently coming out of… exact numbers are difficult to predict but so far, the overall trend has held true. BTC hitting 20k in the fall of 2020 was momentous for the community.

https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/stock-to-flow-model/

Charlie
3 years ago

I forgot add that NFTs are not just for digital assets… For example, the authenticity of a high value physical item on the secondary market, like an AF#15 or an LV bag can be validated using NFTs. Or in this case, you can invest in someone’s home:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/a-st-louis-home-is-being-auctioned-off-as-an-nft-on-mintable

mel taylor
mel taylor
3 years ago

You have to wonder how Non-Physical Things (just Google BFT in case you weren’t sure what the hell Charlie is talking about) became BFTs. Most competent journalists use the full reference before resorting to acronyms, as in your proper use of “BTC(Bitcoin).” I thought the comments were meant to by enlightening, not obfuscatory.

Klaus Shroëder
Klaus Shroëder
3 years ago

And here I continue to just use cash. I don’t even have a credit card.

mel taylor
mel taylor
3 years ago

By the way, in case anybody really cares, NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token, such as the digital collage by Beeple which sold recently at an online Christie’s auction for (count the zeroes!) US$69,000,000. Apparently there really is a sucker born every minute. Rich suckers too!

Charlie
3 years ago

BTC hit a new milestone today… 60k USD! It is now officially in price discovery mode. For anyone wondering if it’s too late to get in… the answer is no. Believe it or not, it is just beginning. But before anyone jumps in… you have to understand the halving cycle. 2022 is expected to be another crypto winter, at which point, nay sayers will come out and say… “I told you so…”, but in reality, the winter cycle is expected and understood as being part of the process. HODL’ers (hold on for dear life) are looking beyond this to a market cap equal to that of gold. Currently, BTC is at 10%.

On the other hand, NFT’s are probably in a bubble right now, but early buyers of key historic digital assets are poised to win big, if/when the market matures. Imagine buying an Action #1 off the newsstand and HODL’ing all these years, while everyone around you said you were a sucker for HODL’ing a kids cartoon magazine?

Yes, it takes imagination and a leap of faith, but I would think that comic book collectors have this more than anyone else.

Charlie
3 years ago

Oops… I spoke to soon. NFT speculators are going back to the first generation of NFTs and scooping them up at crazy prices. Could MoonCat be the Action#1 and Det#27 of NFT’s?

https://twitter.com/pwnlord69/status/1370480976309190656