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by danuker 1639 days ago
> objective measure

How would a bunch of subjective meatbags be able to come up with an objective measure?

If everyone agreed that X is an objective measure, it could still be wrong.

Give me a concrete example of what you think is an objective measure.

1 comments

Sorry - I edited my comment while you were posting this. Feel free to reply to my full comment, since I address the consequences of this line of reasoning there.
Thank you for the response! And sorry for taking so long with mine.

I agree that the example you provided is a more "objective" one, more grounded in physical reality - a tulip costing the same as a 10 years' salary.

> Obviously this is absurd, and history proved it so.

Had the tulips kept their scarcity, and had social interest remained at such high levels, couldn't it have kept its value?

An example I have is gold: people have been hoarding and valuing it for millennia. Sure, it occasionally crashes, but so do a lot of assets. Is it in a constant bubble? Is it overvalued? What is the intrinsic value of gold? It is not very useful in itself, but it is in demand and scarce, as opposed to fiat currency, which is in free fall.

http://pricedingold.com/us-dollar/

I argue that value comes from what people attribute it to be. The markets are an aggregation of such value decisions from many people.

It seems like you are in full agreement with me that the way we value NFTs is exactly equivalent to the valuing of Tulips during the bubble of 1637.

> Had the tulips kept their scarcity,

They did.

> and had social interest remained at such high levels, couldn't it have kept its value?

You mean if the tulip bubble had never burst would we still be paying 10 years of a skilled persons salary for one? Sure.

It’s worth noting that the courts ultimately held the debts owed for Tulip futures to be ‘gambling debts’…

> You mean if the tulip bubble had never burst? Sure.

Exactly. There is no guarantee the NFT bubble will burst! People might keep enjoying these, and investing a significant portion of their lives.

Yes, just like with the Tulip Bubble! It might never have burst, and then we would never have needed NFTs because we’d still be trading tulips.
But I believe everything should be valued this way, including:

- stocks and real estate: people use "objective" metrics like discounting cash flow. But the time preference for discounting cash is subjective.

- precious metals and commodities: there are "objective" stock-to-flow metrics, but they all assume people will still desire precious metals, commodities, and the resulting products. This desire is subjective.