[Lerc]

The current state of NFTs etc. amazes me in the context of Beanie Babies.

So many people have learned nothing. Granted the time gap means these are entirely new people making those mistakes.

We have such a degraded level of discourse now that if it were used in the Beanie Baby craze there would be people arguing about whether all soft toys are evil.

[technofiend]

>So many people have learned nothing.

I would argue considering the plethora of NFT offerings both legitimate and plagiarized that many people learned trying to manufacture the next Beanie Baby is better than investing in them, sort of like selling shovels in a gold rush is more reliable than digging for gold.

[throwanem]

The difference is that stuffed toys have value independent of speculation.

[ARandomerDude]

True in the ones to dozens of dollars. I remember in the Beanies Baby era they were going for hundreds or thousands though.

I actually knew somebody with an extremely valuable collection in the late 90s whose house was broken into. Only the BBs were stolen, which speaks to their value being well beyond that of regular stuffed toys at the time.

[VWWHFSfQ]

Are you saying that my monkey jpeg is not worth 350,000 US dollars?

[OJFord]

You mean your arbitrarily sanctioned title to the publicly available monkey jpeg?

[ratg13]

A better comparison is purchasing a star, or a plot of land on the moon.

[PragmaticPulp]

> So many people have learned nothing.

The more I talk to crypto/NFT people, the more I’ve realized that they’re looking at the same historical events but walking away with completely different take-aways.

For example, they wouldn’t look at the Beanie Baby bubble and think of the people who invested a lot of money and had nothing to show for it after the crash. They’d look at the price charts of Beanie Babies and pattern-match that to NFTs with an assumption that they’re early in the game. Just sell before the line goes down and they’re going to be rich!

[ska]

> Just sell before the line goes down and they’re going to be rich!

This is generally known as the greater fool theory.

[Lerc]

In many respects they are right. Frequently there _are_ greater fools. Eventually someone is left holding the can. The Art world works because there are a few extremely wealthy people who are content to be the 'fool' at the end of the chain. In those cases sentimental attachment or simply being a patron of the arts is enough for them. If everyone expects to make a gain, it's a house of cards.

Cryptocurrencies are a bit different. While there is the same line-goes-up, line-goes-down hunt for greater fools going on, beneath that are people gauging the actual worth. Bitcoin and ETH are vastly overvalued base upon current utility, but if they came to replace money/gold/other they could be worth many times their current value. Investors buying and selling on that basis are not looking for greater fools but are attempting to be more right about the future than average.

[ska]

> Frequently there _are_ greater fools.

That's the basic point of the theory! The tricky part is, at least on mass, humans are much worse at knowing where they are in the curve than they think they are...

[duxup]

I wonder how many individuals were buying beanie babies compared to nfts?

I suspect far more beanie baby buying individuals.

[fullshark]

Are beanie babies the new go to for this? Cause 10 years ago everyone used to laugh at the irrational exuberance of the dotcom boom, pets.com and all that.

Then 10 years later everyone realized the exuberance was actually totally rational when you're talking about the market shifts the internet brought and the size of the spoils that would eventually befall the winners.

[burnt_toast]

I've been hoping someone would make a satirical beanie baby nft website.

[sjg007]

Non-fungible tulips.

[anonporridge]

You joke. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/nft-cryp...