A lot of it is young kids or college students with undeveloped brains and a lack of good guidance. Then a bunch is desperate needy or greedy folks who are thinking impulsively.
it's also just plain advertising. When the celebrities listed in these charges say that they're buying NFTs, a whole lot of people are going to see that and notice.
The number of people that buy an NFT because Soulja Boy bought one is probably pretty small. The number of people who buy NFTs because "everyone else is" is much much larger.
Yes, in advertising terms these endorsements are not tactical but strategic. You want to create an ambience where people sense that everyone successful is now getting into crypto/NFTs. That kind of diffuse group pressure is much harder to consciously analyze than “do I want to buy this thing because Soulja Boy told me to?” — and thus much more effective over time.
Crypto seems to have been particularly powerful at preying on women and minorities who felt like they’re missing out with mainstream finance. This kind of highly focused influencer marketing within communities must have been a major contributor to its uptake.
Is that really true? When I was in college some years ago I didn't fall for any scams and few of my classmates did either. Most of us barely had money for beer and textbooks, so there wasn't much to scam from us in the first place. Has the situation changed?
Do you remember those Power Balance wristbands? I think the things back then on the radars of school/college kids were a bit simpler. In the recent past, fashion was the big driver and what 15-20 year olds saw in trends. Now, social media exposes them to influencers and wealth and they figure they want to get on the crypto train, or get a GoPro because it will make adventure sports happen in their lives, or go live in a van.
Last year, a colleague was talking about his ~15 year old kid insisting he wanted to buy NFTs. Said colleague had suffered FOMO from years of the rest of us talking about Bitcoin and might've therefore been primed to acquiesce.
The number of people that buy an NFT because Soulja Boy bought one is probably pretty small. The number of people who buy NFTs because "everyone else is" is much much larger.