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Murtaza Hussain
@mazmhussain
I like crypto and am glad that the prices have gone back up. I HODLd and tend to mostly buy what you could call the "blue-chip" cryptocurrencies whose performance and valuation I am satisfied with. I can't help but ask, however, what happened to all the people who were convinced to buy "real-estate in the metaverse" or were told that it would be a good investment to pay tens of thousands of dollars for images of a cartoon ape? I do not hear much about these narratives anymore and I have not heard of any recovery in values, though I am sure some credulous people lost quite a bit for trusting these stories a few years ago. There needs to be some self-policing and accountability not just of the fringes but the mainstream of any industry in order to build and deserve public trust. I highly recommend reading the book "Narrative Economics" to understand how good storytelling can be used to drive unwarranted increases in asset prices. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182292/narrative-economics
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Fio
@fiodar.eth
I guess those people just got a very expensive investing lesson. In the end, no one forced anyone to pay north of $50k for a JPEG, so I'm not sure if it would be the right move to hold someone - especially the whole industry - "accountable" for something like this, besides the "investors" themselves. And the self-policing mechanism is that most of the people (eventually) won't value this stuff that high ever again, effectively rendering them a failed experiment, thereby stopping future builders and entrepreneurs from launching similar "products" going forward.
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Murtaza Hussain
@mazmhussain
If this is the case then people would take the lesson not to trust any of the individuals or institutions who advised them to do something the first time; or knowingly turned a blind eye to what was bad consumer advice. That’s fine in itself but doesn’t build a healthy culture over time.
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Fio
@fiodar.eth
But can we really speak of "advising" there? In the end, some people sold other people a dream (getting rich), which isn't unique to our industry. And instead of searching for someone "to blame", the people who pressed the buy button are better off long-term if they see the things as they are, which is: "I fucked up by buying a JPEG for 50k". This way, people build up something like "healthy distrust" in individuals and institutions they aren't familiar with - what seems to be the right approach to me. I get your point, though. The reputational damage done to crypto as well as the financial damage done to these people cannot be undone, unfortunately. I guess this is something we need to live with in free markets? Sorry for this blog post - it's a super interesting but also complex topic!
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