Be careful with that. Our ambassadors are often kidnapped and held hostage by hostile foreign nations
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And then all their Crypto belongz to CHU!
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I will never buy a “token” to access a DC key issue digitally. At least not with the intent to hold for investment or hope for a flip. There is a significant difference between a digital access license and physical ownership of a comic.
One is a license that can be revoked at any time under copyright, the other is absolute sole possessory title and possession to the physical material minus the right to reproduce, distribute, etc. under copyright. It’s the same reason I don’t spend hundreds of dollars on game skins that can be taken away at any time. Yes, there is money to be made in selling in-game assets in video games, but that market is entirely at the whim of the IP licensor. If they want to shut down the secondary market, they can.
That’s exactly the problem that NFTs solve. You own the token. It can’t be shut off or taken away. It’s not a license like your steam games.
If the NFT relies upon a service that is managed or controlled by a 3rd party, it can still in a sense be stripped away. If I own a Magical Sword asset in some virtual game called “Magical Wonders” with my own NFT, that service could still essentially revoke the item by updating their software or code (not likely if they’re supporting NFT assets), or just completely shutting down the service entirely.
If my Magical Sword only works in Magical Wonders, sure I still own the item via NFT but it’s now worthless if the game no longer exists (or they rewrote the code base to no longer support the original assets) and you can’t use the item anywhere else.
NFT’s remind me of Ready Player One… at the end where everyone is using “one of a kind assets and items” but the big baddie uses a bomb to make everyone in the vicinity lose everything, essentially starting over. 
That’s absolutely true. The key problem to solve is to decentralize as much as possible and open source any required centralized/3rd party solutions so that there’s competition. If one shuts off, there’s another ready to pick up the invested user base. If a million people minted their own custom magical swords and then magical wonders shut down, you better believe mystical wonders swoops in immediately and supports the magical wonders NFT holders. The network effect still holds because it is emergent. This is same reason you can’t kill bitcoin. Even if you shutoff Coinbase.
The only way it would work is if it was supported by a broadly accepted and utilized platform, like a pdf format, locked for editing and only accessible to you. Then you’re still relying on the collective support of the pdf format, though.
And yes, like nonlinear stated, the base code has to be open sourced. If you deal with a closed source entity, even if another service popped up to take it’s place and accept your NFT asset, they essentially would be rewriting the code to support such asset.
For me though, in the end, it’s still all virtual and make belief. As big as I am in tech, I’ll never join the bandwagon of buying unique items that will and only ever be in some virtual environment to be used.
Music and movies are sort of different in the aspect that I watch and listen to those in a digital world. Some asset used in some game, in the end, all it boils down to being is just a bunch of ones and zeroes and I get zero satisfaction owning such things… cause that’s all they’ll ever be, numbers…
And the advisability of your purchase of that in-game asset is always subject to the popularity of that game. If Fortnite popularity cratered and it was no longer supported, the game company would move on without a second thought to your skins.
Yeah, that’s the other reason why I’ll not find myself usually buying virtual assets like in the case of Fortnite. The game could crater or popularity fall to non-existent. If no one steps up to take it’s place where people could trade or sell their NFT assets, then… oh well. The only time I’ll buy virtual items is if it’s just for fun, but never for a truly unique asset I think will be valuable. I find it crazy when people spend money buying virtual items from others in games… all the power to them I suppose, me, I think it’s just money thrown away as I just can’t be bothered understanding the appeal of such purchases.
I guess I have faith that an entrepreneur will step in when an invested user base already exists. Once again it’s down to network effects and actual ownership. I wouldn’t spend a dollar on a skin that’s locked into a specific game (so as you can imagine I own zero skins for any games).
For example, I often wish that all my steam licenses were NFTs so I could trade/sell them. Then if steam goes belly up, another entity could take their place as a centralized vendor/validator/distributor with their own [dumb/legal] contracts in place with the IP holders. This would happen because of the vested user base and the network effects that creates.
The new SEC guy is a crypto expert. Forget the name but from MIT. I have a Bitcoin ETF with a small allocation. But mostly just to participate in upside. I am also ok with losing the investment. Lottery ticket. Interestingly, I made that investment as an alternative to buying store variants.
I pay attention to Ethereum but don’t have exposure. I don’t have the spine to put more than a few thousand in crypto (via etf). Wish I did! I can’t stomach that type of volatility.
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I actually just posted about this subject on my blog. I’m hesitant about it…
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Yeah that was my understanding as well about the SEC guy.
There is no true BTC ETF (yet) so I assume you’re talking about GBTC. I own a bunch of that in my Roth. It’s more volatile than straight BTC bc of the premium fluctuations. I hardened my stomach to volatility back in 2018 when it all came tumbling down and my ETH went from 1400 to 90 per coin. But I HODLd cuz I know where the extrinsic value comes from and knew it would take a little time for general public to clue in. Ether is going to start burning tokens once ETH 2.0 goes live so BTC will have another digital gold contender in top 2. Get comfortable cuz it’s going to be a wild ride! I go for a 60/30/10 allocation between BTC/ETH/ENJ across my portfolio.
Don’t buy ETHE (it’s Grayscales ETH product). The premium is insane and as a result the price action will not follow ETHs on any reasonable time scale
If I did do it, would be for same reasons. Money I’m willing to lose.
Given fiscal and monetary policy going forward I would be prepared to lose your dollars too! Purchasing power that is
I’m out of most crypto at this point. I had a decent amount that I cashed out during the last bull run (2017?). Ended up working out because I turned a really small “let’s just put it in there and see what happens” amount a few years earlier into being able to buy us a new van when we needed it with a 3rd kid on the way.
I’ve got a little bit of BTC left, even less ETH, and mostly have a decent amount of Stellar and Neblio for the longer-term potential. But it could all go to 0 and I’d still be well ahead of where I started in the big picture.
Like anyone who has been around crypto the amount of stories I have of times when I sold or gave away or didn’t accept bitcoin for things back when it was still a few bucks a coin makes me laugh. At one of my previous jobs we used to use our test rigs for development to mine bitcoin overnight and split the proceeds between a few of us and the company. Cashed out on all of that around I think $25/coin haha.
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My brain hurts after reading that.
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Yes to the GBTC. I have been tracking the Ethereum ETF from the same fund manager. Although I would be more likely the buy Ethereum outright and not ETF (because of the lower absolute dollar value relative to Bitcoin - I don’t think there is fractional Bitcoin). And yes, the volatility of the ETF relative to the crypto currency is annoying. Bitcoin ETF can be up 5% on a day when Bitcoin is down 2%, for example.
I just can’t figure out the crypto market. I have a lot of economics training and can figure out most financial markets to an extent. However, crypto (price action) is completely perplexing to me. Oh, and I can’t figure out how to hedge my exposure. Hence the lottery ticket approach.
All bitcoin is fractional. A satoshi is a tiny fraction of a bitcoin. The GBTC trust is not fractional. The ETHE trust is not either. But the premium over NAV on ETHE is not cool. The premium over NAV for GBTC is around 25%. Not great but whatever… I want tax free bitcoin gains in my Roth so fine I’ll play until a real ETF comes out.
Re: hedging. ETH futures coming from CME soon! Options to follow!