Thread by @sajithpai

Thinking aloud.🧵

Useful to see
- Bitcoin
- the sudden spurt in collectibles (StockX, GOAT, Artsy, RallyRd) including NFT + the entire financialisation of everything trend
- Gamestop + WSB
as decentralised coordinated accelerated creation of value.

Let us unpack this.

Value of anything incl currency, stocks has a broad subjective basis.

That said, to ensure that we dont start questioning the value of currency or what we are buying in every transaction, we base value in some centralised authority's diktat - state / central bank / market.

That means the gatekeeper / centralised authority (who also maintains the ledger) has a fair amount of power.

Historically transactions in stock market / art / currencies have all been intermediated or coordinated through a central authority (NSE / NYSE / Christies etc.)

Bitcoin / crypto is interesting in that it is the largest coordinated / non-centralised creation of value - Total crypto market cap is $1.4T per coinmarketcap.com

This $1.4T exists because people believe in it. If everyone thought the value of 1 bitcoin or ether was 0, it would become that overnight.

Similarly for collectible sneakers or baseball cards or comic books or first editions. There is no instrinsic value as such.

Markets for collectibles are weakly centralized. There is a ledger but no active price-setting. Similarly stock market i suppose.

Art is more centralised. Sotheby's / Christie's / Gagosian's set price and also maintain a ledger (less important because of scarcity).

Speed.

Value creation in these markets thus far has moved slowly. It takes time for coordination games which drive up value (or down) to take place.

But now internet, lots of liquidity (and the ubiquity of blockchain) means we can quickly agree and confer value on something - like a digital piece of art - the NFT enabling scarcity of the digital good - or a sneaker or a stock.

The coordination games of the centralised market have been sped up thanks to easy money (this matters v much), the internet and the decentralised ledger.

We are likely at the cusp of digital decentralized / coordinated goods as crossing 1%(?) of the value of all assets.

NFT is interesting in that it creates scarcity of a digital asset, and can supercharge the creation of a digital collectibles market.

In some ways it is to the blockchain what ecommerce was to the internet / web. The creator is to blockchain what the online store was to the web.

Still thinking through this topic.

We have all been thinking - what is to the blockchain that GUI was to the computer or web was to the internet - and clearly NFTs seem to be pointing at something.

Fin/