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Don't fence me in

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When I first joined facebook, I was surprised to see how many of my old high school friends were farmers.  I had grown up in a rural Northwest Florida community so it wasn't a stretch.  Well, it turned out they were all playing FarmVille, trading crops and livestock as if they were real things.  They invited me to join in but I said no thanks.  Turns out you needed to buy "farm cash" to build any sort of capital.  

Not surprisingly, Bitcoin came into being about the same time.  I saw it as just another form of "farm cash."  What could you do with it?  Turns out you could do a lot if you had a nose for this sort of thing.  Mostly fool other people into buying it so that you can build its value over time.  

Non-fungible tokens became a big thing.  They can take any digital shape or form, even art work.  This so-called cryptoart was very popular a couple years ago but like cryptocurrency hit its peak and started tumbling in value.  Leave it to Donald Trump to come in at the tail end of this wave with his digital trading cards.  You knew SNL Weekend Update wouldn't pass up this golden opportunity.  

Of course, it wasn't his idea.  He was just paid to pitch the trading cards with a really big announcement.  That honor falls to CIC Ventures, founded by former Trump advisor Nick Luna and Trump lawyer John Marion.  They reportedly raked in close to $5 million off the initial offering.  You really have to wonder who would be so gullible to buy this sort of thing.  Silly me.

The interesting part is that his loyal supporters aren't bashing Trump for endorsing this product, but rather his advisors for letting him sign onto such a deal.  We should all know by now that all you need to do is appeal to Trump's vanity to get his attention.  I bet you that Steve Bannon bought some of those NFT cards on the sly.

It seems that more and more we live in a non-fungible world.  Even those things that are fungible are built on rather shaky digital foundations.  I've long thought that Tesla stock is grossly overvalued, especially given how hard it has been for Elon Musk to meet the demand for his electric cars.  He is constantly enticing people with other ventures, like his Mission to Mars, to maintain interest.  He's also not above donning a Superhero outfit to celebrate his recent acquisitions, firmly believing himself to be Tony Stark.  Only problem is that when Elon ventured into this virtual domain in buying Twitter, he has seen his Tesla stocks plummet by $700 billion.  Now, he is conducting a poll to see if viewers want him to remain as Twitter CEO.  Maybe he should ask if they still want him to be the Tesla CEO?

With all this digital commerce it is really hard to tell the value of anything anymore.  It has become a Ponzi scheme writ large.  If you got in at the beginning of these schemes you probably did profit significantly but now that they are all pretty much in a downward spiral, you will lose your shirt.  Yet, our lawmakers are more concerned with Tik Tok than they are this out of control cryptoworld.  If China really wants all our personal information, it will get it one way or another.  I'm more concerned that state pension funds have invested in cryptocurrencies.  We're headed toward another dot-com collapse that would be far more severe than the one we experienced in 2000.

The anger is palpable.  Not only are people suing FTX and other cryptocurrency exchanges, but the celebrities who endorsed them.  FTX went big at the last Super Bowl with this ad that proved all too prophetic.  When you see others making money hand over fist on these investments, you want a piece of the action only to find out it was a big scam.  The interesting part is that persons very rarely hold the main perpetrator responsible but rather those who convinced them to join in.  One of the many reasons I never suggested cryptocurrencies or other NFTs to anyone, not that I invested in them myself.

I prefer the fungible world.  Of course, it is also subject to fluctuation but at least you still have a roof over your head.  I can't even imagine digital architecture other than as a design tool, but wouldn't be surprised if people buy virtual houses.  After all, people are buying virtual real estate.




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