Saying people don't place the value in the monetary realm is amusing, since money is supposed to be fungible for all value. :)
That said, I get it. Some people place a ridiculously high value on having the latest. I think I used to be in that population, to an extent. Nowadays, I confess this mentality leaves me ridiculously confused.
This has always been the case for all items of value. You might just consider some of those things "meaningful" if people have been valuing them for a very long time (like coins or other physical items which represent a standardized currency) or if the reason people value them is closely tied to features of nature which we aren't likely to change in the imminent future (like requiring scarce things such as food and shelter to survive). But at the end of the day, people are still choosing to value those things and that is all there is to it.
Thing is, "value is in the eye of the beholder". It might be material in a strictly biological setting, or idealistic (subjective) in a post-scarcity environment. We're somewhere in-between with the digital world, the value of the superfluous (e.g. collectibles) is able to rise as material needs are more easily covered (using an ever-smaller fraction of resources).
To put it simply to the point of absurdity, if we were a "magical" (in Arthur C. Clarke's word) civilization without any outstanding needs, we could still play some for-profit economic game and spend quadrillions buying autographs, because it wouldn't lessen anything of importance. Conversely, if you're barely eating enough, you won't spend resources on anything else than getting more food, because that would lessen your chances of survival.
The degree of perceived insanity, I think, thus entirely depends on who you are as a beholder of value, where you fit in the material ? idealistic spectrum. Pretty sure Africans with $1/day feel this is perfectly stupid, but your average billionaire might find it a funny hobby, like collecting some cards of the digital era. There will be a market for that, I think crypto-manias proved as much.
Sure, but many things don't retain value. Your thousand dollar smartphone will be worthless in ten years. Your car will probably be worthless in twenty. People make the mistake of treating them like cryptocurrency which they aren't, but just because they're stupid and will be worthless doesn't make them worthless now.
We will always have to pay for goods in a fiat currency, so it makes sense for people to value everything relative to fiat. Even trading on a ratio still falls back to “which will be worth more fiat”.
This doesn’t mean that people don’t value crypto, it means they live in the real world.
Ferrari cars charge a premium, much like Apple does but they are a hell of a lot faster than a Honda Civic. Baseball cards started as a thing outside of rarity, they had information and a picture which was more valuable pre Internet.
Now you can argue that Antiques should not gain value from age, but old junk is not valueable, old pristine stuff is. So your argument is people overvalue something they have a rational reason to value, which is different than placing clause on something without inherent value.
I am not saying Bitcoins shpuld be worth zero today, I am saying they will be worth zero in 100 years after the fad ends unless they fix the inherent problems with the protocol so it can be used as a medium of exchange.
Money has value because people agree on it as a medium of exchange. Perhaps some day this new coin will be worth something, but I'm pretty skeptical of creating new coins when there's already literally hundreds that can do the job.
The thing is, people generally do view currency as something concrete, and its value is largely based on faith in that concreteness. Once they stop having faith in that, it seems likely that they’ll stop valuing it.
I think you (and many others) have this relationship by the wrong end. Things which are valuable are frequently rare/unique, whereas there are many unique/rare things with no value whatsoever. As others in this thread have implied, the lack of ability to monetize is strongly correlated with a lack of real value.
Value is not an objective property of a thing, so I don't see your point. Things have value by the virtue of them being valued, not solely because someone wants to spend money on it.
Yeah, I think this speaks to a much broader problem with how we attribute value in our society.
Monetary value has no bearing on actual value. For example, a smartphone is only $1000 because some people were paid $0 to produce it. Did those people not produce value? Take a fast food hamburger, it only costs $1 because it's not real meat (mostly), and the person who heated it up is being paid a wage with which they cannot afford reasonable housing and healthy food.
You didn't answer my question. Things have a value because people value them. Nothing has an "intrinsic" value, not bitcoins, not gold, not dollars, not food. I am not a bitcoin fanboy, but I find strange that many seem unable to grasp the fact that most of the value of anything lies in the willingness of other people to give us something in exchange for it, not in the good itself.
Sure, if you're going to argue from a position of economic nihilism that the only value anything is determined by what some idiot is willing to pay for it, then you can call that NFT valuable. That isn't much of a discussion though is it? Since I could also call Beanie Babies and tulip bulbs valuable. If I give my friend $100 for a red paperclip and he gives me $100 for a green paperclip could say those paperclips were worth $100.
It is the scarcity that creates the 'value'. Unless everybody walks away from the idea that it is worth something (may happen), then its value is still driven by how difficult it is to create some.
That said, I get it. Some people place a ridiculously high value on having the latest. I think I used to be in that population, to an extent. Nowadays, I confess this mentality leaves me ridiculously confused.
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