I sat out the whole NFT bubble but I would lie if I didnt at least once think "maybe I should learn how to code smart contracts because everyone is doing it" before dismissing it when realising NFT:s doesnt make any sense at all (and I have to yet see a blockchain use case that solves a problem better and cheaper than existing solutions)
Smart contracts and NFT's are like cars and the blings clients put on their wheels. A car is a good thing, the blings not so much. So yeah, you should still learn to code smart contracts, NFT's are just one particular use of that. Oh, and they definitely still do smart contracts by millions nowadays in ETH blockchain.
> There might be a sense in which bubbles are getting more ridiculous over time (e.g., NFT) but it would be hard to prove it in any objective sense.
IMHO, the key driver to NFT were a bunch of early crypto whales who wanted/needed to cash out. Just dumping their coins on the open market would tank the valuation, but create a demand frenzy by contracting some high-profile influencers and now you can dump as many coins as you want and people will still buy them.
Now, a lot of people are holding very very deep bags.
Though to be precise the acronym FOMO was already in use long before the cryptotoken bubble. FOMO originally referred to the fear of missing out from social events shared on social media (essentially only Facebook at the time), and was only later used for fear of missing out on making a quick buck by being an early buyer of the latest cryptocrap.
In any case though, 'FOMO' is an equally good term for both phenomena.
I think Freakonomics basically debunked the whole tulips thing. The real Tulip mania was much smaller but stories of it got exadgerated as they passed around the world. Actual business records of the claims in contemporary newspapers don't exist.
There seems to be currency with debunking tulipmania but reading this [1] it seems people play more with the semantics, i.e., what kind of market behavior do you admit into the "manic class" as opposed to the "rational calculation class".
Expecting others to enter a bubble and trading accordingly can be a perfectly rational calculation following observations of behaviors in a given market context.
Would be cool to have some sort of well defined "bubble-mania-meter" but it is unfortunately quite subjective.
The role of scarcity is something interesting to consider as input. Scarcity (perceived or actual) is more natural with tulips or anything that is a tangible, real object.
NFT's tortured way of creating "digital scarcity" sets them, imho, apart from other bubbles. Given how much of modern life revolves around digital they are probably the forerunner of much worse to come.
strange but true, scarcity comes in different sizes. Is the infinity of NFT's the same as that of paintings? How many types of infinite junk are there? Or is this infinite itself?
Sorry to bring you the bad news, but your lifetime is (likely) finite and each brush stroke takes away a bit of that precious finite time.
In contrast, while digitally reproduced crap is also fundamentally finite, it can be replicated gazillion upon gazillion times more without any effort or sacrifice.
This is the so-called zero-marginal cost of (re)production [1]. Some people think its a blessing, some people think its a curse.
With AI algorithms it gets even worse. You don't only have infinite copies of the original, you also have infinite variations of the original.
There might be a sense in which bubbles are getting more ridiculous over time (e.g., NFT) but it would be hard to prove it in any objective sense.