What the guy spending $208,000 on a video is gambling, like anyone buying crypto art or investing in crypto currencies like Bitcoin is gambling, is that their purchases are an investment, and whatever they’re worth today, they’ll be worth more sometime in the future. The point here isn’t even that these guys are NBA fans. The content is irrelevant, it’s the market itself, and the opportunity for a quick buck, that’s the draw.

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It’s a mirage, of course, one built on tech weirdos trying to speculate their way into a new, digital world while contributing greatly to the destruction of the existing, actual one. It’s at best the latest example of a digital Tulip Mania, at worst a complete scam. The NBA likely knows this and is just happy to skim money off these suckers, while Dapper Labs definitely know this, since they’re the same team behind Cryptokitties, a cat-collecting game whose boom and bust seems to have had no effect on...anyone

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It’s wild to me how similar this market is to video game loot boxes. The gambling, its origins in real world card collecting, the resale market, the idea that a collection of 1s and 0s confined to a digital space can hold any real value at all. But at least when it comes to video game loot boxes, there’s a practical use of the thing you “own”: a Counter-Strike skin is something you can see (and be seen using) in a game that you’re playing, and a rare NBA 2K player may have better stats than your opponent’s, giving you a competitive advantage.

With NBA Topshots, there’s just the illusion of ownership of something that, like I just showed, anyone can go out right now and view and take for nothing. You don’t actually own shit. You “own” a single copy of a video that some companies decided to monetise, and you were stupid enough to pay them—or someone else—for the supposed privilege.

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But you don’t actually “own” that highlight, just the version created for you that you paid for. Everyone else can just go watch it for free.
But you don’t actually “own” that highlight, just the version created for you that you paid for. Everyone else can just go watch it for free.
Image: NBA Top Shot

What really gets me though is that while gamers grow increasingly wary of loot boxes, to the point that many governments are taking action and other games are toning down their use, there’s no such caution here. There’s this feeling among certain crowds—a Venn diagram where the overlap between “bitcoin proselytiser” and “GameStop stock kids” is almost non-existent—that there’s money to be made in them thar internet hills, if only everyone believes it strongly enough to make it a reality.

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Those people will say that the same rules about the market apply here as they apply everywhere else. That something will always be valuable so long as others find value in it. But other age-old rules apply too, like fools and their money being easily parted.

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