GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
stephendiehl.com
GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
1–10 of 197 posts
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#2> It’s not surprising that when it comes to their investment strategies, that the “you only live once” philosophy and a preference for high-risk high-return investments is preferred. What has this generation got to lose?
That is pure irrationality. IMO The real issue is a crap education system which gives neither opportunity, nor good advice-- instead of training rational actors w/ valueable skills it focuses on building activists before they have any life experience and smacks of marxism.
What's the path out? Free education for socially profitable degrees might be a fix (ie STEM). Not wasting the first 18 years of a person's life might be an alternative (eg: why are we memorizing dates permanently recorded online, why arent we teaching (personal) financial and programming expertise?).
Edit: by financial I meant personal financial skills, not wall street skills. My apologies for the imprecision.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#3> And so we see Gamestop story fall out of that. In a nutshell a bunch of retail investors (possibly with help from institutional insiders) decided to pump a small cap stock far beyond what the valuation of the company should be.
This completely ignores the fact that the stock was shorted over 100% of float, and people knew it was going to squeeze so they bought in hoping to ride the wave. And that did in fact happen, although timing is everything.
I could go on, but this philosophical piece is incredibly lazy with its historical accuracy.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#4I find bitcoin to be the greatest innovation in finance in the 21st century, a watershed moment in economic development. For the first time any person can own a financial asset completely decoupled from any government. That’s the value proposition for me. It’s not nihilism - it’s optimism in the individual to succeed over the corrupt state.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#5I find bitcoin to be the greatest innovation in finance in the 21st century, a watershed moment in economic development. For the first time any person can own a financial asset completely decoupled from any government. That’s the value proposition for me. It’s not nihilism - it’s optimism in the individual to succeed over the corrupt state.
> a financial asset completely decoupled from any government
is gold not one of these?
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#6I find bitcoin to be the greatest innovation in finance in the 21st century, a watershed moment in economic development. For the first time any person can own a financial asset completely decoupled from any government. That’s the value proposition for me. It’s not nihilism - it’s optimism in the individual to succeed over the corrupt state.
Couldn't you do that with gold or even earlier, seashells?
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#7I find bitcoin to be the greatest innovation in finance in the 21st century, a watershed moment in economic development. For the first time any person can own a financial asset completely decoupled from any government. That’s the value proposition for me. It’s not nihilism - it’s optimism in the individual to succeed over the corrupt state.
> a financial asset completely decoupled from any government is gold not one of these?
I neglected to explain it in my original post but bitcoin has all of the good properties of gold and none of the bad - primarily in terms of how easy it is to settle (especially over long distances) and the guaranteed fixed supply and emission rate.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#8I’ll be curious to read what the author thinks in the next few years regarding DeFi and NFTs on Ethereum and other smart contract blockchains. Things are just getting started and it’s going to get interesting.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#9> It’s not surprising that when it comes to their investment strategies, that the “you only live once” philosophy and a preference for high-risk high-return investments is preferred. What has this generation got to lose? That is pure irrationality. IMO The real issue is a crap education system which gives neither opportunity, nor good advice-- instead of training rational actors w/ valueable skills it focuses on buil…
> Not wasting the first 18 years of a person's life might be an alternative
It's not an alternative, it's strictly necessary. People look around and wonder how 70 million Americans voted for a certain someone, and the clear-cut answer isn't farther than their local public high school.
A system designed from the ground up to mold nearly everybody into obedient manufacturing drones in a economy that doesn't rely on manufacturing anymore is bound to create huge issues.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#10> And so we see Gamestop story fall out of that. In a nutshell a bunch of retail investors (possibly with help from institutional insiders) decided to pump a small cap stock far beyond what the valuation of the company should be. This completely ignores the fact that the stock was shorted over 100% of float, and people knew it was going to squeeze so they bought in hoping to ride the wave. And that did in fact happen…
This. The stock was at around 20/share before the spike and was considered a WIN at that. It's now sitting at 40/share and is probably priced high.
It was shorted to below 2/share at some point which is imo insane given what we've seen EVERY SINGLE CONSOLE RELEASE EVER.
The media saw an opportunity to make this about populist rage, and we all bit it. But this was started as a short squeeze and a very effective one at that.
EDIT: Just to clarify. There was obviously a short squeeze. That short squeeze could have stopped at 20/share and been a GREAT short squeeze. I have friends who got off the ride at that point thinking the squeeze was over. The frenzy that happened that pushed the stock to 400 was insane, and wouldn't have happened if this stock didn't start trending. You don't have a subreddit go from 2m to 8m in 2 weeks unless there's some serious frenzy.