Speculative Bubbles in the 21st Century & Asymmetric Upside

Something similar is currently happening in the virtual world. Online scarcity is possible. Virtual land can be valuable if it provides exclusive access to a unique flow of economic opportunities — in the same way that a domain name can be valuable. As such, virtual land can indeed be scarce. But the fundamentals are tough to read, the number of ne... See more

The problem is that the benefits of “community” fall off steeply once you’re in the minor leagues of payto-join PFPs. The real “in” communities will either have unassailable history, or earned reputation elements. Because I have no problem starting nuclear wars with my writing, I’ll end with this: Long Punks, Neutral Apes, Short Penguins and everyt... See more

But if we can’t fully prevent the herd behavior that causes bubbles, can we at least hope to detect them while they are occurring? Say you accept Black’s premise that the market is behaving irrationally 10 percent of the time. Can we know when we’re in that 10 percent phase? Then we might hope to profit from bubbles. Or, less selfishly, we could cr

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The spectacle of “building" describes systems that optimize for whatever can be ritualized, narrated, and scaled. The argument isn’t that spectacle alone is negative. Quite the opposite. Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber, in their recent book Boom, make the persuasive case that bubbles aren't merely collective irrationality; they’re crucial for innovat... See more