I don’t know! Capitalism is different now! It used to be that, if you were a struggling online lingerie retailer, you could try to sell more lingerie, or you could try to cut your costs of selling lingerie, or you could expand into some related apparel business lines, or you could shut down, I don’t know, I’m sure there were more options, but if you went to an investment conference and said “I’m tired of lingerie let’s do electric cars” investors would be skeptical. But now sometimes you can be a struggling online lingerie retailer and get hit by Reddit lightning. And if that happens, you gotta seize the moment. “People are paying attention to us, we can raise money, only one choice here: electric cars.” (Honestly two choices: electric cars or crypto.) And off you go. Now you run an electric-car company. Congratulations.
evidence continues to accumulate that Matt Levine is in hell and we are all just watching
And as we made those announcements, which was making a lot of you happy, these – lot of their commentary came in about Shiba Inu. So again I did a Twitter poll. And again, a lot of you read the Tweet, a lot of you voted. And lot of you voted yes. And we are now figuring out how we can take Shiba Inu as a currency, that’s the next one on our cryptocurrency hit parade.
I might add that we believe we have figured out ways where we do not have to hold cryptocurrency on our balance sheet. So we’re not taking increased balance sheet risk with all this potential acceptance of cryptocurrency and as I said in – earlier in the remarks, as we learn more and more about the opportunities available to AMC with cryptocurrency, it does really raise the question in a serious way and we are engaged in serious thought and discussions with third parties on this subject. Do we just accept cryptocurrency or do we issue an AMC cryptocurrency of our own?
evidence continues to accumulate.
Shiba Inu, the cryptocurrency, is “based on Shiba Inus” in the sense that its name is “Shiba Inu” and some of its branding involves Shiba Inus, but that’s it. Shiba Inu the cryptocurrency is not redeemable for Shiba Inus the dogs. There is not a fixed exchange ratio between the cryptocurrency and the dog; arbitrageurs do not keep the prices of the cryptocurrency and the dog in line. Nor does the cryptocurrency represent some sort of claim on the cash flows of the dogs, or on the cash flows of intellectual property related to the dogs, etc. Nor do the dogs generate the cryptocurrency. Nor is the cryptocurrency issued or governed by a collective of dogs. The cryptocurrency is sort of inspired by the dog but that’s it. Nothing flows from the cryptocurrency to the dogs, or from the dogs to the cryptocurrency.
And yet:
With virtual life increasingly indistinguishable from everyday reality, it makes sense: Just as the price of dog-inspired cryptocurrencies Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin have exploded, so has demand for—what else?—living, breathing shiba inus.
There is — I’m sorry, I’m so sorry — there is an arbitrage between the Shiba Inu coin and actual Shiba Inus. When the stock of the dog goes up (because Elon Musk gets one) people race to buy the coins. When the coins go up, people race to buy the dogs.
is further evidence really necessary
It continues not to be my fault! I am sorry! I realize that people think I am having a mental breakdown in this column but I am actually doing fine; financial markets are having a bit of a mental breakdown.
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#in 2017 I experimented with Bitcoin as a way to launder Amazon gift cards #(the gift cards were legitimately obtained‚ but they were flowing in faster than we could use them ourselves) #(and taking the money in PayPal form instead was either expensive or impossible‚ depending on the exact form of menial Internet labour) #the transaction fees were insane‚ so it ended up not really being useful #a while later CryptoKitties was the big thing‚ and I exchanged my few dozen dollars of Bitcoin into Ethereum so I could poke around #turns out that petsites with real-world-trading have *vastly* more competitive economies than those without #I figured it’d be much more competitive‚ but had not realised just how much #you basically can’t do *any* merchanting on CryptoKitties unless you’re a bot #not even for the starvation wages I was hoping for #later I dumped my remaining scraps of ETH (now valued at about 50 USD) onto GiveWell to deal with #at no point did I ever turn cash into crypto or vice versa‚ and it was only ever a few dozen dollars #I feel I got off very lightly #I will stick to [things that reduce one’s expenses] and [all-in-one highly diversified ETF in a retirement fund] #for my investments‚ thank you very much #life is risky enough as it is #(especially during a *pandemic*‚ of all times!) #((yes I am familiar with the boredom markets hypothesis‚ it’s just that #”this is boring and I need to add more risk to my life to compensate” is‚ like‚ the exact opposite of my experience of 2020)) #(((as for if I run out of reasonable expense reductions and retirement-fund contribution room‚ I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it))) #(((I do have a couple preliminary ideas for how to invest in the stock market through an ordinary non-retirement account without #incurring the wrath of the IRS‚ but the rules may well change by the time it comes up #so there’s no sense in firming up those plans *too* much))) #(((just as long as I have a general idea))) #tag rambles #adventures in human capitalism #adventures in feline capitalism? #adventures in canine capitalism??
Brinens and Things 