The brutally confounding element, when judging the ‘seriousness’ of investments(whether in meme-backed cryptocurrencies, Facebook stock, or scarce metals with curious optical properties) is the existence of the ‘greater fool theory’ (and the fact that it is in fact accurate, even if the greatest of the greater fools turns out to be a greater-fool-theorist who overestimated the population of fools).
I have a strong emotional sympathy for some sort of notion of ‘fundamental’ value, tempered by a grudging admission that some purely-conventional valuations appear to be remarkably enduring and so must be tolerated; but I also have to admit that, while it is a speculative and potentially risky activity, all kinds of ‘stupid’ investments aren’t, so long as your belief that somebody will take them off your hands for more than you paid for them is correct.
I don’t think that dogecoins are worth a thing, or that facebook stock was anything but hilariously overvalued; but if somebody thinks that they can buy at X and sell at greater than X(sufficiently greater to cover their time and opportunity costs), they needn’t have any belief in the value of what they are buying, purely a belief in what somebody else will pay for it.
Some, of course, don’t think that there is any distinction, and that view is hardly some new aberration coming out of contemporary finance.
“Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it”
-Publilius Syrus(1st century BC) (By way of Civilization IV’s “Currency” tech quote, lest I be mistaken for some fancy classicist rather than a gamer nerd…)
