🗂 JPEGs, Buy Now Pay Later, and Creators.
🗂 JPEGs, Buy Now Pay Later, and Creators.
Happy Friday, rock those white denim pants one last time this weekend. I am back from vacation and I really hope that this isn’t your only source of news because you have missed out on a lot… Let’s dive in!
Greed In The Form Of A Flower
To kick this topic off we need to clarify two definitions:
NFT (Non-Fungible Token) - a digital certificate of ownership of an object: text, image, video, audio, game item. In short, think of an NFT as the “blue checkmark” on Twitter or Instagram.
Dutch Tulip Market Bubble or “Tulipmania” - one of the most famous market bubbles and crashes of all time. It occurred in Holland during the early to mid-1600s when speculation drove the value of tulip bulbs to extremes.
Jpeg files have been selling for millions over the last week and I have to think it might all be about to crash. Tulipmania tought us that if a hyped, super expensive product doesn’t solve a real problem, it is probably a bubble. NFTs are also a status symbol – to some extent. But first of all, tokens are a certificate of ownership of a specific result of intellectual work and help creative people make money on a product that has no physical manifestation.
The collection of 50 NFTs (like the one above), launched on Monday, are an explicit tribute to the 16th-century Dutch mania that saw multicolor tulip bulbs sold for massively inflated prices before crashing. At the peak of the bubble, one tulip bulb sold for 20 times the yearly income of a skilled worker, according to the BBC.
The collection - pitching itself as paying "homage to the investors who risked it all to make a fortune" - sold out on NFT marketplace OpenSea within hours, according to the artist. One NFT in the collection sold for as high as 17.5 ethereum, worth about $55,785 at Wednesday prices.
The tulip mania that swept Dutch society has become a modern parable for how the madness of crowds can drive rampant price speculation - on the "greater fool" theory that another person will always buy your overpriced flower - eventually leading to a devastating crash.
Still, some have used the tulip bubble to frame today's meme-stock and crypto phenomena, pointing to sky-high prices for GameStop and AMC shares or bitcoin as portents of a coming collapse.
Side Note: My dad (shoutout) has great ideas when it comes to NFTs, the digital marketplace, and FOMO investing. So if you ever see him, bring it up!
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That’s Affirmative
Shopping is forever. Payments can wait.
News broke this week that Amazon has agreed to work with buy now-pay later company Affirm to offer some of its online customers the option to pay for goods in installments, Affirm said in a Friday press release. For now, they're testing the new service with a subset of Amazon customers, but in the coming months they expect to make it more broadly available.
Only “select” Amazon customers making total purchases of at least $50 will be eligible to use the Affirm "pay-over-time" service, which allows consumers to make monthly payments on their total tab after they agree to terms of financing at checkout. A spokesman for Affirm declined to comment on those terms, but the company’s web site says that it charges simple interest, not compound interest, without “fees of any kind.”
In a statement, Amazon confirmed the new tie and said: “Amazon is always looking to add flexible payment options, and Affirm does just that by offering transparent pay-over-time solutions that customers can choose from based on their needs, with no late or hidden fees.”
Amazon’s entry into the buy now, pay later space comes as demand for the space continues to heat up, particularly among younger generations who are turning to BNPL platforms instead of traditional credit cards that often come with high-interest rates. This month, Square announced it was entering the space through a $29 billion purchase of Afterpay. Bloomberg News previously reported Apple is also planning its own installment partnership with Goldman Sachs.
Also, someone on Reddit found out about the news by combing through amazon.com URLs with “affirm” in them. Maybe he can find out what is going on with McDonalds’ ice cream machines.
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Creating The New World, One Dollar At A Time
On Wednesday, New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz released a story on Li Jin, venture capitalist extraordinaire who specializes in the creator economy. Below is a summary of her thoughts:
If there is such a thing as an “It Girl” in venture capital these days, Ms. Jin, 31, would fill the bill. She sits at the intersection of start-up investing and the fast-growing ecosystem of online creators, both of which are red hot. And while she formed her own venture firm, Atelier Ventures, just last year and has raised a relatively small $13 million for a fund, Ms. Jin was among the first investors in Silicon Valley to take influencers seriously and has written about and backed creators for years.
Now as large venture capital firms flock to influencer start-ups, and as Facebook, YouTube and others introduce $1 billion creator funds, Ms. Jin’s track record has made her a go-to business guru for many digital stars who are trying to navigate the fast-changing landscape.
Ms. Jin, who has invested in Substack and Patreon, said that although her fund was small, she planned to put all the money into companies transforming online work. “Everything I invest in is a creator-focused company,” she said. “I think the impact I have is outsized relative to the dollar amounts.”
Since starting Atelier Ventures, Ms. Jin has moved away from Silicon Valley and run her fund out of her childhood bedroom in Pittsburgh. This summer, she was nomadic, traveling around the world surrounded by a changing cast of internet stars, artists, Gen Z tech founders and crypto pioneers.
“It’s just so improbable that I’m here,” Ms. Jin said, “that I was born in Beijing speaking Chinese as my first and only language and something happened to bring me to the U.S. and now I have the tools to be able to have a voice and influence.”
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ICYMI
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