Money games, social currency, and cultural industries, combing the NFT collectibles market biased by "earth dogs"


Author | Beichen

Although at a glance, NFT collectibles have established a sophisticated market system (the degree of precision can directly refer to various NFT research reports), I do not intend to criticize various analyzes, they are indeed scattered insights in the market, but this article may Whistle’s harshest criticism yet, easily exhausted…

I want to point out that most of the current analysis of NFT collections is untenable, not that it is wrong, but superficial.

In the NFT collectibles market guided by superficial cognition, most of them are destined to be temporary illegal buildings, which will be reduced to ruins in the future, and only a few will continue to exist (such as Bored Ape, CyberPunk, OpenSea). It can be used as a reference guide for you to participate in the post-disaster reconstruction of the NFT collectibles market in the future.

NFT as Money Game

The NFT collectibles market is “the collectibles market with NFT as the carrier”, which can be divided into at least three levels for discussion-** the superficial money game, the deep social currency, and the cultural product as the core. **Each level has its own clear logic, but few people can tell the difference, just follow their own feelings and the shouts in the market.

The most superficial thing is that it is a money game. Of course, there is nothing wrong with it, and the prosperity of any market cannot be separated from the money game. It can be said that speculation is a necessary factor for the prosperity of the market. But what I want to point out is that even if you just treat it as a money game, you must pay attention to two basic common sense.

The first is to distinguish the difference between FT and NFT, and not to confuse the two different types of money games. Most of the NFT research reports and related discussions stay at the most superficial layer, and it is still the most superficial layer-they are analyzing NF****T in the way of analyzing FT. So from time to time, words such as “liquidity”, “blue chip” and “transaction fee” are thrown out to show their professionalism, but they do not know that they have exposed their poor cognition-the game strategy is fine, but they use the wrong game. And it was dead wrong.

Although the participants in the FT market (such as BTC, Maotai stock) come from different groups, they are playing the same money game after all, and they play the same role (the so-called leek and dog village are actually still the same role, just junior players The difference from senior players), the decision-making mechanism is not much different, so it is completely possible to use very obvious signals of the market (such as liquidity, cash flow, growth rate, net assets) to evaluate its intrinsic value and the general trend in the future .

But the collectibles market is a lot of individuals playing many different money games, and the role types are not the same (just like the decision-making of just-needed home buyers and investment home buyers is completely different), so the analysis of the FT market cannot be applied way to analyze the NFT market.

To be honest, this set of analysis framework is unreliable for FTs other than Top 5 (you can directly refer to the second half of “Why Helium Doesn’t Work from the Root, and on Web3 Research Methods”), let alone go to Analyze NFT collections with smaller market value and liquidity. If the audience and investment logic of BTC and ETH tend to be consistent, then the audience and investment logic of BTC and Dogecoin, which is not a small market value, are already completely different.

For example, in 2021, Dogecoin will soar far beyond expectations. In addition to KOLs in European and American communities shouting orders, young people in China have also made great contributions-they came to the booming crypto market after buying funds and losing money. I feel that BTC is too expensive to afford, and Dogecoin is cheap… You can never analyze this simple and crude logic that is even a bit stupid with the above method, but this logic is so reasonable in those young groups.

If you are insulated from this group, you can only analyze it according to the logic of FT’s money game, that is, to constantly track the most superficial signals of all Bosha games in the market, and to carry out short-term actions with hindsight The buy low sell high**. Of course, there is still a chance of getting fishtails, because it is already beyond the level of most of this industry to be able to analyze NFT skillfully using the method of analyzing FT…

Only a few people use the NFT method to analyze in addition to the FT method. Although the level of research is still terrible, it does not exceed the logic of the post card ten years ago! The postal card speculators are basically poor, uneducated, greasy, and elderly groups (at least meet the above three labels).

For those in today’s self-proclaimed cutting-edge NFT collectibles space. Postal currency cards are very old (although less than ten years old) and very old-fashioned, but the two groups of people are actually surprisingly similar in core - the so-called research of postal currency cards is based on the amount of stock, face value, material, appearance, The so-called platform is to provide services such as multi-dimensional query of collections, market forecasts, value mining, and investment consulting. You will find that changing the term postage card is also effective for the earth dog in the field of NFT collectibles.

Secondly, the NFT collectibles market is very similar to the over-financialized real estate**, it is a game between rigid demand and speculation, and the critical point is the tolerance limit of rigid demand**. Some people in the real estate industry wishfully believe that emptying their wallets and buying a house in debt is an eternal market demand, and some people in the NFT collectibles market still wishfully believe that someone will always take over. But in fact, whether it is real estate or NFT collectibles, the real critical point of this money game has long been exceeded.

If you want to have a longer-term operation across bull and bear markets, you must jump over the signals that capture the most superficial money game, and touch what Bourdieu called “social currency” or “cultural capital.”

NFT as Social Currency

The crypto industry is at the forefront of technology and finance, and these two fields are talking about productivity. Culture does not matter, but they all need to use culture to decorate the facade. Therefore, the halo endowed by productivity allows them to express violent comments on collections confidently (just like the Internet giants who were enthusiastic about IP in 2016 came to guide the development of cultural creation, and there was no feathers or even feathers left in the last place), and then aroused the vast number of land without halos. The resonance of the dog, and use it as a theoretical basis.

But even if they are all local dogs, there are still differences and even contradictions between them.

Dogs who only stay at the level of the money game think that someone will use it to pretend (mainly because they don’t have enough money to act as real consumers), they are the survival strategy of lambs, just follow the leader of the herd Walk forward to eat the bonus (although often leads to the slaughterhouse). But this is indeed the optimal strategy for them, because people can’t give up what they don’t have, such as they can’t give up independent thinking.

Although some people are also dirt dogs, at least at the level of the money game, they know that some NFT collections are too dirt dogs, so they can’t be speculated anyway, but this judgment is only based on their own life experience. .

The contradiction between these two groups of people lies in the fact that rich local dogs want to use excess money to buy cultural capital (such as the first group of encrypted upstarts who consume NFT collectibles), **and **** have no money The earth dog still firmly believes that money determines the quality of life, and thinks that the former is the same kind of person, so the former said silently: Thank you! But don’t beat me.

So how to analyze the NFT collectibles market beyond the money game and beyond life experience? This uses the theory of social currency or cultural capital. Although it has been discussed badly by sociologists in the last century, it is still worth popularizing science in the crypto industry…

Bourdieu divides capital into four forms: economic capital, cultural capital, social capital and symbolic capital. Needless to say, economic capital, but social currency is the easiest way to pursue cultural capital, social capital and symbolic capital, because it does not require institutional forms (such as issuing degrees or certificates), let alone bodily forms (such as learning the piano from childhood) Instinctive skills and appreciative ability), customers can directly use economic capital to purchase those object forms to show their own cultural interest.

NFT collectibles act as social currency in social media, just like fashion and luxury cars in real life. Different groups need different social currencies (depending on needs and purchasing power, for example, a reclusive rich man has purchasing power but no demand), social currencies will increase value by artificially creating scarcity, so as to distinguish them from others.

So whether you are an investor or an entrepreneur, if you want to grasp the NFT collectibles as a social currency, you have to understand the different cultural tastes they reflect and have a deep resonance with them-the cultural tastes of people of different classes Quite different, because taste is the expression of social division, and this taste is a habit formed systematically over a long period of time.

People tend to choose social currencies based on their own life experience and feelings, Tugou can only judge all social currencies based on his own low-level tastes—lower than his level is too low, high Too pretentious for his level, so they tend to feel too pretentious to talk about NFT collectibles outside of the money game.

Now the most common word to praise an NFT collection is “exquisite”, and you can probably understand the degree of dirt in this industry. Because the boundary of language is the boundary of thought, I really can’t find any difference between “beautiful” and “fuck”, they are all nonsense words that can describe everything.

So you either target a specific group of people, try to understand them, can empathize with them and guide them to spend social currency (instead of imagining what they like based on superficial data). Either like anthropologists or cultural scholars who focus on fieldwork, they have a large number of samples and theoretical tools to analyze the transformation of social currency between different groups. Here Strongly recommend Bourdieu’s “Distinction-Social Criticism of Judgment”.

To add a few extra words, Justin Sun possesses both of the above abilities. Sun Yuchen, who was taken to various pyramid marketing classes by his mother as a primary school student, established a backward compatibility for unemployed farmers who harvested Pi coins in Zhumadian after a few years. can be noticed, not to mention understood and harvested). Mr. Justin Sun, who can switch between the identities of genius writer, KOL, student leader, Jack Ma disciple, and Grenada’s Permanent Ambassador to the WTO in a timely manner, fully demonstrates that he is a natural speculator who can skip academic training, although Going downhill (not in the sense of wealth, but referring to the sinking of the harvested objects).

NFT as a cultural product

So far, our analysis tools for the NFT collectibles market have gone beyond money games and life experience, and we also know that using economic capital to buy cultural capital is to increase the class gap relative to others, but we still haven’t touched the core—how To analyze the NFT collections of social currencies that are originally aimed at different groups of interests?

This requires borrowing from the culture industry theory put forward by the Frankfurt School a century ago, but it cannot be fully used… because they are leftist intellectuals who are critics, with prejudices in their positions and flaws in their knowledge structure.

This set of theories is used to crusade against “capitalism’s incorporation of cultural production - consciously catering to consumers, using industrialized methods to mass-produce and sell, and ultimately reducing culture to commodities, rather than autonomous pure spirituality.” product".

How to put it, if you use their theories to analyze it, you will conclude that everything from the Mogao Grottoes murals to Shakespeare’s plays are not “independent pure spiritual products”.

They only stop at philosophical speculation and political commentary because they themselves do not understand the operation of the industrial system very well, so they cannot further describe the mechanism of production and reproduction accurately. But they have at least pointed out one fact - cultural products, like other products, are produced in the industrial system. **If we interpret cultural products from the perspective of cultural production mechanism, everything will be much clearer.

However, regarding the production mechanism of culture, we cannot directly seek help from practitioners, because although they are familiar with the operation of the cultural industry system, to a large extent they only follow the instinctive reaction driven by commercial interests, and they only understand their own subdivision fields ( For example, fashion magazines and classical literature publishing houses are basically separated by mountains, not to mention those fields with a larger span).

So we might as well combine the two to distinguish different cultural products from the different stages of cultural industrial production. I know it’s hard to explain, just like it’s hard to give an accurate definition of porn, although a discerning person can tell it at a glance. Due to space constraints, this article tries to simplify as much as possible, or start directly from the controversy.

A lot of cultural debates (elegant vs. vulgar, fashion vs. old-fashioned, etc.)** all stem from the fact that they don’t know which stage of cultural industry production the cultural products they support and oppose are in, so Often it is a spat of words based on misplaced comparisons. This is especially evident in the NFT collectibles market of Universal Dog.

Let’s start with a test question: Picasso and beeple’s works have sold for sky-high prices. Are they a thing?

Tugou thinks that the market determines the right to speak. Since they are all priced at sky-high prices and endorsed by top auction houses, they are all works of art. If anyone criticizes beeple’s works, it must be bullying the art’s right to speak. In short, they judged Picasso, who led the development direction of modern art history, and the American Wuhe Qilin (it can be said that Sima Nan, who used comics to express his position), was evaluated by sales volume, and beeple was not as good as Wuhe Qilin in terms of craftsmanship. It’s like using MC Tianyou’s income to deny Dou Wei’s music level.

Although many NFT projects in the name of art have recruited critics and curators who are not well-known in the art market to forcibly sublimate their style, they can only forcibly pile up artistic slang, which is essentially the same as Internet slang to cover up the barren core , but it is enough to scare the dog.

Cultural products are divided into at least five stages in the cultural industry production system: original ecology - niche - trendy play - popular - consumer goods, each stage has its own user portrait and market logic. The reason why it is divided into different stages according to the upstream and downstream is because the production department directly selects mature products from the upstream for processing and transformation, and the input-output ratio is the highest.

The original ecological culture is the cultural tradition formed in the real way of life, such as the Indian culture formed in the tropical rainforest, the street graffiti and hip hop and other counterculture formed in the black community at the bottom, and the old culture formed in Beijing Hutong. Beijing Well Culture, Stele Study and Calligraphy Study in Traditional Calligraphy… In short, the original ecological culture is a culture that is naturally formed and has real vitality. At this time, it has not been included in the category of cultural industry or consumerism.

The cultural industry sector will seek inspiration from the original ecological culture and incorporate it into a homogenized and standardized product system, making it a niche cultural product with consumption value. The audience of niche culture is those who can afford a certain amount of money and are willing to spend a certain amount of time to capture cultural capital to enhance their personal prestige. Note that the niche is because the cost of time for learning and experience is relatively high, so it is niche.

Trendy play culture is to find inspiration from minority culture and copy it in batches into cultural products with lower money cost and less time for learning and experience. Subsequent popular culture (such as popular songs) and consumer product culture (such as Douyin Divine Comedy, which meets entertainment needs like Coke) all operate according to the same logic. In constant reduction **. Cultural capital has been exhausted at the stage of consumer goods, but it has value, and it may exist for a long time because of its real vitality, forming a new original ecological culture (for example, the American cowboy hat of the Khamba man feels that it has become a national part of the clothing).

The common myth in the NFT collectibles market is to use consumer goods to touch porcelain art (such as various NFT collectibles based on game IP called art), at most it is a digital trendy game (such as PFP of foreign IP such as Rare Pepes and NBA Top Shot) series). As an original culture of art, it doesn’t mean that you just buy it and it’s over. Behind it, you need institutional forms (such as being included in the art education system and becoming part of the training of future artists) and physical forms (such as long-term training and appreciation). capacity) support.

As cultural products, different NFT collections are at different stages in the cultural industry, and the logic is naturally different. If you consider the interest of subdividing groups, it will be more complicated. This is like Qinghai, Different social swings are popular in Guangxi and Northeast China, although there is no difference in the eyes of people who do not understand social swings.

in conclusion

This article is not to say that all NFT collectibles are earth dogs. After all, the birth of the first NFT originated from artwork-on May 3, 2014, on Namecoin, which was forked from Bitcoin, an uploaded by The code-generated endlessly looping animated video “Quantum” uses the blockchain to claim ownership of the original digital work.

This article wants to emphasize the following points:

1. NFT collections are nothing but digitized collections. They are completely different cultural products and should have different market logic. **

2. It is necessary to admit that the money game is the cornerstone of the prosperity of the NFT collectibles market, but don’t just stay at the most superficial money game (and it’s still a FT money game) to understand the NFT collectibles market. Most research reports and discussions only stay at this level for analysis, and it can be said that they have not even touched the edge.

3. It is necessary to admit that NFT collections have the function of cultural capital, and the purpose is to widen the class gap of others, so must have a deep resonance with the audience behind the cultural capital. Otherwise, it is just to grasp the whole market with the cultural interests of audiences of a certain class and a certain field, just like a petty bourgeoisie in Shanghai can go to a second-tier city to open a coffee shop, but cannot copy it in a county. It is said that the topic of royalties can be debated in the industry, which fully shows that the degree of local dog in the NFT market is surprisingly consistent.

4. It is necessary to give a clear positioning of the stage of NFT collections in the cultural industry, and it is best not to compare cultural products of different stages together. **They are in different stages of cultural production, corresponding to different markets, and have completely different logics. In addition, the interests of subdivided groups must be considered. For example, pop culture products in Asia and Europe and the United States are destined to be different.

Going back to the previous article “When the post-00s who entered the circle in 2020 are called OG - reviewing the ten-year and three-cycle cycle of the crypto industry”: There are not many opportunities left for ordinary people in this era, but the crypto industry is still Yes, not only because it is still growing at a high speed, but also because there are many local dogs here.