Fact
When speculation IS the product vs. when it just fades
Shaan distinguishes Bitcoin from hype assets like Zed Run, Top Shot, and Clubhouse: for Bitcoin, higher prices from speculation actually make it a better store of value, so speculation creates the product. For games and collectibles, speculation eventually fades and there's nothing left.
“And both games and speculation sort of fade over time with everything except for Bitcoin because For Bitcoin, the speculation is actually what makes it valuable. You know, people speculate that the price will go higher. The higher the price goes, the more it actually is a store of value. So the speculation actually creates the product, whereas that's not the case for ZET.”
Fact
NFT whales pump their own market with wash trades
Shaan explains how the same daily-fantasy whales who dominated NBA Top Shot inflate prices by trading assets back and forth among themselves — buying each other's cheap holdings to make the public-facing prices look enormous. He calls it a wash trade and 'a little bit fugazi.'
“And they started buying each other's things up. And so all of a sudden the prices went up and it's kind of like a little bit fugazi because these guys, like, they're all buying from each other. So it's sort of like a wash trade. It's like, I'll pay you $5 million and you pay me $4 million back and then I pay you $3 million. And it makes all the price of, it makes the price of all of our assets that we bought dirt cheap go up to the mass public.”
Number
NBA Top Shot did $45M of sales in a single 24 hours
On CryptoSlam, NBA Top Shot showed $45M of sales in the last 24 hours (up 165%) and $164M over 30 days, up 1,200% in roughly the month since Shaan first pitched the idea.
$45M
NBA Top Shot sales volume · USD/day
“And NBA Top Shot in the last 24 hours has sold $45 million worth of stuff and is up in only 24 hours 165%. In the last 30 days, which is around the time that we discussed this, they've sold $164 million worth of volume and they're up 1,200%.”
Fact
Scarcity is only credible from an independent grader
Jack's bear case on NBA Top Shot: the producer itself declares the assets scarce and runs the trading, whereas in physical cards an independent grader like PSA certifies scarcity, separate from whoever makes the cards. Self-declared scarcity is no more meaningful than valuing every YouTube clip.
“The reason that I wouldn't be bullish on this is because they are the ones claiming that the assets are valuable and facilitating the trading. Like, in the basketball or the collectible world, it kind of works because the grading authority saying how scarce something is is independent of the producers that are making the basketball stuff.”