Nuggies: Expensive Digital Collectibles
Thursday, March 4th, 2021
Welcome to the thirty-eighth edition of Nuggies, an email newsletter that aggregates articles and commentary on business, economics, startups, and more, in bite-sized nuggets sent right to your email weekly. Created by and for college students.
Our quote of the week comes from German philosopher Martin Heidegger, “through the poet we encounter reality.”
This Week’s Articles:
NFTs make the internet ownable, Variant
There have always been issues with ownership of digital media, and this blog post illustrates a fast growing new tech that can turn the ownership of digital assets on its head. NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are ways to host digital assets on the blockchain. A good example of this is NBA Top Shot, an NBA trading card marketplace that hosts the trading cards on the blockchain, ensuring a limited supply. This post takes a look at what this means for the future of digital media ownership. We highly recommend a read.
Read it here
Column: Biden’s $1.9-trillion big spend is a big bet on modern economic theory, Los Angeles Times
This article takes an easy-to-understand and intuitive look at the past 50 years of economic thinking in light of the recent $1.9 trillion relief package. It compares economic thinking in the 70’s, which stressed tight policy and austerity with modern theory, which is less concerned with inflation. This is a great context to have when thinking about the $1.9 trillion package, although it is a bit biased towards proponents of modern monetary theory, which is the idea that the government should spend as much as it wants without worrying about inflation.
Read it here
Million Dollar Newsletter, The Flywheel
This articles unpacks how well newsletters and creators in general can monetize their media. In doing soon, creators can often create a flywheel, or a set of mutually reinforcing activities.
For example, the article covers Packy McCormick’s newsletter Not Boring. Packy writes weekly deep dives on companies and investment memos for his angel syndicate. As his audience grows, he can sell more expensive ads and get access to better deals which helps him write better content. And just like that, the flywheel is spinning.
Read it here
This Week’s Tweets:
^another example of NFTs
This Week’s Wildcard (an extra, interesting nugget):
This is the most detailed picture we have ever taken of a human cell. Obtained by a bunch of words we don’t understand, including radiography, nuclear magnetic resonance and cryo-electron microscopy.
This Week’s Question:
Would you buy an NFT? How much would you be willing to spend?
What are we listening to this week?:
This week, we’re listening to Young Thug’s debut Album, JEFFREY. From the album art alone, which pictures Thugger sporting a pale blue dress, you can tell Young Thug is not afraid to be different. Each song is named after one of Young Thug’s idols, including the likes of Wyclef Jean, Future, Kanye, and (of course) Harambe.
Thank you for reading! Nuggies is created by Thomas Pero and Spencer Koehl, two undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame.
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