Footballer Michael Owen has come under fire for promoting a new crypto investment and claiming it could not fall in value.
The former Liverpool and Real Madrid striker said his “non-fungible tokens”, or NFTs, would be “the first ever that can’t lose their initial value”. NFTs are digital certificates that denote ownership of a physical or virtual asset. They are stored on the “blockchain”, a digital ledger, and are bought using cryptocurrencies.
Mr Owen and his business partner Oceidon, a technology company, claim their NFT series have a fixed floor price which allows the value to rise but never go down.
Andrew Green, of Oceidon, told fans on Twitter: “We have come up with a way to prohibit people selling the NFTs for less than what they initially acquire them for.”
Possible to imagine coding that insists upon that. But that doesn’t mean that they’ll never fall in value. It just means that there’s a cliff in value – you might be able to sell at the issue price or you’ll not be able to sell at all and the value will be zero.
You know, like the minimum wage? If you can’t sell your labour at the minimum wage then you can’t sell your labour at all?
An asset is only worth that which someone is prepared to pay for it.
Sign up Michael for your team and then try to flog him in the next transfer window.
As with peeps who put stuff on Ebay then grizzle when it sells for less than their expectation or doesn’t reach their reserve price – they cannot understand that something is only worth what someone else will pay for it, not what they think it is worth……
I sadly recall the sycophantic comment made about him towards the twilight of his playing career by a typical bbc pundit that “form is temporary, class is permanent”.
It clearly wasn’t no matter how fine a player he had been in his younger pre-injury days with Liverpool and England.
Regretably, Addolff, in my experience that virtually everyone. And on both sides of the deal.
It’s somehow deeply appropriate that a footballer is recommending this. I wonder what MO is worth as a footballer nowadays?
Technically he’s not lying.. The intrinsic value of an NFT/crypto is exactly zero. Can’t really drop from there..
Now the price, and the number of idiots willing to gamble with that is quite another matter…
But it really can’t drop in value.
So, if you are not allowed to sell them below the price you bought for, all that means is that when the real price falls below that level, the market is closed.
So, instead of an asset you cannot sell at a loss, you have an asset you cannot sell at all.
ie a 100% loss.