Bomb Token, Runescape Partyhats and Rubber Turkeys — A Game of Scarcity & Desire

[Rouse_creationsHostel]

Hello, please read my article on Medium
https://medium.com/@real_rouse/bomb-token-runescape-partyhats-and-rubber-turkeys-a-game-of-scarcity-desire-c11babd081c3

What makes a good store-of-value in your opinion? I would like to hear what you think.

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[Indamuck]

I remember the game runescape and partyhats were discontinued and they reached crazy high levels.  But people who work at Jagex could easily just spawn millions of an item, they are never rare when one person can instantly just make infinite copies at will.

[timerland]

No.
Partyhats are not a good store-of-value. You would have to trust Jagex, that their in-game partyhats would keep their value forever.
Shouldn’t we trust Jagex? — Well, let me introduce another supposedly discontinued Runescape holiday item.

I think that the comparison of a lot of fiat currencies to in game GP is a good one - while they may be store of values in the short run, or at least appear to be so; in the long term their value is heavily based on trust in the game to continue to function.

And given the fact that the game creators can essentially create as many of these "partyhats" (think, fiat currency) as they want to, it's really a representation of how fragile its value can be. Same logic applies to fiat - when the central bank introduces monetary stimulus to debase the currency supply, what suffers is the value of existing currency.

What has traditionally been recognized as stores of values are precisely the opposite of these types of centralized assets, but rather, assets whose supply can't be controlled by anyone (think gold, silver, stones, even clam shells). And BTC I think is simply a more robust and efficient way of representing that idea.

[hatshepsut93]

I think one of the often overlooked factors about stores of value is a measurement of how popular they are in society. Gold is desired by everyone, it has thousands of years of history of being used as store of value and from this it has it's relatively stable price, which is a very important property for a store of value. Bitcoin honestly can't yet be fully considered a store of value - its technology is great, but because it's not popular yet, it is too volatile. If you bought BTC a few weeks ago, because you don't want to lose 1-2% per year to fiat's inflation, you'd be shocked to see that it's already 23% down. You can (but probably shouldn't) put all your savings in gold, but you'd be crazy to do it with Bitcoin.

[el kaka22]

I think this was one of the most well written article I have ever seen about the store of value plus explanations of how it all works. I knew it already but if you asked me to explain it I wouldn't be capable of telling you something this amazing. From the runescape bluehat type of deals to bitcoin and decentralization to the eventual bomb shill, it was all amazing.

I personally was around on the early days of bomb, I even received a bit I think but managed to sell it for couple bucks because I didn't really trusted it. Its still doing fine from what I can see but eventually all bombs will be destroyed by logic so less and less people will have bomb and that would make them even though scarce, unwanted and not cared. Even if one person owned all golds in the world they would lose their value since people would move to something else.

[Thirdspace]

What makes a good store-of-value in your opinion? I would like to hear what you think.

whatever item that has limited quantity, difficult to produce/obtain and desirable by many people
it can be intangible but tangible items are more common and make sense in today's society

[Aveatrex]

I think that the comparison of a lot of fiat currencies to in game GP is a good one - while they may be store of values in the short run, or at least appear to be so; in the long term their value is heavily based on trust in the game to continue to function.

The problem isn't trusting the game to continue functioning, the real problem is that nowadays there are a lot of bots that heavily farm on multiple accounts the in game gold to dump it for couple $ cents/million.There is also risk of inside jobs, and this actually happened recently at Jagex where a moderator have stolen from players their GP.All these factors and other similar ones has lead the price of GP to go downhill, which answers the question,- no, it's not a good store of value.

[beerlover]

You may consider miners to be bots in the game as well.

Yeah, some of us make some bitcoins here and there by working hard and trading etc but the miners are making much more bitcoin than any other demographic so we can assume in the game you might make some money and make some profits but in the end bots are going to make much more than any other as well.

So, in parallel to real life and bitcoins that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that there are centralized currencies in crypto world as well like ripple and bitcoin cash however if they did anything to hurt their own economy then the price would fall and people would move to other crypto currencies whereas in runescape if developers decide to print more of an item players will just move to another item in the same game instead of moving to another game.

[timerland]

I think that the comparison of a lot of fiat currencies to in game GP is a good one - while they may be store of values in the short run, or at least appear to be so; in the long term their value is heavily based on trust in the game to continue to function.

The problem isn't trusting the game to continue functioning, the real problem is that nowadays there are a lot of bots that heavily farm on multiple accounts the in game gold to dump it for couple $ cents/million.There is also risk of inside jobs, and this actually happened recently at Jagex where a moderator have stolen from players their GP.All these factors and other similar ones has lead the price of GP to go downhill, which answers the question,- no, it's not a good store of value.

I disagree. What the problem boils down to is still that there is a central entity/entities that are capable of modifying people's GP balances arbitrarily, as they wish from a case to case basis. Whether that comes in the form of keeping the game functioning, or having to trust the moderators doing their job properly.

Again, the comparison to fiat is that its centrality. Moderators and game developers in RS are essentially the regulators and the central bankers in the fiat world, if you want an analogy.

It is because of this that it is not a good long term store of value, not necessarily because of gold farmers. A loosening in the monetary policy, or an increase in the frequency of gold drops would result in debasement of the currency instantly, just like inflation in real life. If the game was decentralized, then even with gold farmers, people can be sure that inflation will be controlled and there won't be modifications to rules in the short term, which means stability in the long run.

On a side note, who would have thought that RS would turn out to be such an interesting economics analogy?