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Geoff Davis's avatar

Myriad by Anna Ridler is an artwork where AI tulips grow related to BTC price, it's based around tulip mania. She's in my talk on AI and Image at CAS on 1 June. What a coincidence! http://annaridler.com/myriad-tulips

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Birgitte Rasine's avatar

Nice post Kaloh :) I did know about the Dutch tulip mania, known about it for many years in fact. Pretty crazy. We humans haven't really changed, have we! I do see some similarities with crypto and NFTs (and GameStop and a lot of other stocks, especially during the pandemic), but it's not a direct or perfect comparison. For one thing, it was contained within one nation. Crypto, NFTs, and the stock market in general are global systems.

As for the "imaginary" economy concept... aren't all economies imaginary, in a sense? They do not occur in Nature; they are uniquely human constructs, imagined and developed by us. Take money. Yes, it started out as a physical thing (gold, seashells, cacao beans) and today we have a new form of money that is digital. Even "real" money translates into digital numbers in your traditional bank account. A society needs to believe in the value and power of money in order for it to be effectively real. Same with any other type of currency or transaction.

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