A Crisis of Ownership

When I looked for an image to illustrate this article, I searched for 'ownership'.

Half of the images were houses.

The other half were bitcoins.

The definition of ownership is changing. Or is it disappearing? Over the last few years, ownership has taken a life of its own. Moving through different business models, being relocated to fewer hands, and challenging its own necessity.

There was a time when ownership meant a house. A sanctuary and foundation upon which life was to be sustained and developed. Houses were (and still are) the people's key investment. They would graduate, get a job, and purchase a house.

Over the past few years - decades really - things became quite less straightforward.

Ownership, which had always been a cornerstone of contention and a political battlefield, going back to famous 17th and 18th century philosophers, apparently fell into irrelevance. Welcome the Uber era. You do not need to own, you can rent, you can subscribe, you can lease, you can reside in 'co-living'.

While this transformation was occurring, the same battles were being fought. The battles for ownership. The flag that your average family should own a home. The millennials, such as myself, being told not to settle for less. These battles were occurring in the political field, with more aggressive discourses, feeling a breaking point.

The truth is, ownership became unreachable.

In this environment, with strong pressure from the lack of ownership - a feeling of missing out from life - a vacuum opened up in which the Uber business models found life. There was an opportunity, from this desperate desire to own. Resigned to not be saved by the political debate, we were forced to accept a new narrative:

"You don't need to own! Subscribe here!"

We were going to be saved by the exact thing we were trying to protect ourselves against. It turns out, we were wrong all along. Ownership is Bad. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery.

This resignation from your average person, the political resignation that "they won't save us" despite decades of 'housing crisis' debates, emboldened the Uber companies to claim the meaning and purpose of ownership.

"Don't worry, you don't need to own, you are not missing out" - were we told. We needed the reassurance, so we listened. Some of us were doubtful, if ever slightly.

Yet, there was this gnawing feeling that we were just on a treadmill.

This was our fate, and we had to accept it.

Or do we?

Enters: bitcoins.

Once again, a great business opportunity capitalising on the thirst for ownership and for a set of different rules governing the economy that would go back to an era long by gone.

Here was our saviour. The bitcoin era.

I see the bitcoin era as a direct backlash to the crisis of ownership. It encompasses several different personal finance endeavours: micro-stocks, cryptocurrency, NFTs.

In many instances, these were desperate attempts to cling to ownership. To own something, even if ever useless, but not meaningless. It was an emotional way out, our saviours. Our generation had been screwed all along, this was payback.

The thirst for ownership and the hope it brought with it pushed people to invest heavily into JPEGs.

I believe most people did not realise it, but the reason they flew to these assets, was because other asset classes were unreachable. Give me anything, anything I can own, even a picture on the internet.

You can see that this way out and backlash are mainly emotionally, rather than financially, significant. Your average person would obtain a small amount of stocks, often not the complete stock, but a portion of one. Even if the investment would 10X, the impact would be insignificant - perhaps a fancier holiday during the summer.

Yet, it is this attachment, a tiny step outside the treadmill, the flavour of ownership and benefiting from the economy, that would provide the feeling of salvation longed for.

The way I see it, a lot of the bitcoin era is capitalising on the crisis of ownership. It is also distracting its participants, feeling that they're okay because they own 0.3% of a Tesla stock.

A large portion of this era isn't driven by technology or innovation,

it is driven by a desperate attempt of achieving ownership.