「如果明天世界完了，第二天全球的货币就是宝可梦卡」：一个手握五十万张卡的投资人是认真的，而他说错的地方比说对的地方更有意思

One sentence travelled widely online last week, said by an investor.

He said: I am completely convinced that if the world were destroyed tomorrow, the day after that the currency used worldwide would be Pokémon cards.

It was passed around tens of thousands of times as a joke.

I want to take it seriously once, because what it asks is a very old question: what makes money money?

The man first.

He runs an investment firm focused on the games industry, and he collects cards himself.

By his own account, he holds "well north of five hundred thousand" Pokémon cards.

Five hundred thousand is not a collection any more. That is a warehouse.

He also cited a figure: these cards have risen three thousand percent more than the American market index.

There is something wrong with that figure, and I will come to it.

First let me take his thinking apart.

To judge whether something can serve as money, you usually look at three things.

The first is scarcity.

Anything you can make as much of as you like cannot be money.

The second is that it must be portable, divisible and not easily destroyed.

The third is that enough people accept it, and believe the next person will accept it too.

The third is fundamental; the first two exist to serve it.

Gold held the role for thousands of years because all three held at once.

Now run Pokémon cards through them.

The first: it holds.

The print run for a rare card is fixed at issue; once printing stops, no more are made.

The second: it holds well.

A card is lighter than gold of the same value by orders of magnitude.

Durability just about holds: paper does not like water, bending or light, but stored properly it lasts decades.

The one that matters is the third.

This is where his argument sits.

The people who play and collect these cards are not in one country.

Japan, North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America — all of them.

More importantly, there are companies that grade cards, scoring their condition.

With that grade, two people on opposite sides of the world can trade without ever seeing the card itself.

So the same card sells for roughly the same in Tokyo as in Los Angeles.

In other words, it already has a price the whole world agrees on.

Apart from gold, there really are not many things like that.

Up to this point, his argument stands.

What follows is two problems, and the second is fatal.

The first is that three thousand percent.

That figure is taken from the most expensive cards.

Count every card in circulation and most of them are worth nothing.

Open a new pack and the great majority of what is inside has no buyer.

Using the best few to represent an entire category is a classic arithmetic problem.

The second problem matters more.

Collectibles are worth money because some people have spare money.

Which is to say: there has to be a group of people who are fed and clothed and still willing to spend what is left on something impractical.

And the assumption "the world ended" destroys exactly that group first.

In the world he is describing, what people trade is water, medicine, fuel and food.

A piece of paper with a cartoon on it is of no use at all at that point.

So as a prediction, the sentence is wrong.

But as a question, it is a good one.

Because it forces you to answer: what makes that piece of paper in your pocket worth anything?

The answer is not in the paper.

The answer is how many people believe in it, and how long that belief can hold.

Think about it:

Of the things you hold, which is worth something purely because other people think so?

And if they stopped thinking so, what would be left of it?