Since our senior editor has a side-gig working for a bank (ok, fine, my lawyers *forcefully* suggested I make it clear Arteculate is the side-gig), he’s adopted a bit of a penchant for thinking about how money is an important part of the conversation in “unraveling technology’s complicated relationship with society.”
And nowhere has that been more clear, recently, than the confluence of Reddit’s wallstreetbets forum, free stock trading on apps like Robinhood, and meme stocks like Gamestop and AMC. As several professional commentators have recently stated: “SERIOUSLY WTF IS GOING ON?!” To which several redditors simply responded:
You can read elsewhere for what’s happening mechanically to boost $GME, but at a broader level it’s now very obvious that technology has enabled unprecedentedly easy access to financial markets, which, (surprise!) has exposed the madness of crowds. Oh yeah, and those crowds are winning and making heaps of money and we can’t stop laughing (while regretting that we didn’t take action on some solid DD).
We’ve seen technology get into the hands of “non-professionals” many times in the past, and the results can be interesting, innovative, dumb, and scary. But it’s following something of a pattern:
- Researchers and professionals develop a technology for serious purposes
- Off to the side, those same researchers and professionals find other creative uses for said technology
- That lights a creative spark as the technology is democratized and new entrants discover new uses
- Some of those new uses seem anathema to the researchers and professionals who developed the technology for serious purposes
So what will happen to the proliferation of technology that’s made it easy for anyone to trade “stonks”? Regulation could be coming, but just as likely, people might actually get bored and go find other fun things to do with their time. Amazingly, it seems there are people out there whose goal in life is not to finish with the highest net worth.