Izabella Kaminska On The Intangibles that go into Valuation With a Look at Contango in the Market for Water from the Grotto of Massabielle in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, France
The last time we referenced Izabella's Lourdes piece was December 11, 2017 six days before Bitcoin hit its all-time high. The introduction was:
I believe I shall begin referring to the contango in Bitcoin futures as "The Learning Curve™".
In this post, we consider the roles of narrative and myth in value creation.
We’ll start with the argument that a powerful enough narrative or myth
can turn even abundant commodities into stores of value in their own
right.
Case in point, this bottle of water from Lourdes:
This
is a great example of how myth alone can turn a bottle of ordinary
water — abundant in the part of France it comes from — into an object of
value (and additional utility). Whether you consider the object
valuable or not is dependent entirely on whether you are a believer in
the underlying myth or not....MORE
That whole post is a quick primer on some of the psych features that go into the shape of the futures curve.
This short stroll down memory lane was prompted by Ms. Kaminska's most recent post, "Bitcoin contango" which links to a couple of earlier market structure posts and has at least two informed comments from the cheap seats.
Definitely worth a visit, if one is so inclined:
