If A Price Chart Can Be A Dog, What Do Prices Mean?
Painting the Tape: Price As Meme, Market As Medium
With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.
—Chris Anderson, Wired
The numbers that speak for themselves have become numbers that speak to themselves.
—Kevin Slavin, MIT Media Lab
Several weeks ago, we wrote about a “crypto bro” who gave new meaning to the phrase “painting the tape” by using the price system as a literal drawing pad—creating performance art through price manipulation:
This week brought a copycat who launched a new coin and meticulously drew an image of a Shiba Inu dog as the price chart:
While these are obviously jokes and publicity stunts from crypto’s Wild West frontier, they nonetheless raise unsettling questions. What do the prices of stocks and bonds flashing on our screens—not to mention the prices we pay for goods on Amazon—actually mean when algorithms and AI systems increasingly determine their values?
Read the full Skynet Part V on our site (link here):
Trading Beyond Reality’s Edge: Engines Of Hyperreality
New to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice series? For essential context, start with our foundational posts on the Financial Matrix, HyperPrices, and Hyperreality, or explore the full Table Of Contents.