The Rise of Risky Alt Investing

The past few weeks have seen a lot of crypto investing hype, largely thanks to the meteoric rise of Dogecoin. The meme cryptocurrency, which received a massive boost from Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter account, has risen a whopping 12,000% since January. This has turned some coin owners into millionaires – many of them bought Dogecoin when the price was hovering around $ 0.007.

All it took to generate massive returns was a $ 1,000 purchase of Dogecoin earlier in the year when the price was below $ 0.01 per coin. A purchase of $ 1,000 Dogecoin at that price at this point is now easily worth over $ 100,000 in your bank account – despite the fluctuations in price that followed Doge’s rise to internet fame.

It’s lucky buys like this, or things like the GameStop stock craze that hit earlier this year and that would-be and seasoned investors are looking for their next big investment. These trends have given way to a surge in alternative investments, with some investors pouring money into rather curious gambling.

Read on to learn about legacy investing and how sports memorabilia and crypto-art can be the next big things to rise to the moon.

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What is driving the demand for alternative investments?

According to some experts, the urge for alternative investments comes from an unusual place: real estate.

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, experienced and prospective investors have driven property prices across the country as they take advantage of record-low mortgage rates. This stifling demand for real estate has resulted in a real estate crisis in almost every major market – making it difficult to get a slice of the real estate pie.

This sparked a frenzy of would-be property investors looking for other ways to make money. And this happened at a time when alternative investments like Bitcoin and GameStop were making the headlines to make many people rich.

Combine that investment need with a boredom caused by a pandemic, and you end up with a recipe for risky business. And for many, that risk has paid off. This has led people to look for creative and sometimes just weird ways to capitalize on alternative investments – including sports memorabilia and crypto-art.

The demand for sports memorabilia

If you’ve tucked away a bunch of your old Big League Chew trading cards, this may be the time to dust them off. This is because a lot of money is currently being put into sports memorabilia. The pandemic – and the lackluster returns on some traditional investments – has caused demand for the sports collectibles market to hit record highs.

Do you need proof? Take the rookie trading card with quarterback Tom Brady. It sold for a record $ 2.25 million in April. Or how about Mickey Mantle’s extremely rare 1952 Topps baseball card, which sold for a whopping $ 5.2 million in January.

Tons of sports memorabilia are flying off the shelves. Much of it comes with hundreds of thousands of price tags – and even millions in the case of baseball cards or a Babe Ruth jersey that went up for $ 5.64 million at auction.

And interestingly, it’s not just vintage collectibles that are making a splash. Digital sports collectibles are also booming. Take NBA Top Shot, for example. This is a blockchain-based platform that enables people to buy, trade, and sell basketball highlight clips in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Business for NBA Top Shot was booming when it topped $ 200 million in sales in March – and demand hasn’t slowed yet.

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It is clear that selling sports memorabilia, both physical and otherwise, is extremely lucrative right now – and the first choice for those looking to invest in alternative markets.

A massive investment in crypto art

We’ve all heard of the cryptocurrency mania thanks to the unexpected rise of Dogecoin, but crypto coins aren’t the only thing investors are looking for. Crypto-art has also begun to make an impact across the country – and it comes at a substantial price.

NFTs aren’t just used for digital sports collectibles. They are also used in the art world to sell digital works of art – linked to contracts on the blockchain that claim the artwork is an original piece – to collectors.

What’s unique about NFT, or crypto-art, is that it will revolutionize the tracking of original art. Since the digital file is on the blockchain, you can sell the digital original and it will also be registered on the blockchain. If the person who bought it from you resells it, that transaction will also be recorded on the blockchain.

This means that you have access to the entire transaction history for the artwork that is bought and sold on the secondary market.

While digital prints or artwork NFTs are relatively new to date, it seems like a pretty lucrative business – one that can make millions if the right eye of the buyer is hit.

That happened to a digital artist in March. Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the name of Beeple, sold a non-fungible token of his play entitled “Everydays: the First 5000 Days” for a whopping $ 69.3 million – a record for digital art.

Where are alternative investments going next?

It is impossible to predict which alternative investment will have the next big moment, but one thing is certain: alternative investments are going nowhere. Investors have seen tremendous gains in unusual locations lately, and there is already evidence of new and unique investments coming into the market.

Whether it’s NFT albums – one of which recently raised over $ 11 million for an electronic musician – or some other technology-related investment – chances are we will see the next Dogecoin and crypto-art in the near future. What it actually becomes in the end, however, is everyone’s guess.