To be honest: I haven’t done a complete switch. I still lurk on reddit from time to time.

What I have done however is switched to only actively engage with Lemmy, which imo is the more important part. I sadly don’t have much original content to offer, but I try to engage in some comments (like just now)

My take:

Is it even worth trying to invest $15K?

Yes and no. What i mean with that is that investing can mean a variety of things from investing in stocks/etfs to investing in yourself, your education and new experiences. Also while $15k is substantial and if put into a broad market fund and not touched until retirement will grow into a substantial sum, if you are on track to getting a good education and wellpaying job you are going to make this many times over during your carreer. To the point where you might enjoy the luxury of being in a position similar to your generous brother-in-law, for whom $15k is “pocket money”.

The goal of investing is not just to put as much money as possible into your retirement account at all cost, but to smooth out your lifetime earnings over your whole life. Since you will earn most of that in your 30-60s that ofc means setting aside a good chunk for retirement after, but it is just as valid to spend some during your teens and 20s, where you equally will have lower income.

Without knowing your specific circumstances, here is what i would do, assuming you are otherwise financially healthy (otherwise paying off debt and stuff is likely more important):

• Take a substantial sum, maybe $5k and put it into a broad market, low fee fund. Depending on your preference that can be one following an index tracking the total market, the developed world or the S&P500. You will have plenty of time accumulating more wealth once you land a good job, but from a psychological pov there is a difference of looking at historical data and coming to the conclusion that investing is worth it, vs having actual skin in the game and seeing the ups and downs affect your own money. If you feel like it, pick 1-3 stocks of companies you believe in long term and buy a few shares, but set yourself a hard limit of maybe 10-20% relative to what you put into the diversified fund. However you should see this as a risky bet and mentally mark it as 0, maybe you’ll get lucky and hit the next nvidia, but likely not. This is an investment with a time horizon of at least 10-15+ years (a time frame which is historically enough to ride out market downturns,) so do so only if you expect to not need the money for at least that long.

• Take another chunk, maybe 2-3k and spend it on sensible “luxury” purchases that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. With that i mean maybe you get a new laptop that you could also use during university (if that is where you are headed) or otherwise a good pc setup, a nice bike, some better quality gear for your hobbies, maybe some good clothes etc. . Still try to get good price/performance, but opt for something that lasts.

• If you have the time, then travel. Taking a few thousand and spending it e.g. traveling a month or more all accross europe, asia or south america might be a once in a lifetime experience worth many times over what you spend. Maybe you end up getting to know new friends or even a partner, maybe you get to know something new about yourself, you’ll learn about different cultures and so on, which might end up changing what you want to become and where you want to live.

• Does your brother-in-law have any interest or hobbies that you know of? Or maybe you yourself have some interesting idea that he might also enjoy. If you can think of something good i might take a few hundred $ and ask him whether he would like to do some unique experience with you for a day or a weekend. If both of you are thrillseekers you could do something like skydiving, as an example. If he’s a car person, maybe there is a opportunity to go to a race track and drive a few rounds in a cool car. If he’s a sports person, go to see a game together.

• Maybe take a few hundred and spend it “irresponsibly” just having fun. Go to concerts, in the cinema, eat a huge pile of ice cream. idk whatever you can think of. Or maybe do something nice to someone else by including them in those things or getting them a way larger gift that you’d overwise have done.

• Whatever is left, which should be a few k into readily accessible saving (if there’s something that also pays a bit of interest even better), because there most certainly will come times that you unexpectedly need some of the money. For example when you need it as deposit for renting a new place.

Honestly, imo they wouldn’t even need to get off Twitter and other platforms completely. Just make their own mastodon instance (or something similar that they control themselves) the primary source of truth and place of interaction. They could still link and reference it on other platforms to increase visibility, but make sure that all primary information is in a freely accessible place and not beholden to unreliable entities.

That’s the thing, it’s not centralized

But who is able to mint/create those cards? Anyone or just the company? That is what I was primarily getting at.

if the company hosting it closes it’s doors, you still have something in your ownership that corresponds to your cards,

Yes, proof that you owned cards in a now defunct game. The question is how much value is left at that point.

opening up the possibility of others re-implementing everything.

Barring copyright/IP law allowing it, or are we disregarding that? If someone wanted to take over they might just buy out the old company and take over.

And even when starting from scratch they’d have to evaluate if honoring/adopting the existing tokens would be worth it (would give an existing player base, but in return you don’t get any money from them and probably less than from a customer that starts from scratch).

A third option would be some form of foss project reviving the game. But the game seems independent of the blockchain aspect, which only tracks card ownership. Why would any such effort want to adopt a system build on artificial scarcity and profit?

Could you elaborate a bit how blockchain enables something unique here? I see that it enables trade between users, but if a single company controls the game and I assume supply of new cards, does the blockchain aspect for trading really matter?

Trading itself is basic and doesn’t need a blockchain. I guess with it you have it implemented in a public and tamper proof way, but that second part doesn’t seem to matter to me if the source is centralized.

So what exactly is gained from this approach over just your average ingame auction house?

I think for businesses that deal with physical items, rather than offering services, and are not drop shipping, selling something 3D printed has to be one of the lowest inventory options. You need to have the printers, some filament, and maybe some accessories like packaging boxes, but otherwise you can just make your product whenever you get orders (or have a small stock for faster fulfillment).

Using a spare system that isn’t in active use anymore to mess around and learn is definitely a good idea. However for long-term use I would keep an eye out for energy consumption. Depending on electricity prices it might make more sense to get a newer system with lower power draw, especially for something with high uptime.