Recently the wildly successful crowdfunding platform StartEngine expanded into a new territory - investing in wine.  This takes the platform outside of the initial focus of providing a platform for Reg CF and Reg A raises into actual equity or debt (convertibles) of business entities.  The bigger question looms as to what this means for platforms such as Rally with a rapidly growing and cash rich player entering their turf.  

Rally offers folks the opportunity to invest in scarcity at its core.  Users can buy and sell pieces of rare books, trading cards, video games, cars, and essentially anything.  We've used it to buy a few items and the experience was quite pleasant, and we've noticed that the items we purchased have thus far performed well (books).  By "performed well" of course we are referring to the liquidity presented inside the Rally platform when assets continue to trade. 

StartEngine recently started offering investments into elite wines.  Basically investors get to buy a portion of a defined quantity of a given wine (a case or collection of cases, units, etc.).  This appears to put them on a collision course with the collectibles space.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

We see this as part of the bigger trend related to scarcity in general and the consistent evisceration of the purchasing power of your native fiat currency.  Investors want to preserve wealth, so they are flocking to crypto, scarce assets like collectibles, and crowdfunding opportunities among other things such as real estate.  In addition to earning free Bitcoin or other crypto there are plenty of investors seeking to minimize exposure to traditional markets such as publicly traded equities where the market moves almost in lockstep with the Fed's balance sheet. 

Before too long we expect to see crypto and crowdfunding/collectibles converge and integrate in a more obvious manner.  Just look at NFTs as an example.  People are plowing into Tezos and using Tezos to print NFTs which is a great example of using the new technology to validate, store, and invest in scarcity.  Why not use the same type of technology to provide the accounting and management of investing in a rare book, car, case of wine, or otherwise?  Just seems inevitable that all assets will ultimately use crypto at a minimum from an accounting, storage, and management perspective.