Some notes on the broader trend of turning more assets into financial instrument:

Any asset that has increasing value over time is being packaged as a financial instrument, to allow for more people to participate in that value increase. This is happening in traditional categories like art, but also with new students entering the workforce.

This exercise is not different from securitization, in which different forms of contractual debt is repackaged as bonds or CDO’s.

This trend feels like something that can only occur in a booming market cycle, when investors are looking for new opportunities to generate wealth. This seems to be coming to an end. I’m not spelling doom and gloom for these new innovative ‘asset classes’ - I think investors will generally skew towards fewer abstractions and increased certainty.