Comment by dsab

I suppose memecoins represent a form of this, but I was really referring to financial instruments, in particular those that exist based on a derived sense of value, rather than an actual quantification of it, such as:

Stock and, to a lesser degree, commodities futures, stock index futures, currency futures, interest rate futures, index options, currency options, interest rate options, credit default swaps, total return swaps, currency forwards, interest rate forwards.

The more exotic of these, which are usually more lucractive and less well regulated, include:

derivative-based exchange-traded funds, leveraged ETFs, inverse ETFs, equity-linked notes, credit-linked notes, principal-protected notes, collateralized debt obligations, weather derivatives (yes, you read that right), catastrophe bonds (eesh) barrier options and lookback options, to name a few.

They are all mechanisms to leverage expectation and uncertainty and most rely on the quantification of risk at some level. Risk, however, is defined in terms of expected return and subject to an assessment of externalities that is, at its core, resource-blind.