Labubu is just the start: how emotional consumption sets you up to lose

The Labubu moment is a warning

I saw it with my own daughter. Not long ago, in China, she became obsessed with Labubu, watching unboxings and wanting one badly. When I took her to buy one, I started thinking about what we were actually paying for.

The production cost of these little toys is tiny, at most a couple of dollars. On the secondary market, some sell for dozens or hundreds of times that. Prices have completely detached from any functional value.

Recently a single Labubu sold for $170,000, roughly the price of two bitcoins. I remember a similar frenzy around Bearbrick more than a decade ago. At the time, some pieces reached the same level. Now many of those same Bearbricks sell for less than $1,000.

In fifty years, Labubu will probably follow the same path. Bitcoin, which is often compared to these collectibles, is a different game: it may reach one million dollars. The people buying trend toys are not stupid. They know prices are irrational. The problem is that the game is not about value.

Emotional consumption is the perfect cover

The first thing capital understands is human nature. We buy many things now from a fear of missing out, rather than from actual need. That applies to limited toys, to hyped clothing, to the latest iPhone. Every year there are queues outside Apple stores, but many people in line cannot tell you what the new camera or the new chip does. They just do not want to be the last person to own it.

That feeling is engineered. A product with almost no use value can still command unlimited pricing power. My family is not immune: my kids watch YouTube and want to collect blind boxes, my wife buys limited designer bags and clothes, and I have bought branded clothes myself.

When a product is scarce, unverifiable, and tied to identity or emotion, prices can be whatever the market will bear. That gives capital huge room to operate.

Trend toys as a laundering channel

Trend toys have several features that make them ideal for moving money. They have large price swings. There is no technical barrier to making more. Scarcity is artificial: the manufacturer can produce as many as it wants. Most transactions happen offline, often settled in cash, and there is no central pricing standard.

Here is one example. A toy may cost a couple of dollars at retail. On the secondary market, it can go from a few hundred to tens of thousands. Nobody can tell you the fair value. The price depends entirely on who is willing to take the bag.

That opens the door to capital. You can buy a few toys for a few thousand dollars, present it as a personal hobby, then arrange for someone at an auction to buy them back at a huge markup. Outside, it looks like a passionate collector paying for fashion. Nobody connects it to money laundering.

This is not new. We have seen the same pattern in the art market, in film, and now in toys. The product is secondary. The real purpose is moving money from one pocket to another in a way that looks legal.

Movies are an even bigger black hole

I have a friend in film financing, and he told me honestly: the best thing about film is that you can spend as much as you want. A movie has so many stages, from script development to shooting, post production, promotion, and distribution, that nobody can audit the real cost. Script fee, actor fee, special effects, studio rental, lighting: each line can be inflated, and no outside auditor can really verify it.

That means the film industry functions as a perfect capital channel. You put money in, it flows out legally, and nobody asks where the original money came from. A film that flops at the box office is written off as an investment failure. The money has already been washed.

When you sit through a terrible movie, you become an extra in that operation. Your ticket helps complete a legal transfer. You think you are watching entertainment. Capital sees a laundering machine with a storyline.

Meme coins run on the same playbook

If you have followed my previous videos, you will notice the same structure in crypto. Meme coins have no technology, no ecosystem, and often a whitepaper that looks like a joke. Yet they can rise a hundred times overnight.

The core driver is emotion, and value is almost irrelevant. Because there is no real product or cash flow, capital can move the price curve almost freely. A large part of the supply sits in a few hands. Those insiders control liquidity, control the narrative, and control the timing.

At first, they create a wave of FOMO. Everyone sees green candles and thinks they are early. By the time you and your friends hear about it and rush in, capital is already selling quietly. You have become the exit liquidity.

What makes it even stranger is that everything is public. The contract is on chain. You bought voluntarily. There is no fraud in the traditional sense. Exactly like a film flop or a hyped toy, the process is legal. You think you joined a project, but you actually joined a laundering cycle. You are the last buyer.

I have also talked about North Korean hackers. They stole billions of dollars in crypto, and some of it was laundered through meme coins. That is not an accident. The whole market is like a giant washing machine, and we are the ones spinning inside it.

The four step machine

After years in crypto and finance, I can summarize the system in four steps.

• First, capital creates an asset with vague value: a toy, a movie, a meme coin. The less it resembles a classic commodity, the better. The less utility it has, the more its valuation depends on narrative, and the more room there is to manipulate.
• Second, they push a story through social media, influencers, and events. The message is always the same: this is limited, this is hot, you must act now or you will miss out.
• Third, the market enters a frenzy. Prices go up, and fear becomes the main driver. Nobody wants to be the last one holding cash.
• Fourth, capital exits calmly. They sell at high prices through private sales or over the counter channels. By the time retail holders realize what happened, the insiders have already locked in profits.

Read the game before you become the exit

I am not telling you never to buy a toy, watch a movie, or trade a meme coin. I am telling you to see the structure behind them. The less a thing looks like a product, the more it can be used as a tool.

Whether it is Labubu, a box office flop, or a meme coin, the object of desire is usually a story, a feeling, and a fear of being left out. The price stops reflecting any actual value. The real players do not care what the product is. They care about liquidity, narrative, and exit.

You can use this knowledge to protect yourself. Before you buy, ask who benefits if you buy now. If the answer is someone who needs you to feel urgent, you are probably the product being sold.

Once you see the machine, you can refuse to be the last bag holder.