It's a weird clout ("look what I got") + get rich quick ("look at my getting potential") swamp monster.

I had dinner with a childhood friend a few years ago. Her son (15) was super into it. I had so many questions. For him, it was all about The Flip - getting something rare at a reasonable price that other people with relatively impaired access would pay a lot for.

He described a world of bots buying out entire stocks of items instantly when dropped. He was even paying to use bots. I tried to convince him the real money was in creating the bots but that's always a hard sell; "hey young blood, you know what's better? getting extremely rich slowly and painfully."

Most of this stuff is just a weird status<->economic live-fire game I think.