Toys, sneakers, weather, elections, friendships: everything can now become a speculative asset. Everyday life is turning into a perpetual market where use matters less than probability. At the heart of this shift lies one certainty: nothing really has value anymore if it becomes possible to bet on everything.
Predictive markets: the new religion of numbers
Capitalism is dying under the weight of its own excesses. Its new, tangible reality manifests itself through absurd distortions that turn daily life into a giant casino. The most trivial objects become instruments of financial speculation. Its decline is accelerated by automation, artificial intelligence, and unrestrained financialization that cannibalizes everything—and everyone.
In 2025, speculators no longer need to buy a product to take part in this global game in which everything is objectified, absolutely and totally, and where culture is nothing more than a trading algorithm. Because today everything is monetized—even fun.
With an annual volume estimated this year at 50 billion, markets dedicated to prediction now rival traditional stock exchanges. Except that when everything is “tradable,” nothing has intrinsic value anymore.
Take Kalshi, a platform regulated by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), which allows users to trade “event contracts.” These binary contracts are bought between 1 and 99 cents depending on perceived probability. Sixty cents for “yes” equates to a 60% chance: if the event occurs, your contract is worth one dollar; otherwise, it expires worthless.
A few examples to illustrate this organized absurdity:
“Will Republicans control the House of Representatives after the 2026 midterms?”
Current price: ~55 cents for “yes.”
Volume: more than 10 million dollars traded.
“Will Taylor Swift be Time’s Person of the Year in 2025?”
Price: ~15 cents for “yes.”
“Will Wicked have a Rotten Tomatoes score above 80% in 2025?”
Price: ~85 cents for “yes.”
“Will New York experience more than 10 days above 35°C in July 2026?”
Price: ~30 cents for “yes.”
Speculation colonizes objects
The market spares nothing.
Sneakers, for instance, are no longer worn: they’re traded.
“Will the Jordan 1 Retro High OG exceed 250 dollars on StockX one week after its release on November 29, 2025?”
Price: ~65 cents for “yes.” Volume: 5 million dollars in 24 hours.
Toys are turning into derivative assets.
Labubu figurines?
A PVC toy turned into an asset more liquid than many publicly traded stocks. A rare Labubu (“Secret” Big Into Energy) sold for 28,000 dollars.
Forty-eight-hour lines in front of Shanghai’s Pop Mart stores, filmed scuffles over a 60-euro box, contracts speculating on the average prices of the “Exciting Macaron” series: the feverish micro-economy of a cute monster turned financial product.
We no longer own the object. We own the probability that someone else will pay more for it.
Finance swallows the intimate
Speculative excesses eat away even at intimacy.
People bet on hurricanes, bankruptcies, layoffs.
Access to one’s private life, relationships, emotions is sold—through subscriptions.
Apps let you “rent a friend.”
Influencers charge for attending children’s birthday parties.
Friendship can be bought by the hour through RentAFriend: 20 dollars for a staged coffee.
BNPL: continuous debt
It is the reign of BNPL: “Buy Now, Pay Later.”
Klarna, Afterpay and others turn the most mundane purchases into micro-loans.
A T-shirt, a sandwich, makeup: everything becomes debt.
Young people are urged to go into debt starting at 20 euros.
Borrow 20 euros for a sandwich you’ll pay off over six months with 15% interest.
The lifetime subscription
Your car has heated seats? You must subscribe to activate them.
Your Tesla brakes less strongly—as long as you haven’t paid for the “premium acceleration” option.
At iRobot, Roomba vacuums map your living room, but refuse to do so without a paid cloud plan.
In Mumbai, an 80% annual microloan forces a family to mortgage their goat; repossessed, the family sleeps under a bridge.
You bought the object?
Well, now you must rent the right to use it.
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As speculation infiltrates objects, relationships, and emotions, it also roots itself in our imagination. It redefines what we once considered normal, practical, inevitable. Each imposed subscription, each micro-loan disguised as a service, each probability contract applied to reality shifts a boundary—imperceptibly, through continuous drift.
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