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China’s crypto speculators are pushing sneakers into bubble territory
Sneaker investors have their own WeChat groups and are buying fractions of Air Jordans
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Over the last few years, reselling expensive and limited edition sports shoes has gone from a niche hobby to a proper business. But in China, the trade is now looking more like a bubble.
But it's not the sneakerheads saying this. It's the country’s central bank.
The Shanghai branch of the People's Bank of China issued a briefing saying that the country’s sneaker trade is wading into murky financial waters. Risks include illegal fundraising and pyramid schemes, according to the brief. Similar descriptions have been used for the murky cryptocurrency trade, and now the sneaker trade is attracting some of those same investors -- and seeing its first victims.
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“I want to reassure all of you that I’m not a cheater, I’m just an ordinary person who loves sneakers,” a young trader named Cookie Liu told his customers in a video apology published on WeChat.
WeChat, the app that does everything
Liu started off as a sneaker trader only to end up 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in debt after the skyrocketing prices of sneakers made supply difficult to get, according to his online confession, widely covered by local media. Customers who paid for sneakers walked away empty-handed.
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