This is very interesting guys. I’ve actually seen quite a lot of hate posts on Twitter (where you should be for crypto) about the NFT industry.
“Oh NFTs are a scam, the hype is over!”, “NFTs are just a bubble, they’re dead soon!”
Right.
I’ve seen a lot of these criticisms directed towards NFTs lately and I wanted to address them. Let’s get into it.
“NFTs Are Just A Bubble, They Are All Hype”
What does this even mean? Almost everything in life operates in the cycle of a “bubble.” At the start of anything valuable, hype builds up, skeptics come out and denounce it, the weak get weeded out, and the strong are left standing. That’s the pattern.
NFTs (ERC-721 tokens) caught on fire earlier this year and have been the talk of the town in 2021. Why?
A lot of people believe NFTs are just art pieces being sold digitally and they are skeptical of their sustainability. Why wouldn’t you just order something off Amazon or make the actual physical purchase?
A lot of people believe NFTs are a scam. These pieces that are being sold digitally are being sold for an enormous amount of money sometimes. Why would anyone pay millions of dollars for a PNG file? This is just a get-rich-quick scheme, right?
I’m going to answer both of those questions for you, but there’s one concept that’s important to grasp before I do. NFTs exploded onto the scene and caught fire for many reasons, but the technology and intangible forces NFTs introduce to human society are what I consider game-changer.
That’s why this industry is going to be here for the rest of our lives; the technology and intangible forces.
What Intangible Forces? Dude What Are You Talking About?
I believe there is a consistent variable in the paradigm of humanity’s progression and success. That variable is legitimacy.
(Reference: Bankless Podcast With Vitalik Buterin)
Throughout the years, I’ve always heard people say, “if I don’t see the returns, I’m going to move on to something else.”
I always wonder why people have that mentality. What do these people define “returns” as?
Money is our ability to maneuver within our society. Acquiring a large amount of money lets you leverage your time and creates a an alpha perception of an individual to his/her peers. Naturally, everyone wants to acquire a large amount of money.
What people don’t understand is that there are intangible forces that open pathways to more resources like money, for example. These intangible forces are a powerful energy in our society that most people aren’t aware of. And that’s the problem.
There is one specific intangible force that holds an enormous amount of influence within human society. This is an intangible force dictated by attention.
Legitimacy.
Legitimacy is the intangible force that gives an individual a certain kind of power. The power to make an impact. The power to hold influence over his/her peers. Legitimacy brings about a much more efficient method to generating money (everyone’s favorite) to the table.
So How Does This Relate To NFTs?
NFTs will be the metric used to measure legitimacy in the future.
NFTs will answer Who? What? When? and Where?
5 years from now, we’ll know if Keith attended the Lakers game or went to Europe on vacation. Everything will be recorded on the blockchain and be available in your public wallet.
NFTs are going to represent who we are in society. People will start to judge people based off of the NFTs they have in their wallet.
That’s why I keep laughing at all these hate posts towards the community. Art is the front-end; it’s what the token looks like. The back-end; what it represents is what will make these non-fungible tokens a staple in our society. And what do these tokens represent? Anything.
Anything you can think of.
The art is a visual representation on the blockchain, but you can also pair the NFT with any physical, tangible real-life item or concept. Yes, even concept.
For example, you can create a digital artwork and pair it with the actual copy in real life. You can ship it to the individual who purchases your NFT. You can pair it with a ticket to a basketball game. You can pair it to a television set. You can pair it with a song you recorded. You can pair it with special access to a discord containing your network.
So Are They A Bubble?
Of course the mainstream media coverage will simmer down. Of course a majority of these projects you see on Twitter will stop.
There are WAY more suppliers than collectors right now. So much to the point a majority of TALENTED artists go undiscovered.
And then they quit.
Why is that? Why is there an abundance of suppliers, as opposed to a small amount of collectors?
Because the use cases need to evolve.
Everybody has everyday expenses. Bills, groceries, comfort items, vacations, etc. For someone to purchase an NFT, there needs to be a strong enough incentive. At the beginning of the year, the art proved to be that strong incentive.
But as time went on, the standard for everything across the community rose. More and more artists started to not sell and BOOM! Here we are. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
We’re evolving. We are exploring new boundaries. This forces us to look for use cases or items in the virtual AND physical world to pair with these tokens.
The mainstream media calls it a “bubble.”
Even if mainstream media coverage simmers down for the short term; if you take a macro perspective, the technology will continue to evolve because the passionate communities will continue to search for the answers.
More use cases will become prevalent and pretty soon, mainstream media won’t just be covering NFTs… they will probably be integrated into NFT technology somehow.
Moral of the story:
Stop calling some of the most innovative technology on the planet a “bubble.” Learn it. Find out how to improve it. That’s my best advice.
Let Them Hate
These hate posts won’t stop.
Even if proven wrong, they will just evolve into something else. That is the nature of our society. That’s why it’s best to let people believe whatever they want to believe about this new technology.
I want to be a catalyst in bringing this new technology towards full adoption, but certain people need to see for themselves what this technology can do before they jump aboard.
If people want to post hate posts about the NFT community, let them. This is the part the real, passionate members are here for. The part where the weak get weeded out and the strong pioneer this new frontier into what its supposed to be.
If you genuinely want to build this industry… this is the fun part.
Focus on your work. Focus on your MARKETING. Stay in your lane. Build out your vision. Don’t focus on the negativity. Let it go.
Certain people are ignorant and uneducated at the moment. That’s not necessarily a knock on them.
That’s ok. This technology will offer them tangible AND intangible proof of what is to come.
P.S. I used Lebron James to symbolize NFTs… in case you didn’t get it….
……you know because Lebron is like.. really good at basketball and people are doubting him because he lost in the first ro-.. never mind, you get it.
The Talk2Much Podcast Episode of the Week:
This week, Pranav Maheshwari, a solutions developer at Edge & Node, the team behind The Graph protocol, joins me to talk about the technological infrastructure behind The Graph, the purpose of The Graph, what The Graph protocol is focused on, what the future of The Graph and all of Web 3.0 will look like, and the concept decentralization.
Thanks for the insights and encouragement. The 2nd is gold in time of market temper-tantrums like this! Btw Gutter Cat Gang's Gutter Dan is doing a tour and looking for podcasts (I am not part of that team but think it's a great project - it's also helping me recover from China tantrums and Musky Elon jibberish). Check GCG Discord if youi're interested or I can liaison if you want.