I think that NFTs are awesome. Not necessarily the particular NFTs being making headline trades right now—many of those are stupid; but then,
many uses of Bitcoin have been stupid (especially early on). Nonetheless, the
concept is awesome.
And get this:
NFTs are not in competition with Bitcoin! Bitcoin is a currency; it is supposed to be fungible, and
I defend Bitcoin’s fungibility. Non-Fungible Tokens are, of course,
not fungible. They are not supposed to be a currency. Why are some Bitcoiners getting bent out of shape about this? Just because NFTs run on generalized smart-contract chains,
0 which Bitcoin is not?
NFTs apply cryptography for a new use case. A very
useful use case.
1 They have created a new asset class that improves on the properties of similar, older asset classes, just as Bitcoin created a new kind of money that improves on the properties of older monies.
Proof that NFT technology will succeed:
I see WOers slinging the exact same FUD against NFTs as has always been used against Bitcoin. Let’s see just how much this technology will totally take over the world:
- “It’s a Ponzi.” ✔
- “The scarcity is artificial. Anyone can make perfect copies of it.” ✔
- “Drug dealers will use it to launder money.” ✔
- “Those fools will be burned when it is shut down by regulators (SEC, et al.).”2 ✔
I anticipate that as I keep reading WO posts about NFTs, I will be adding to this list...
Now,
don’t you dare accuse me of being “bullish on NFTs”, or some such nonsense. Again,
duh: NFTs are non-fungible. To say, “Buy NFTs!” is like saying, “Buy stuff!” Well,
what stuff? Some stuff is valuable; other stuff is not.
In the course of my life, I have sometimes paid extra for
e.g. a copy of a book autographed by an author whom I admire. That copy is just like every other copy, except that the author spent about a second of his time marking that copy as special. I doubt that anyone here would call me stupid for buying that; everyone understands that fans and admirers like autographed copies. By close analogy, I would be happy to buy a limited-edition, digitally-autographed NFT for an e-book issued by the same author.
NFTs are also good for the use case of tracking title to real-world assets,
e.g. land titles. If NFTs can take over those functions in the future, that will improve the world. The legacy systems are horrible. Cryptography can make things better.
Somehow, I get the feeling that the people bashing NFTs
didn’t CPU-mine Bitcoin in 2009, and
didn’t buy Bitcoin at $0.06. It is hard to see the future.
Disclosure: As of this writing, I have never bought an NFT. In the future, I may—perhaps—not as a speculative investment, but rather, if I see something that I actually want to own.
0. Right now, that’s mostly Ethereum. But also right now, there is a hot competition for which smart contract chain will be ETH2—and ETH2 itself seems to be in a losing position,
because they are not yet shipping and they won’t be for a long time. I doubt that ETH maximalists will like the results. They should have learned a lesson from Bitcoin Core: Do The Right Thing, don’t move fast and break things with people’s money, and don’t paint yourself into a corner where your system
needs massive changes which require disrupting your own ecosystem. If you do these things, that is how you kill your own brand and lose your first-mover advantage.
1. Long before the general public learned about NFTs in the headlines, I had ideas for a new business model through which NFTs can be used to generate sustainable income for content producers. I don’t want to spill details, because—
business model. Whereas the importance of such use cases should be obvious to anyone who has followed the copyright wars.
2. The reference to the SEC is especially nonsensical here. How the hell is ownership of a digital asset in any way even remotely similar to a security representing an equity interest in a business? Talk about the SEC here is “not even wrong”. It is a total
non sequitur.
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