Do you see real business value in NFTs?
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But I still wonder whether that’s an NFT thing or just a database with a unique ID key. That is a really interesting piece if you go into a decentralized model. But when you trust one company like Meta to do all that, you might as well just have a database.
I had an experience last summer that changed my whole outlook on NFTs. After our withdrawal from Afghanistan, a couple friends of mine wanted to create NFTs to raise money for the families of the 13 service members who had died in action there. That was the shortest fundraising campaign ever. It took less than three days to raise over $500K. That kind of application is interesting: people actually want to have the whole rights to something because they want to be part of the big picture and contribute to doing something good. And it also appeals to people’s innate desire to leave a legacy that lasts forever, so there could be another side of NFTs emerging soon.
In that vein, I have friends who paid for college by creating skins and content in Second Life. So I can see NFTs being used in that context, where creators could say, "I'm the one who made that piece of fashion." But I love that perspective of contributing to the greater good. You could buy part of an NFT that's going towards a church that was destroyed, or a new school, and that's how you’ll show your contribution. Then you could add that to your Second Life or metaverse avatar.
The CEO of Second Life announced that they're coming back with a vengeance to show all these metaverse players what it's really about.
What really drives new technology adoption, and a lot of technology innovation, is a particular adult entertainment industry. That industry made the decision to choose Blu-ray over DVD for handling file compression. There's a lot of early adoption happening there, so I would look at that industry and how they would use NFTs.
Collectors typically want to buy something because it's exclusive. NFTs don't necessarily solve that piece for a collector unless they want that unique thing. Most of the attention on NFTs right now is from people who got into the cryptocurrency space early, and are trying to figure out how they can make a couple bucks. They’re looking for ways to flip it and do these components without saying, "I actually want the NFT of this thing, because I'll be the only one who has this collection." Most people are fine with having a reprint of a piece of art, and they will be fine with having a licensed copy of some sort of non-fungible piece. Once the adult entertainment industry solves how they use NFTs, then I'll get a sense of what NFTs will actually be used for.
There are Profile Picture NFTs (PP NFTs) like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, or the Loaded Lions from crypto.com, which give you unique access to certain things like discounts on the exchange. You can be part of this social network because you have one of those PP NFTs and not just a copy, so that's one interesting example of the utility they're trying to drive on NFTs.