Looking back on it, I was driven by enthusiasm. That has a since evaporated.
I think it is important to ask the fundamental question again "What problem does it solve". What is its use case?
NFT serve no real function outside of speculation. Meaningless hype, and god awful art.
Blockchains are niche technology, and efforts to jam them into existing tech has proven expensive, inefficient and ineffective.
Cryptocurrency has promise, but KYC rules will basically make it less convenient to use than fiat.
When you strip away the greed and speculation the technology is not that exciting.
Oh damn I have to write another book here for the solved problems and use cases
Let's try list format.
Think personal asset-ownership, decentralization:
- transfer unlimited money to anyone anywhere in the world with only their wallet address faster than any wire transfers which are slower than flying the cash yourself in a suitcase (single line address required versus wire transfers needing name, bank, branch, account or credit card needing card, expiry, exact written name, address)
- transfer unlimited money to anyone anywhere in the world 24/7 in minutes or hours - weekends, holidays, late-night, doesn't matter
- peer to peer transfers are direct not through third parties like banks, tech companies, credit card companies
- decentralization - hold your own unlimited money and assets 'transfer' to yourself or anyone worldwide, this is more of a gold-bug money under the mattress type thing so depends on the person in terms of convenience and use-case
- art: depends on the person. What do you like? In terms of cost it is far cheaper to buy, display and distribute online rather than physical are and huge art museums, air conditioning and security for high end
- art discoverability: how much physical art have you seen created by... Indians for example? Chinese? Awareness and discoverability is near zero for the majority in the physical world of small/emerging artists but widespread or easily accessible online
- Take out loans against your NFTs
- supporting creators: NFTs can have royalties that pay the artist their decided fee every time the art is resold. E.g. if you sold your print for $20 cash and then it later became worth $10,000 - the reseller takes all the $10k money and you only got your original $20 and maybe quit art because you couldn't afford to keep going. NFTs allow the creator to continually be paid their decided fee for resales (generally 2.5%-10%)
- Creators can know their collectors: artists and musicians for example know at least the wallet address of the people who bought their art, and can generally talk to their collectors/buyers online or even donate them gifts like more art for appreciation to their wallet
- access passes / tickets / membership tokens: you can buy/hold a company's or artist's token (NFT) and show it to grant you more intimate access to artists that they provide or simply prove you own it to enter a physical location like stadium, private party, etc. These can be resold.
- video game assets: this is still early with mostly Magic-style card games at the moment but ownership of skins and in-game items/weapons/armor etc. People spend real money for skins in Fortnite, Apex Legends, maybe weapons already in games etc. and it all goes to that company and is not resaleable nor transferrable. At some point, you'll be able to buy the NFT asset outside of the game and be able to use it in that game or other games. If you get bored of it or decide to quit, you can sell the asset to someone else and at least get some cash back.
Those were top of mind.
The people who left crypto due to the bear market were generally in it for the money anyway, not the technology nor the people. The overall space is very positive, helpful, and optimistic about the future.
KYC at this point is needed for banks and exchanges across the board anyway to buy or transfer anything, including crypto. Once you go off exchange it's generally peer to peer transactions without KYC, like cash.
Regulation is way behind yes, at least Japan has a lot of early experience and is getting there.
Centralization, the dark side:
- On the flip side CBDC central bank digital currencies will be more like gift-cards, something to keep in mind for the future. The expectation is that you may receive CBDCs of JPY, for example, but in the protocol/contract they will be able to wipe it to zero, disable spending it during certain times or have an expiry date to spend, for certain things or at certain places. They will be able to control your financial freedom literally at the push of a button if CBDCs become widespread adopted over cash/fiat currencies. (if I had to guess, Kishida or future prez will raise taxes again and give you $100 CBDCs to 'balance' the loss like we had with the permanent 8% to 10% sales tax increase 'balanced' with some temporary discounts for using payment apps to spend digital cash at certain restaurants for 6 months or so)
- META, Facebook are trying to get into the space and plan to charge almost 50% fees for purchases
- Apple currently charges around 30% fees on apps and in-app purchases. They have already imposed this for NFT in-app purchases (and block apps/podcasts at their whim)
- META, Twitter, Apple, Google (Youtube) can block/delete you anytime they want and wipe you off the internet at the whim of a single individual as we all know examples
- Credit cards generally charge maybe 3% fees to the merchant but sometimes the merchants put that fee on you; generally happens at Chinese shops and in Australia from my experience.
