We actually thought about posting an article that was just a bunch of Greeking text: you know, “Lorem ipsum” and the like, over and over again, for paragraph after paragraph. We’d drop in a couple NFT references, maybe say OpenSea with a link to OpenSea, and we’d be sure to include hashtags.
After all, #NFTs are having a moment; so much of a moment that Saturday Night Live tried to explain them on last night’s show.
(Metacoin Grade: B+. Clever, some cute references, just nerdy enough. McKinnon’s Yellen wasn’t too convincing, though.)
Of Course We Have Our Own NFTs
That’s right, it wouldn’t be a crypto bandwagon without everyone jumping on board, and that includes Team Metacoin, whose Obvious Statement collection aims to take advantage of the intersection between memes and finance. For instance, here’s one piece we’re auctioning off:
(If you think we think anyone’s going to bid 10 ETH on this, you misunderestimate us.)
But Why, Though?
A rather apocryphal story from college goes like this: Philosophy professor arrives for final exam, hands out the little blue exam books, and writes the final exam question on the chalkboard. “Why?”
Student opens his exam book, writes his response: “Why not?”
Student gets an A.
Akin to the wise student, most of the involvement in NFTs these days — by everyone from athletes to gamers to Taco Bell — is a little about chasing the shiny object and a lot about sensing an opportunity whose opportunity cost is minimal. While it took Metacoin years to understand what the heck is going on in this whole crypto universe, it really only took a few minutes to create an NFT and plop it on the blockchain. Can you really blame Mark Cuban for leveraging his billion-plus dollars to try to make a billion-plus more?
Here’s a brilliant point from a recent interview with Bloq.com’s Phil Gomes (and you can watch the 5-minute snippet below): People love to collect things. You can’t really do much with a collection of dollars, or Satoshis, but you sure as heck can do a lot with a collection of NFTs — you can admire them, you can collect more, you can brag about their one-of-a-kind-ness.
Where’s This All Going?
Often, you’ll hear Bitcoin and crypto pundits say things like “it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” or “we’re in the first inning of a nine-inning ballgame.”
And you’ll also hear traditional financial pundits ask if you’re old enough to remember the Beanie Babies craze of the 90s, and how kids were bankrolling their college educations with just a few collectibles — but the same pundits are also suggesting that it is just that, a craze whose time was just a blip on the financial timeline.
The answer is probably somewhere in between. Some of these things have sorta kinda jumped the shark. Some others? Real staying power — we think.
And, since this is an obligatory NFT post, we should use an obligatory close:
Watch this space for more.
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