Sometimes I have no idea what I am doing in the world of Crypto. Compared to the visionary founders, the technical builders, and the gambling degens, I’ve always felt like the odd duck out of place. I am not a coder, nor a gambler, nor do I have the ambition to change the world. All I am is curious, and my tinkering alone has led me here.
I am a regular dad with regular responsibilities and obligations. I take out the trash, go to work, play with my kids, pay my taxes. I also collect digital artwork and invest modest amounts in BTC and ETH, because I see value in these decentralized digital assets. My hope is that soon more people will look beyond the well-known extremes of Crypto and NFTs and see what I see; a ground-breaking technology that can empower everyday people.
Over the past year of observing and tinkering, I have arrived at the following three conclusions:
NFTs empower creators by enabling them to own their art, content, distribution, and followers (community) without intermediaries
NFTs allow everyday users to actually own digital possessions, instead of the current model where we are allowed to use what tech companies own
Crypto enables scarcity backed by computation and cryptography, which may become a stable store of value one day if sufficiently adopted worldwide
Put simply, my view is that Crypto and NFTs bring us back to a time before modern digital. A time when artists could reach their fans, person by person. A time when we actually owned our possessions in the form of cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, physical books. A time when you could reasonably buy and hold gems and precious metals, as opposed to deeds and rights to items held in trust by third parties.
Crypto and NFTs give us back ownership.
As a kid of the 90’s, I believe I am one of the last generations to have experienced certain things before much of our daily lives were digitized. I liked to collect various objects: trading cards, pogs, coins, stamps. I had a pen pal with whom I would exchange written letters. I used to listen to the radio and make mix tapes. If I liked a band, I would buy their CDs.
Being a PC enthusiast, I would often buy CD-ROMs of various software, games, and utilities. Into the 00’s, this did not change much. I would still download software (usually freeware, sometimes shareware). I would create MP3s of my CDs and organize a digital music collection. I would take photos on my digital camera and save them to my hard drive. I had my own digital corner of life.
Fast forward to today.
I can’t put my finger on exactly when it happened, but the notion of owning my digital possessions seems to have faded away. I still have my digital music collection, albeit it is a list of songs that I have received a “license” to use from Apple. I don’t buy software anymore, but I have subscriptions that give me a “license” to use software from Microsoft. I don’t write friends anymore, but rather message them on messaging apps, our conversation history locked into the proprietary platform of LINE or WhatsApp. My photos are housed in the online storage of Google.
Somehow, my digital possessions are no longer my own. They have been spread across a small group of corporations that grant me rights to use or access. Rights that can be taken away, or that may disappear when the corporation decides to close shop. I am merely a user, or worse yet, a serf.
It wasn’t until summer of 2021 that I realized what blockchain had enabled. While I was aware of cryptocurrency and had purchased some in 2017, my attention had long since drifted away from BTC and ETH, and my thought process only went so far as to think that such digital currencies may have value. I did not go the extra step to think how they might be used, or what might be built on top of them.
After downloading MetaMask in March of 2021, it took me a full six months to actually buy my first NFT. It was this one, by the way:
The concept of digital self-sovereign identity hit me for the first time. A cryptocurrency wallet is something that cannot be taken away from you or revoked (albeit it may be hacked, and someone else can gains access to it). If you are able to demonstrate things using this wallet, such as taste in art or music, on-chain experiences, decisions on investments, or writing (such as what you are reading now), you are able to build up an identity on the internet that remains pseudonymous, yet can accrue value through a verifiable reputation.
For the first time ever, we can own our identities on the internet by leveraging public blockchains. We are no longer dependent on tech companies on proprietary user names or messaging services. A cryptocurrency wallet represents a way to build a digital identity that does not rely on any particular platform. As long as you have your private key (and it stays private!), your wallet represents you on the internet.
It didn’t take me long to realize that as wallets can demonstrate individual identity, so can NFTs held in those wallets demonstrate collective identity through ownership, shared interest, beliefs, and intents.
So here we are, on the other side of the 2021-2022 NFT bull market. Projects have come and gone, and seemingly what could go wrong has gone wrong in Crypto when it comes to the human side of things (the protocols are working perfectly!). Through it all, nothing has changed my belief that NFTs will one day change the world, and how we perceive ownership, scarcity, and community will be altered forever. I believe this will be a positive impact and make the world “small” again, in a good way.
NFTs enable digital objects to be imbued with a history. How a particular pfp changed hands to reach its current owner, or how a cherished artwork has never left the owner’s vault since mint. The digital footprints of choices, mistakes, learnings, and growth form a distinct identity that we can look back on and appreciate.
It has been a joy to collect art I like, to explore online museums, to tinker with defi protocols, and imagine what the future might look like. I hope for the day when we can normalize digital ownership, where digital objects are viewed in the same way physical possessions are. Our possessions defines us, to a certain extent. Why should it be any different whether those are tangible or intangible, physical or digital?
Cover image created using Stable Diffusion v1.5