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Thanks to the collectors of the work featured in this piece: Jeff Lau, Charles Read, shatt.eth, ethventurer.eth, localdegen.eth — You likely fall into one of these categories:What’s an NFT?NFTs are bullshit.NFTs are a breakthrough technology.Whichever it is, I hope to offer some perspective for you to further consider your position. Let’s begin.1/ AttributionThe world runs on social contracts. The first mental building block for understanding this technology is to think of it as a digital sig...

edition://0xDF5b5ee15CC96ba7d0CB6BD9b2c0fc4417ab6445?editionId=6

If you clicked the link to this article, you know what the Bored Ape Yacht Club is. 10,000 provably unique avatars. 0.08 ETH to mint on April 30th, 2021. I bought Ape 5207 on May 2, 2021 for 2.5 ETH. According to rarity tools, this is the 330th rarest token in the BAYC collection. The cheapest comparable ape is now priced at 69 ETH (at time of writing). BAYC represents a massive shift in creative IP, allowing holders to create and sell derivative works of the apes they own. In their language:...

edition://0xaf89C5E115Ab3437fC965224D317d09faa66ee3E?editionId=266

"The need in Afghanistan is overwhelming and growing fast as conflict escalates and drives more than 393,000 newly displaced people from their homes. They need food, water, shelter, and protection. Please give now to rush emergency aid to displaced Afghan families and your gift will matched to go twice as far to help." Each edition of this NFT covers one family’s emergency needs for a month. (scroll down to buy 10 at a time) Funds are routed directly to [care.org] Funds Sent: 8/18/21 — 33.824...

Words: Luke Burgis, author of Wanting, out today. Token #3384 Memes are stuff. Mimetic desire is movement. On January 25, 2021, $GME looked like 4 meaningless characters on a screen. On January 26, 2021: a movement of 92.71%. $GME meant something. It represented the desires of thousands, then millions. Behind the stock ticker were people looking to other people, wanting what other people wanted. Desires aren’t static; they’re mimetic. They rise and fall on the strength of others’ desires. The...

2020 was a hell of a year. Lots of charts that looked like this:Screen time, through the roof: Remote work. Ecommerce orders. Zoom minutes. Retail trading volume. Digital art sales. The list goes on. All accelerations of trends, nothing particularly surprising given the circumstances. What is difficult to plot on a chart is the proportion in which our identities are shifting from offline-first to online-first. Physical status symbols are of no utility if you aren't going outside. If the ...

"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." — James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)Infinite games. Long-term games. Positive-sum games. Not too long ago, if you'd have asked me to explain what any of the above meant, I'd have no idea what you were talking about. Now, I play them every day.“No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not re...