NFTs: wild west or opportunity?

It’s safe to say that pretty much everyone has heard of NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) in one way or another. Whether you are following the space from its origins, intrigued by CryptoPunks and pictures of rocks sold for millions of dollars, or your favourite celebrity putting an NFT as their profile picture on Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) – NFTs are everywhere.

The premise of NFTs is very intriguing and will likely transform many industries, mainly gaming, and even create industries – such as digital art collecting. Imagine for a second a popular game, Counter-Strike, for instance, releasing an NFT of a unique piece of gear that only your character can wear and one that you can buy and sell at any time on an open market. This is in contrast with the current model, which relies on the casino-like opening of randomized sets of gear skins that thousands of other people have. It’s pretty obvious which model looks more appealing.

On the other hand, after diving deep into the NFT market, I can’t help but get the same sense as back in the 2017 “ICO craze.” Same if not more extreme FOMO, same promises of unbelievable utility and overly ambitious metaverse plans, and of course, the biggest culprit of them all – greed and promises of becoming the next CryptoPunks.

It seems like this narrative repeats itself in every crypto-related endeavour – we have a big idea or technology that can change the world. Yet, it’s instantly flooded with opportunists seeking to follow the buzz and create ventures for the sake of creating them, creating them to make money quickly, or worse – creating them for the sake of defrauding people. 

Don’t get me wrong, while all this is happening, there are hundreds or even thousands of legitimate ventures started that actually seek to bring light to this world to change or improve the world in some way. But all this is happening in an ocean of BS. This happened during the ICO craze of 2017, and one can argue that this is happening with NFTs now.

If the ICO craze was any indication – it could get worse before it gets better. Ventures that are done for the right reasons always win in the end, and it will be exciting to see how the NFT space evolves and which direction it takes after the appeal of pictures of strangely dressed animals is inevitably exhausted.