NFT Collectibles are the breakout asset class of the year 2021 for sure. In this blog post we take a peek on where are NFTs in the hype cycle and how the small fish win over the big fish in NFT tsunami.

Hype of NFT Collectibles: Honus Wagner Card

This August, a baseball card featuring Honus Wagner sold for $6.6 million, the most ever for a sports card. The sale went largely unnoticed. Million-dollar sales of sports cards – and many other collectibles – are fast becoming commonplace. Not a hype anymore. And they are all getting overshadowed by the billions of dollars flooding in of NFT collectibles?

If a small piece of cardboard with a picture on it sells for $6.6 million, few bat an eye. In fact, the NFT collectibles are wildly superior and unlocks doors for collectors that traditional collectibles simply cannot. As just one example, in 10 years, the biggest brands will not be corporate logos – they will be NFTs. Guaranteed. Let’s think for a while, why the aforementioned Wagner card sold for $6.6 million:

• Fewer than 200 were printed (rare)
• It’s relatively easy to verify its authenticity (authentic)
• Baseball has its own die-hard community (culture).

When it comes to collectibles, there’s a difference between an NFT and a physical card. For one, nobody knows exactly how many Honus Wagner cards were originally printed. The buyer of the Wagner card is knowingly speculating that it is rare and a box of them isn’t just going to turn up in someone’s attic. Also, highly specialized experts are needed to authenticate each one. So there’s a certain amount of risk involved and they’re not really easy to sell.

Enough of Honus Wagner NFT collectibles shoutout…

Let’s dive into why NFTs are valuable and how an individual onboard of this new innovation seamlessly…

Why Are NFTs Valuable?

NFTs provide enhanced scarcity, authentication and liquid markets. NFTs provide transparency of issuance and authenticity on the blockchain. They are provably rare and anyone can verify one for themselves. They offer more liquidity, rapid settlement finality, a global marketplace that never sleeps and a collectible that never degrades or tarnishes. While those NFTs might be digital, this only adds to their potential utility. An NFT can provide access into exclusive communities. It can get you tickets to special events. More than a JPEG, the NFT provides provable ownership of a cultural network effect. This is so astonishing and profound that it takes time for the implications to fully sink in.

Crypto Twitter Activity – “Institution Are Coming”

By analyzing crypto Twitter activity, one can notice the difference about NFTs from an “institutions are coming” perspective. Crypto Twitter front-run the institutions badly in BTC and in ETH, but in the end, +/- the institutions “won” to some degree. BTC and ETH remain an enormous achievement.

But a huge amount of liquid BTC and ETH is now locked up in centralized vehicles – CEXs, custodians, fund-like structures and this will only get “worse” .That has two ‘bad’ parts, 1) It hurts decentralization, 2) Bigger late adopters picked up more gains than early adopters.

Why am I saying this?

What is different with NFT?

One thing that is different about NFT collectbles is that some of us crypto-native are not broke like we were in, say, 2013. This allows to take more ambitious bets and some of has have more staying power. This is not specific to NFTs – also true in DeFi

The biggest difference is the non-fungibility. Any small holder of BTC could do nothing about the market selling to some kind of a whale. It is a fungible anonymous global market that trades at the margin.

So is UNI, but punks are NOT

NFTs are built different.

There are 18 hoodie nerd glasses punks or 20 squiggles perfect spectrum that will eventually mostly end up in diamond hands over the next months/years as we play some musical chairs and shuffle things around.

That means that when a crypto whale of 2028 shows up with a $400M fund to buy hoodie nerd glass punks or squiggles or whatever, at least at the elite level, the sellers can just say “no”. Not “at a high price”, but simply “no, we are going to control these and their culture”

And because of the non-fungibility, there is no necessarily ‘weak hand’ at the table that will sell. I think this is a fundamentally different dynamic regarding how this market will trade.

NFT Collectibles Are Mostly Misunderstood Thus Far

Why does misunderstnding matter, aren’t we creating a new elite? Maybe, to some degree we are, that is true. But it is a crypto-native elite, with different values, different goals, different objectives on the whole. We have a chance to make the decentralized dream true.

These days most of the earlt crypto adapters are in NFT twitter. For them, the first priority should be to secure your IRL (in real life) – your house, your fam, your nest egg. The faster you can firewall your IRL spending from your crypto speculation (and it IS speculation), the more fun you will have here in NFT-land.

Crypto marketplace will have winters and dry spells – these win-quick crypto adopters don’t want that to impact their rent, dinner, tuition, whatever. Only then is it 100% fun. So for those who are in the process of making it, sell when the offer makes sense to you and *never look back* on that piece. Don’t feel any shame, concern or guilt. Practically nobody is a 100% HODLer from origin BTC days. HODL is a useful meme, not absolute reality.

Don’t Let The Institutions Steal Your JPGs

The fight with the institutions needs to be led by the 2nd and 3rd gen crypto folks. I think the real goal for crypto believers should be to ultimately change the society, not just sell tokens to the institutions at a higher price. tl;dr Don’t let the institutions steal your JPGs.

Let the co-travelers in BTC / ETH collaborate over line on NFTs. It would be 100x preferred that a grail piece ends up in say crypto-native hands than with the institutions.

@XCOPYART is one of the claasic examples of artists. His art is more than art, but a memetic lever to change the world. Why not the ‘new thing’ NFT colectibles can move his art in the digital world, in a way that TradArt cannot. Wealthy individuals have a lot more sway in the trad art world than tradfi too. Some will sell, no doubt, but you’re right that the overall power dynamic should not be the same as currencies.

This is the chance of cryto maximalists and that need all hands on deck, so the rest of crypto twitter needs to stop the ridiculous cope about “tops” and “jpgs” and get with the program.

The challenge, crypto believers consider, is for NFT culture / ‘the space / community’ to not eat itself. ‘Power corrupts’ as Lord Acton said. We’re degens playing with JPGs, the community is amazing, Let’s have a blast, I hope we can hold onto this, when the big guns come.

The Future of NFT Colletibles

The “real world” version of an NFT might be something like the deed to my house (verifiably scarce), if one could prove ownership to my insurance company by signing a transaction in a wallet that holds the receiptcof my deed (digital representation of property). I could grant access to the house for Airbnb guests with the NFT (programmable), or take out a home equity line of credit and pledge the NFT as collateral on a peer-to-peer lending platform (portable).

That comes later. The new gig version will come first:

Gig signing into a VR casino with his/her virtual ID (verifiably scarce) and pull up a chair where the dealer recognizes his/heravatar as TBI (digital representation of property). Since this is his/her 10th time at the casino, and she’as been on a heater, her player’s card is shining hot (programmable), signaling that other players should come join her table, which the casino likes and decides to send her a virtual “drink ticket”, that can be redeemed at Uber Eats, Drizzly, or any app that recognizes those NFTs are credits (portable).

If you have a little imagination, you’ll see that the opportunity is ginormous.

To Sum Up…

NFTs seems to be “peak of inflated expectation” phase of the hype cycle. NFTs are a major economic innovation. NFTs allow creators to sell their work to anyone directly. This is the real promise of NFTs – the facilitation of secure transactions that are recorded on the blockchain no matter how many times an item changes hands. NFTs tear down barriers for creators and collectors alike; they create a whole new universe of digital content that can be bought and sold around the world in an instant. 

Dream Come Reality of Not Letting The Institutions Steal Your JPGs

I’d encourage you to watch these two quick explainer videos if you want a good visual primer on how NFTs work, and why we’ve recently hit euphoria. It will set up the right mind set on NFT collectibles!

Related Reading: What Is NFT? 5 Starter Tools To Jump Start With NFTs

Book Pick: NFT (Non Fungible Tokens) Guide: Buying, Selling, Trading, Investing in Crypto Collectibles Art. Create Wealth and Build Assets: Or Become a NFT Digital Artist with Easy How to Instructions

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