Do you remember the ICO boom of 2017?
Of course, you do.
Back then, the entire crypto market blew past crazy ATHs with almost no exception. This lured many celebrities and companies into issuing their own tokens via ICOs in an attempt to make the most of the craze. Most of those coins/tokens had no special tech, no use cases, and no economic incentives. And as expected, most of them eventually went to junk with many naive and investors getting wrecked.
Well...I think there is kind of a "resurrection" of this mania in much the same way Matrix has been resurrected. However, This time, not ICO mania, but NFT mania...
I'm sure most of you guys have noticed it, and it is something I talked about in a previous post: Is NFT overrated?
Today, I'd like to bring you some of those celebrities and big companies that seem to be riding the NFT wave and share with my thoughts on the matter...
Jack Dorsey:
He's well-known as a crypto advocate who had a serious hand in multiple mass-adoption campaigns on Twitter when he was the CEO.
In March of this year, Jack Dorsey minted the first-ever tweet posted on Twitter as an NFT and sold it for a whopping $2.9 million. It is also worth pointing out that Dorsey didn't take the money for himself, but donated it to Give Directly’s Africa Response fund for COVID-19 relief. So, yea, the proceeds went for a good reason...
Elon Mask:
Elon Musk is a relatively new crypto bull who overtly announced his support for Bitcoin sometime in 2019, yet he is currently a cult-like figure for the crypto community.
Also in March of this year, he auctioned a tweet that included a song as an NFT. The song wasn't very much my taste, but it received buying offers for over 1.1 million dollars! (Okay, that's less than half the price of Dorsey's tweet).
A few days later, Elon Musk withdrew his offer to sell the tweet!
"Actually, doesn’t feel quite right selling this. Will pass."
Why did he cancel it?
Hard to tell
Did he get jealous of Jack Dorsey 😅
whatever...
Melania Trump:
This is a recent one...
Former first lady Melania Trump is offering an artwork of her "cobalt blue eyes" for sale as a Solana-based NFT. The image costs 1 Solana which is about $190 as of today's prices.
According to her site, a portion of the profits will go to charity though it is not clear how much that portion forms of the entire proceeds.
Former President Donald Trump showed support for his wife saying "She’s gonna do great. She’s got a great imagination"
The ironic thing about that is that Donald Trump himself is a famous opponent of crypto.
In 2019, he tweeted:
I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air
How come he supports his wife in a crypto-related venture while being a crypto hater at the same time?
Seems... hypocritical, right?
Vodafone:
This time, it's not a celebrity but a high-profile company...
Vodafone, the British telecoms behemoth, announced an auction to sell the first-ever "Merry Christmas" SMS that was sent 29 years ago, on December 3, 1992.
The auction was held in France (Aguttes auction house) and the winning bidder purchased the15 character-long SMS for €132,680 in Ethereum
Much like what Jack Dorsey did, Vodaphon will donate all proceeds to the UN Refugee Agency, which is quite impressive if you ask me!
Is it the a boom, a bubble, or a new revolution ?
Several days ago, I stumbled across a poll on Twitter that was held by Coin Bureau (a YouTube channel that constantly releases crypto-related with over 1.7 million subscribers). The subject of the poll was whether that NFT space has already reached its top or there is still further potential to come...
More than 9000 accounts participated and the result was damn closer than expected...
As you can see, almost half the voters think that the NFT niche has reached its top while the other half believe there is a greater way to go!
If ask me, I think there is meat in both arguments...
The NFT space is witnessing some kind of overrated hype these days. One that lures several famous personalities to re-promote some old tweets, images, or memes in order to make outrageous amounts of money.
This really reminds me of the ICO boom of 2017 and we all know what happened to 99% of those ICOs
Most of them went to zero. However, during those times, we also saw a few blue-chip ICOs from the likes of Binance, Tezos, and DOT...
All of which are among the best performing cryptos right now.
So, if we want to make a comparison, I think 95% of the NFTs that are being hyped these days are going to go to junk. Nothing more than a JPGE the issuers fooled some naive investors into buying it.
That said, I still strongly believe that the legitimate NFT space is here to stay. It is going to be here for the long haul. Not only for artists&designers but for gamers too. Don't take my word for it _ just look at the incredible success Splinterlands has made. It's an NFT blockchain-based game that is making huge progress day by day.
Splinterlands is not a single case, however.
In fact, it pales in comparison with other NFT blockchain games in the wider crypto space. According to research by Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) & DappRadar, the NFT gaming space has raked in a whopping $2.3 billion in revenue in Q3 of this year alone!
The research also mentioned that true asset ownership is the most important advantage of blockchain games- a feature that has attracted millions of gamers around the world...
In my humble opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we are going to see in the coming years...
So, yea. I'm bullish AF!