Why you should AT LEAST be intrigued by NFTs | 10.26.21

NFTs are basically digital collectables that are certified on the internet. The creator of the digital asset gets to choose how many goes into circulation and the public gets to decide if there's actual value in them. (If they get bought or not.)

You could create 1 of 1s; 1 of 5s; 1 of whatever.

The amount is totally up to the creator of said NFT. It's the same thing with collectibles. Supreme only makes a certain amount of products. There's only a certain amount of Holo Gen 1 Charizards. There's only a certain amount of Babe Ruth rookie cards. The companies that created said products only produce a certain amount. There is rarity based off their production.

In the digital space, rarity has never really been a tool creators could utilize. If you wanted to keep that background you found so cool, you could find a way to just save that to your computer for free and set it as your background. Sure you could be nice to the creator and purchase a digital copy on their site. But, people would always find a way to not pay for it and get it for free.

With NFTs those backgrounds that you saved to your desktop are basically counterfeits. You could have it on your desktop and enjoy it, but you would know that you don't actually own the actual verified copy.

So what? Who cares? The background is just for me anyways.

I mean if you see it like that, it's pretty short sited.

It's like you own a print of a Van Gogh instead of holding the one that's hanging in a high security museum. You don't even own a print. It's like you got a print and photocopied that print and hung it up in your room.

NFTs are cool because you get to verify the legitimacy of the digital product you are selling. You get to say that this is the copy that is legit and the rest are just unverified copies or counterfeits. The people who own that verified copy know that they are sole owners of the work or owners of a limited supply.

Digital artists who work their asses off with commission work can now do whatever they want creatively and sell a legitimate piece of art to the world. Then whoever values said piece can buy it like any other piece of art sold at auction houses. You put your piece up for auction; highest bidder takes the piece. Same deal, but worldwide.

And the money is there. Go to OpenSea. Go to Foundation. Go to any NFT marketplace and you'll see pieces of art that you can purchase for a premium amount of money. And the dope thing is that most of the money goes straight to the artist. Even if it's a resale, the artist still gets a cut of the profits.

Oh yeah, that's another dope part of the NFT space. The original creator gets a percentage from any resales that happens on the secondary market.

Say you create a piece right now. You mint it. Nothing happens with it. You go about your life. You're building a career, making a name for yourself. You get a few people interested in your work. They look you up; looking for an original by you to collect. They like your work. They purchase it and hold onto it.

You make a bigger name for yourself. You develop your art style even more. You now have your own creative voice. You have a larger audience. Your new audience now may want that piece you first minted initially. The person who bought it originally sells it at a premium. Now the person who supported you at your beginning gets a pay day for believing in you and you also get a percentage of that resale. Then resale after resale you get more and more. The different projects you've had begin to get hot. Your projects are now supporting you financially.

NFTs give the artist that opportunity. Old auction houses never gave the artist that opportunity. All the money would go to the reseller and auction house. The original artist wouldn't get a dime.

Imagine if Banksy had these tools. Imagine the different pieces Banksy would be making today with all the percentages they would be getting with resales. Banksy's budget for projects would be innumerable. Banksy has already made Dismaland with no sale money, imagine what pieces Banksy could make if their past projects kept funding them.

That's the beauty of NFTs.

Creators are gaining the power of the artistic economy.

The applications for NFTs are only limited to our imagination.

Here's another application for NFTs that is being developed currently.

In December 2019, Nike submitted a patent for CryptoKicks. The premise of the patent is a genome based shoe generator where you can cross-breed different sneakers to create a new shoe that you can take ownership of. You can also manufacture said shoe. Every shoe will have a certain amount of traits depending on what it looks like and you can cross-breed them and try and come up with a new shoe.

It's 2021 and Nike still hasn't released this project yet. But once they do release it, there will be a mass migration of sneaker heads into the crypto NFT space. A space that has been rising steadily as a huge collectors market.

That's huge.

The Hundreds released a randomly generated avatar project called the Adam Bomb Squad. Where they used old artwork from their iconic mascot from different collaborations and created a new project based on the history of their brand. Different attributes of different bombs have different rarity levels. Different bombs can be given different real life perks. Like if you owned an Adam Bomb with a certain sticker, they gave you free admission to their latest food festival.

Name a project before this that has done the same thing. I'll wait.

Right now, that's where the space seems to be; in auto-generated avatars. You can find so many of them. (Deadfellaz, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats NFT, Doodles, etc.) With these projects, there's so many different communities surrounding them. Honestly do your research and just collect the ones you find interesting. Be warned, there's some pretty cool ones with awesome communities and there's a lot that are just cash grabs. I'd recommend doing your due diligence and sticking to the ones you actually enjoy and connect to.

I do not personally own any NFTs right now, simply because they're out of my budget, but I will eventually be involved in the space. The price of accessibility right now is a little too high for me.

I feel like owning NFTs will transport us back when we were in the cafeteria as kids, opening up our binders of cards to show off the different collections we had. Wanting to trade with each other different ones that we hold dearly. Wanting to look and buy the ones we feel connected to. It's going to be dope to see what everybody ends up collecting in the future.

Oh yeah, Street Dreams Magazine is doing a collection that is going to be more affordable and will be selling photography NFTs like booster packs you'd buy for any trading card. You buy a pack and then you'll get random 3 "photo cards". So it'll give us that digital experience of pack openings but instead of physical cards it'll be really dope photos taken by super talented photographers. This will be the first NFT project I will be purchasing.

With Simplex Minds, I've been coming up with an NFT strategy for a while now. I've been lurking in the space for some time now and haven't been able to find a project that is doing it how I want to do it. It will be fun. I want it to be accessible and want people to be forced to be strategic with their NFTs. It'll combine both NFTs, collaboration, and Simplex merchandise.

Once we launch that project, I'll show the original idea I came up with back in March. I'm pretty hyped for it, just need to connect to the right people to get it done correctly.

NFTs are dope because it allows creators to build their own "Pokemon cards". It allows consumers to collect different things they find dope and be able to support the artists of those collectables at the same exact time. It's a community that uplifts each other.

NFTs can legit be anything and that's the dope thing about it. The things we will collect in the future will be so diverse and so specific to who we are as people. There will be millions of collections in the future for consumers to see which ones they want. The limits to what those could be are only up to the imagination of the creator. The different communities we will be a part of and discover because of the different NFTs we collect will allow us to find and connect to people we would never have beforehand.

The beauty of NFTs as a piece of technology is unlike any other tool a creator has been given. Creators can build their way into financial freedom through the market. People will be able to collect whatever they desire. People will be able to connect with other likeminded people across the globe through their collections. It's truly a beautiful thing.

We are really heading into a place where creative financial freedom is becoming more and more obtainable and feasible to the everyday creator. The future is bright in the creative space and I plan on Simplex Minds to be a part of that.