This is the free version of Trends PRO #0050 — Non-Fungible Tokens
❓ What You’ll Learn
- What are NFTs?
- What drives the price of NFTs?
- Who sold an NFT for $75,000+?
- How are NFTs leading to recurring revenue?
- How can communities benefit from NFTs?
- How can creators use NFTs?
- Who offers social-tokens-as-a-service?
- How are flippers profiting from NFTs?
🔍 Problem
Traditional art is hard to secure, sell, authenticate, store, tokenize and collateralize.
In-game items have weak property rights.
Communities have weak alignment.
💡 Solution
Non-Fungible Tokens represent one-of-a-kind items.
- Bitcoins are fungible. Tradable 1 for 1.
- This CryptoKitty is non-fungible. It’s 1 of 1.
Physical, non-fungible assets include the Bubble Palace, this 1993 MVP Trophy and Michael Jordan’s “Flu Game” shoes. There are no equivalents.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) include:
NFTs are digitally scarce. They are easier to store, sell, authenticate, collateralize, tokenize, value and have stronger property rights than physical assets.
🏁 Players
Use Cases
- Art — Prove ownership and authenticity
- Voting — “Burn” tokens to affect change
- Games — Buy, sell and trade in-game items
NFTs
Marketplaces
Artists
Games
NFT Projects
🔮 Predictions
- Creators and communities will retroactively airdrop tokens. RAC used Zora to give early Twitch, Bandcamp and Patreon fans $RAC.
- NFTs will become cash-flowing alternative assets. Guy J sold royalty rights to “Cotton Eyes” for $26,000.
- Projects will piggyback on the success of others with interoperable NFTs. KittyRace and KittyHats build on CryptoKitties. These are two, of many, projects in the KittyVerse.
☁️ Opportunities
- Monetize trust and attention:
- 3LAU sold Everything Canvas for $77,827.77
- Lil Yachty launched a social token with Fyooz
- Cyborg partnered with an illustrator for a drop on NFT Gateway
- Reward early believers with retroactive airdrops. RAC used Zora. Roll and Unite are other options. Seed Club offers social-tokens-as-a-service.
- Incentivize attendance. The Proof of Attendance Protocol lets users collect badges. See this live drop on The Nifty Show using Atomic Hub.
🔑 Key Lessons
- NFTs are easier to store, authenticate, collateralize, value, transfer, tokenize and secure than physical assets.
- Belief drives the price of art and most currencies. Taxes, corporations and nations are also collective hallucinations.
- Timing and access, not price, are the primary sorting functions of drops. Brands build hype and leave money on the table with artificial scarcity. This is a flippers’ profit.
😠 Haters
“NFTs have no utility.”
Owning art signals status. NFTs are a new, superior form factor that solves a very old problem. Some NFTs are used to vote and trade for physical goods.
“I can just copy-paste an NFT.”
Yes. You can also download mona_lisa.jpg. But do you own it? NFTs sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This ship has sailed.
“Proof of listening, watching and attendance can be bought.”
Yes. And we’ll know whether it was bought or earned.
🔗 Links
- Who’s bought/sold NFTs? • The tweet behind this report.
- A Beginner’s Guide to NFTs • NFT use cases from art to social tokens.
- Trends #0026 — Drop Culture • Status and scarcity serve the same role in physical and digital drops.
🙏 Thanks
Thanks to John Crain (SuperRare), Chris Carella (Tezos), Linda Xie (Scalar Capital), Paul Martin (Integrity Music), Stuart Sim (FinLister), Abby Barsky (Cord), Aadil Razvi (Demand Curve), Bram Kanstein (No-Code MVP), Ime Essein (HBCUvc), Ethan Jones (Tools for MGMT), Ryan Deiss (Scalable.co), Marty Bell (Poolside.fm) and A.J. Lawrence (Beyond8Figures). We had a great time jamming on this report.
Get Weekly Reports
Join 65,000+ founders and investors
📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds
Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…
🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.
📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.
💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.
🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.
💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.
What you’ll get:
- 8 Use Cases (166% More)
- 17 NFTs (240% More)
- 18 Marketplaces (160% More)
- 21 Artists (320% More)
- 12 Games (300% More)
- 20 NFT projects (566% More)
- 5 Metaverses (📈 Trends Pro Exclusive)
- 7 Predictions (133% More)
- 9 Opportunities (200% More)
- 6 Key Lessons (100% More)
- 10 Links (233% More)
With Trends Pro you’ll learn:
- (📈 Pro) How are NFTs and DeFi related?
- (📈 Pro) Why are people buying art from algorithms?
- (📈 Pro) What are examples of member-owned communities?
- (📈 Pro) Why are legacy brands undervalued?
- (📈 Pro) What are redeemable tokens?
- (📈 Pro) Where are data-as-a-service opportunities?
- (📈 Pro) Who’s using NFTs to growth hack?
- (📈 Pro) What services are being built around NFTs?
- (📈 Pro) How can NFTs create more alignment?
- (📈 Pro) What’s the best use for NFTs in communities?
- and a lot more…
