There are too many things happening in crypto right now. My thoughts on a few trends.

  • Generative art: Generative art is to crypto junta what Picasso might have been to the older folks. A lot of art projects blowing up right now are generative art projects like art blocks. If you were a nerd in this space, you would want something related to human - computer synergy and generative art falls perfectly in that space.
  • Store of value: A lot of people are buying original art in this space (like crypto punks) as store of value. If this metaverse thing becomes as big as described in Snowcrash, then the OG projects that kickstarted the art scene will become very valuable. These will be the things nerds will show in their digital spaces. Hence the value of crypto punks. It is considered the first major NFT project.
  • Social tokens: Gives you access to a specific community. See Friends with benefits tokens. It is the soho house for the digital era. Fwb is not a NFT project but a token. There will be enough communities that will give you access to their discord/other social spaces if you own their NFT. Bored ape yacht club is a good example. They have created spaces where only the NFT holders can come and chill.
  • Signalling value: If you are rich in the crypto world, holding a OG NFT buys clout. Would we have known Metakovan without his NFT buys? Beeple and him both blew up together.
  • Digital galleries: Metakovan has his own token now that lets you access the digital gallery he has built. I think a lot of art collectors will do the same.
  • Collectors: Remember how we keep hearing about people buying baseball cards or OG comics? One thing I heard in one of the podcasts I listened to recently (forgot which one) is that the reason most OG comics (example wolverine comic number 1) don’t have a lot of collector value is because collectors don’t know how many got printed. Is it scarce? Or were there a lot of the first edition reprints? Unless something is scarce, it is not valuable. Now see Punks comic. You know how many of these will be printed. You have your own unique number. If metaverse is the future then collecting OG comics in this space will become a lot more popular.
  • Financing tools: Stoner cats raised money for their adult show by printing NFTs. Shows associated with drugs are still not popular in Hollywood. NFTs is a good way to raise capital. They have done it for their pilot. Their NFTs are also acting as streaming tokens. Only people who hold the NFTs can watch the show.
  • Streaming tokens: Similar to stoner cats, there will be enough shows, music, that will give access to viewers through streaming tokens. Don’t hold the token? Sorry, can’t view our show.
  • Royalty sharing/ creating first 1000 true fans for an artist: Royal.io is possibly the first serious crypto startup by web2 junta. JD Ross (Open store founder) and 3lau are working on the next evolution of NFTs where NFT owners essentially get royalty. Think how crazy the different factions of the crypto world are. Bitcoin holders shill about Bitcoin whole day on Twitter. They are maximalists as they have put most of their net worth on bitcoin. A lot of them will hodl and never sell. Same with a lot of OG NFT holders. If you have your first 1000 true fans then you can get distribution through these fans who will shout on social media whole day. Related: I was listening to the Fampay founder’s podcast with 100X entrepreneurs. They were saying how the first teens who got their hand on Fampay were so excited that they were creating social content themselves without any expectation of rewards. Even now they hang out on the Discord of Fampay. Scaling through passionate community members who do free marketing for you will become lot more popular with Web 3.0 startups. I think for new artists, launching NFTs, forking out discord groups, and then having absolute crazy fans who will shout about you (in exchange of future royalties) might just be the future. 3lau in a podcast with Pomp was also talking about unbundling of music labels. What does a music label do? How do you unbundle it? How do you cut more middle men out?

Above is a slightly edited note that I had sent to a friend who had asked me about my thoughts on how crypto might disrupt the creator economy. I am still new to this space. Just trying to form my views.