Visa got a fancy new Twitter profile this August, and while it hasn’t been around for long, this 8-bit photo of a naked woman in a stylish mohawk is still pretty popular. It’s not just about the relatively expensive $ 150,000 price tag. The financial giant’s purchase of a non-fungible token (NFT) that featured an image from the CryptoPunks collection ignited the media. It’s the best marketing spend Visa has had in the year – the ROI on items alone would have increased tenfold for that purchase.

That’s right, even Visa “apes” to NFTs these days to use NFT terms, NFT collectors have lost a lot in an age when rich people pour millions into jpegs of apes. But while technology’s meme-to-empire journey has made it into the digital art world, I don’t think this will be the mass market use case.

Name my monkey! Write your suggestions below @BoredApeYC #BAYC #BoredApeYachtClub #NFTs pic.twitter.com/pwFynGy9QJ

– jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) November 17, 2021

By now everyone knows that NFT essentially brings the uniqueness and scarcity, a characteristic of traditional high art, into all forms and forms of digital art, which is infinitely reproducible on earth with a good old copy. As part of the transaction, a link to a specific image, audio or video clip is sent to the blockchain and we’re there – the file can still be copied, but only one wallet has its token. This is where it becomes a luxury: placing an NFT picture as a Twitter avatar is like wearing a Rolex watch with your name engraved on it. It is a status symbol that is valued by insiders.

However, high art and luxury are by definition antonyms of the mass market as their high prices and uniqueness are their main selling points. Someone with money can buy a link for millions, but that’s because they can burn their own money for fun too and want to show their wealth to the world. Good luck, however, when you charge a regular Joe $ 150,000 for a link to an image. The focus on NFT as an art, by definition, limits a promising technology to a relatively small, albeit posh and eccentric niche.

The good thing here is that massive NFT art sales are in the spotlight, which is helping to bring NFT into the mainstream. However, this will not be the primary use of the NFT in the future, but rather a new and expensive toy for the rich and some who are particularly interested in monetary communities and individuals.

The only true

First off, the NFTs already have a mass market use case – they do a lot at home, with CryptoKitties earning a lot of the headlines of the day. From Axie Infinity to all of the newer video game titles, NFTs are fueling a large portion of the digital economy, bringing more than absolute uniqueness to the table.

Yes, it’s great that your NFT sword is unique and has your name on the token, but what’s even better is that it can behead a dragon with a single swing unlike any other unique weapon. And beheaded reptiles are something people are willing to pay for. Fortnite, a free game, grossed $ 5.1 billion for publishers in 2020 from in-game cosmetic sales and paid players for guns, mounts, and castles, and starships aren’t unique in dozens of other games. NFT is just the next step in that direction. And believe it or not, in some developing countries, NFT games have become a valid source of income.

What looks promising is the idea of ​​using NFT in the corporate world as part of a traditional business process. The areas in which NFT is likely to thrive, if not become the new standard way of working, will not be as attractive as high-end luxury goods. However, you will benefit greatly from the main function that NFT offers: the ability to confirm the authenticity of the digital asset in question. For example, this can be as simple as hashing a financial document stored as an NFT on a private or public blockchain to later check whether it has been tampered with.

Software licensing and validation seems to be one of the areas where, given enough time, NFT will shine with the rewards of possible interoperability. Companies and individuals can buy licensed software on a single platform and rent it out for as long as necessary. This lowers costs and gives Chief Information Officers security as they have an additional layer of security, knowing that all digital assets can be authenticated securely and quickly.

Related: Bad Tokens: New Intellectual Property Paradigm?

Those of you as old as I can remember bought your copy of Windows or Adobe CS3 and there is a sticker on the back of the box with your serial number on it. Lost the box and that’s it. This has now been replaced by a SaaS login that stores your serial number, or that platforms like Steam and Apple’s App Retailer keep your digital assets – unless Apple decides, of course, that they don’t have the rights to “Goonies HD” the shop and just delete your purchase. Did you buy it? Too bad. The same goes if the platform is shut down or the company decides that you have somehow violated the 2,000-page Terms of Use, which you consented to without reading them carefully. The point is, with subscription-based SaaS, even if the solution is deployed locally, you don’t own anything.

NFT can fix this error

For example, suppose you buy an asset, any digital asset – music, movies, software licenses, limited photo rights, anything. At the time of purchase, the platform generates a non-fungible token that points to the original file or download location. The token serves as proof of purchase. You store the content locally and most likely access it through an application that uses your token to verify ownership (or if the license period has not expired, for example) when trying to interact with other intellectual property violations Property.

If properly designed, such a system would even allow the transfer of property rights, provided that they are legally incorporated into the NFT. This allows you to give your copy of “Goonies” away to a friend after you have enjoyed it, or to resell it and possibly pay a small license fee to whoever owns the rights to the set, film, or the original seller. Incidentally, the latter partially solves the problem that drives the switch to SaaS in the first place. Companies don’t want a secondary market because it competes with their sales, but with royalties built into the NFT, they get a share of any subsequent resale. In other words, every copy of a film sold becomes a gift that is given over and over again.

Related: We haven’t even started realizing the potential of NFT. to tap into

Granted, however, the ownership part is something that requires more work, especially on the legal side. None of these concepts have been tested, but they have to, whether by an artist or a collector, just to set a precedent and draw a playbook for that terrain. Technical expertise and business or legal expertise are not the same thing. Some of us remember the EOS token sale and the money raised had to be withheld until the SEC completed its investigation. Projects that speak about their legitimacy and prove their legitimacy in court are two different things.

While NFTs are not without flaws, it is too hasty to dismiss them as such by their nature and prematurely as a malicious and deceptive technology. Instead, the industry needs more regulation on the one hand and more entrepreneurs on the other. Art and business go hand in hand these days, and as NFTs mature the path from meme to wealth will most likely lead them into the corporate world.

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