Am I the only one that turned a profit from NFTs? Not that I looked very hard but I don't think I've met a single one in the last few years pretty much anywhere. Everyone's just faking it or talking out of their ass about this stuff and I stopped going to conferences because I got tired of being talked over by charlatans deeply in the red about how to get rich.
I spent about $100 for CryptoPunks #8973 in 2017 then sold it for about $120,000 for a nice profit - no tricks/scams, no marketing, just pure appreciation in price. The money is nice but what I'm most proud of is that I didn't have to screw over or lie to anyone to get there. I got in, got out, made a few bucks, no drama!
https://www.cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/details/8973
If you don't believe me, the records are all there. Don't get me started on Web3 people not having the habit of using ledgers to prove their point even though that's supposed to be their whole thing but, ugh, anyway...
Since then I've seen a lot of people calling themselves collectors pay millions of dollars on this stuff, even though the app has remained virtually unchanged since I got in. I kept on waiting for someone to build something cool on top of it but it never happened so I sold it off at its peak and it's looking like I made the right call there. Hey I'm neither young or cool enough for those flashy after parties - I'm just here to make money, thanks. 🤓
Well, now that the Web3 ecosystem officially lost its way, maybe it might be helpful to add some perspective here - I don't think I've ever spent more than $200 on an NFT, ever. I don't consider myself a collector because that title implies a degree of responsibility that I just don't want to have. "Collectors" in this space have this idea that they are masters of...art, or culture or knowledge, of whatever, but that perspective is...uh, just wrong.
My stuff:
https://teia.art/ryangtanaka/collection
There are no masters in art, only servants, and the best of them have this idea engrained deeply in their soul. The best artists and musicians are merely channeling the art that exists in the world itself - the best collectors are servants of these servants - because it's all about serving a higher cause, not some cheap display of one's status or ego - which is a great way to be forgotten once you're gone if that's all you really care about. (This is very, very rare - I think @TunaKuna4 is the only one that gets even remotely close - the ideal collector in this space, really.)
Anyway, I'm no collector but I do happen to like some things so I've bought a lot of NFTs on Tezos over the years because that's where "it" is happening right now. Just like what I did with the Cryptopunk back in the day - I bought them on a whim because I thought it was cool, underground, and counter-culture - that's about it. I'm a fan of these artists' works because I'm thankful that they took the time and risk to make such a thing - they are above me, not below me.
Imagine being at a concert - we the audience sits in awe of the artist, of their skill, their insight, their perspective, their artistry. You can't really do that if you're hiring them to play inside of a confined room somewhere - that is a recipe for creating garbage art, regardless of the talent or skill of the artist themselves. For art to thrive, the artist must feel like they are free and have enough autonomy to see their vision through and through, while also being "supported" as well - as a whole, the NFT industry failed to reproduce (or even understand) those conditions as a whole. It is a very tricky balance, to be fair, but the problem is that the industry didn't even bother trying because they primarily saw artists as extraction targets, not producers.
So the whole "Web3" thing ended up turning into a space where only grifters and charlatans thrive - which ended up destroying itself in the long run. It was quite obvious to anyone not inside of it to see, but it took a while for people to finally realize what was going on now that the money has dried up. Greed is hell of a drug, eh?
So what comes next? The fundamental mistake that the NFT industry made was actually the same issue the crypto industry has been struggling with in DeFi - scaling. Artists should be selling their works at reasonable prices that even middle-class people can afford...but at scale, so that the volume alone can earn them good money. 10000 editions at 100 XTZ, rather than 1 edition at 1000000 XTZ. Tempting to go for that 1 dude with a million bucks but you're gonna find that it's more trouble than its worth in most cases. That's the difference.
To make the correct model work, however, we still need to figure out the complexities and nuances of secondary markets, which will solve the major problems like IP/copyright, royalties, ownership distribution and all those problems plaguing the industry right now. It's tedious, but not conceptually difficult - it just need to be done. Should've been done 10 years ago, honestly, but better late than never. We can still start now.
I will still never pay more than a few hundred bucks for an NFT, even if I like both the artist and artwork a lot. Some collectors will buy art at a loss just to brag how much money they have to burn, but I'm not one of those folks - the dopamine hit for me is growth, not combustion. But I will gladly spread the word and help artists I like get a larger following - because I am a fan - to fan the flames, not to collect. (Collect what? Think about what that word really means, really.)