What people don’t get about NFTs: Making History
When people talk about art and NFTs, you hear about digital ownership and scarcity. You hear about Cryptopunks and the limited quantity, that there will only be 10,000 ever.
Ownership and scarcity are important, but of course you could modify any .jpg ever so slightly and create a +1 pixel cryptopunk NFT so the art itself is not all that scarce in terms of the impression it might give. So the ownership and the art don’t really matter THAT much. So what are people paying millions of dollars for little 24X24 pixel .jpegs for? Status?
Status is also a bit part of it. But there is something deeper. What is conferring the status?
It’s being a part of history. When someone buys a piece of NFT art they aren’t just buying the rights to the piece, they are becoming part of history. Owning a cryptopunk may be the closest people ever get to climbing Mt. Everest, or walking on the moon. You become part of a very limited a unique part of history that’s immutable and may well exist for pretty near eternity.
The web is becoming a digital world. The metaverse as it’s increasingly known. These early parts of web3 have the potential to be like sacred artifacts for eons to come. That’s why these prices are so crazy. People spend millions because they understand that they are joining in something permanent.
And now that ownership is becoming ever more personalized. The biggest NFT projects right now are still profile projects, PFPs. People are tying their personal identities to these new assets. Identities in the very social sense of how they want to be perceived. I’ll argue that an originally, never sold NFT will be worth more than one that was bought for a million dollars. The time at which you come to own an NFT confers as much or more status than the price you paid.
In very real sense, the art and the owner become one. The owner is part of the history of the thing. They are inseparable.
Cortex allows ever wallet address to be personalized with a name and to have digital real estate built around it, images, text, code and more. So not only do you and your NFT collection become part of history, all of your creations and all you do online, your entire digital empire, will be tied to that history as well. That’s why and what we’re building.
