NFTs: The world’s biggest scam?. NFT.NYC taught me a lot | by Isaiah McCall | April 2023
NFT.NYC taught me a lot
The majesty that is NFT.NYC week. Here, normality is the outsider and deviance and esotericism reign as crypto diehards try to sell you nursery school art for your rent money.
I saw a piece called “Virgin Rock” that sold for $200 — a “steal,” according to the buyer.
All this feels deeply like a religion – maybe even a cult – that is unhealthy?
I attended several events at NFT.NYC and found no one willing to address fraud, manipulation, grifters, lack of adoption, and how Web3 is the butt of everyone who isn’t part of its inner circle. Instead, I heard the same story: “NFTs will work because Pokemon worked.”
Mind. Blown.
It wasn’t until I spoke to two keynote speakers from England that everything changed.
NFT market OpenSea recently revealed an alarming truth: 80% of digital art minted through “trust us, it’s free!” creation tool revealed itself to be spam, scam or otherwise fraudulent.
Another popular marketplace Blur shook up the NFT world this year, becoming the new market leader and generating over $200 million in weekly trading volume. Why the sudden rise?
Because Blur is the best money laundering method in the crypto world.
CryptoSlam, a leading platform for tracking NFT sales, even took action: it purged $577 million of suspicious sales data from its analytics in response to “market manipulation” by Blur traders – all filtered through an updated algorithm.
How did NFT.NYC react to this? They ignored it.
We took body shots, snorted punches, talked about Bitcoin hitting $30,000 and danced to Daft Punk. The only ones willing to talk about the real-world implications of NFTs were a mother-and-son duo from Felbridge, England.
“The branding around NFTs are dead; nobody wants to hear someone trying to sell them NFTs,” said Daniel Bedford, CEO of Re-Evolution a video game that uses blockchain and digital assets. “We’ve completely reworded our message and removed almost all references to NFTs in our product because it’s a closure.”
At this moment, I realized that two of the event organizers’ faces were contorting in shame. Daniel was not the metaverse. He wasn’t talking about diamond hands or his Elon Musk fanfic.
He spoke truth to power: NFTers need a rebirth or they are dead.
NFTs are nothing new. Everyone misses this. President of Valve and Steam Corporation Gabe Newell built a billion-dollar empire and fortune of purchasable pixels locked into a fictitious economy in shoddy software.
Steam’s platform even allowed you to trade and play on virtual weapon skins in games like “Counter-Strike” and “Dota 2” for thousands.
(If not millions at once)
Steam is NFT’s 1.0.
Human beings give a shit about digital goods. Why? Hell if I know. It’s probably our inner Pokémon instinct. But NFTs have ZERO future as “NFTs” — it’s like trying to sell a subprime mortgage in 2023.
The “non-fungible” part of NFTs doesn’t sound like a word.
They also need utility. Wouldn’t NFTs be useful for game ownership, for example? Then you can sell your digital games on.
NFTs can change everything if:
- You didn’t have to pay high gas fees to move or liquidate them on Ethereum
- You didn’t have to deal with scams and blankets that can’t even be prosecuted by law because they aren’t securities
- You did not have major players in the NFT environment on your own
- You didn’t have 80% of the projects being actual money scams with absolutely zero purpose. Even the most high-profile projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club became dumpster fires when they tried to go for “legitimacy” with their failed airdrop tarnishing their image.
- You didn’t have centralized/user-friendly apps and economies like Counter-Strike so that even the biggest illiterate could make money while buying skins for a game he plays daily, aka an actual purpose for said pixels.
NFT ownership is a great idea, but 99% of the environment it’s built on is garbage with zero legitimacy, just scammers trying to screw you.
Crazy enough, GameStop’s NFT Marketplace solves all of these problems, but it’s been shamed by people who hate NFTs.
Daniel pointed out that the only companies that succeed with NFTs are those that “don’t mention them.” Companies like Starbucks recently made a bold foray into the NFT world with their newly launched loyalty program: Odyssey.
It’s an extension of their rewards program, offering loyal customers access to exclusive experiences – all they have to do is earn collectibles Travel stamps (aka an easier way for non-nerds to say ‘NFT’).
NFTs will also have a place in games.
Still, the games that do exist, like Axie Infinity and any Pokemon ripoff, are terrible. Someone has to make a really good game first.
I would like to invest in NFTs because a digital economy is coming, but I just don’t know how.
And I don’t think the NFT.NYC community knows either.
God loves them’.
