I hate crypto as it stands right now. The language, the culture, the means, and the way it’s treated by its own community. It’s changed and metamorphized into something twisted and antithetical to its nature.
I despise the word bullish. The word bullish and all the elements surrounding it are what’s wrong with crypto at its core. Crypto, to many people, is a weird stock asset. The tickers and candle graphs make crypto seem like a stock in a company, and I’m positive most people treat it like that. Not as currency to exchange or fuel for transactions, but as a stock asset you buy low and sell high.
Casual investors do not care about the project or technology except as a “How will this affect my gains?” Sigma grind set bros and Tate fanboys have hijacked as a means to an end. By coins at their lowest and dump them at their highest with little regard to use cases.
The only useful case is making easy money.
I like the game Gods Unchained. I like the game and the developers’ idea. For those unaware, Gods Unchained seeks to use NFTs to help gamers monetize collectible card trading games. Usually, in games like Hearthstone or Magic the Gathering Arena, gamers can buy card packs with real money but can’t monetize their digital cards after that outside of selling their account. (Which usually violates terms of service or EULA)
Most content surrounding Gods Unchained isn’t about meta or players. It’s about making the most amount of money from playing it. People don’t usually play Magic the Gathering to make sick gains or as a side hustle. If the game doesn’t make people enough money, they’ll drop it, and the game will die out.
I don't expect to make any serious money from it, nor do I want to do that. I like the game, and I like the fact that people are being allowed to have more control over their online gaming experiences. Furthermore, I like the idea of gamers being able to have some sort of financial control outside of buying things.
This is an exception, however, and should anything change, I’ll drop Gods Unchained like rotten potatoes. Blockchain games are notoriously scammy. They expect users to pay expensive fees and see little return to merely enjoy the content. Most large scale AAA developers see NFTs not as a way to give users control over content, but as a way to make more money selling crap to people. The popular platform Steam has banned any and all blockchain games for their dicey nature.
Bored Apes and their zealous fan base were a nightmare that did irreparable damage to crypto and the idea of NFTs. NFT fans became embarrassingly spastic over stupid pictures of monkeys.
I don’t believe NFTs should or can be used as online art. I think NFTs can much better be used as things that a) don’t entirely rely on or even have an image, and b) do something more than be a yacht ticket or picture. Freaking out over a right click and the millions spent on NFTs showed people on the outside looking at a very poor image.
The idea that crypto is just a money laundering scheme and a con to take new investors’ money is going to stick for a while. The poor image of the technology and community is entirely our fault. It is turning people away and drawing in ridicule. This damage is fixable, but it will take time and effort by the community. By not behaving as nutcases obsessed with ape cartoons, by not babbling about obscure and advanced computer ideas, and by chilling out about our investments, the community and technology can slowly begin to improve its image.
I’m Michael Vincent Hawthorne of the Midnight Variety Hour. What I’m writing in this article is not financial advice nor is it a buy/sell signal. It is merely an opinion piece about technology and the community surrounding it.
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