You have valid reasons for thinking NFTs are a scam. You see more NFT scams than grains of sand on a beach. Pump and dumps, rug pulls, wallet hacks..

But, these things have everything to do with human psychology, and nothing to do with NFTs.

All an NFT is, is a unique item. They don’t have to be financial assets, though they can be.

People don’t understand why NFTs are so valuable because they don’t understand what they’re used for. So, in this article I will tell you the 3 most popular use cases of NFTs.

1. Art

If you visit an NFT marketplace (eg. OpenSea), you will quickly find thousands of art pieces that are available for sale.

Art is valuable because otherwise why would people buy it? Not all art is valuable, of course. Most artworks get sold for $0. This is true for physical art. This is true for NFT art. The price of art can range from worthless to astronomically valuable. Last year, the Salvador Mundi was sold for $450M to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. In the NFT space Beeple sold his Everydays for $69M at the Christie’s auction house.

Saying “NFTs aren’t valuable” is like saying “Art isn’t valuable”. It’s just not true.

2. Tickets

When we buy tickets for a movie, we get access to the movie. When we buy tickets for a flight, we get access to the flight. Tickets are a way to trade cash for access.

You can make tickets as an NFT. All you have to do is mint it on a blockchain.

In fact, most NFT projects are already de-facto tickets.

I’ll give you an example. Last month, I went down to SXSW in Austin. Doodles, an NFT project, had a physical booth there. Here is a look at the inside.

I was allowed in. But, if you had a Doodles NFT, then you were eligible to receive an additional special perk. Now, I didn’t have a Doodles NFT, so I didn’t know what that perk was.

But, the Doodles booth shows two things: (1) it’s possible to use an NFT as a ticket (2) it’s already being done.

3. Credentials

Let’s say you take a course or training. You probably want some proof that you completed it. Otherwise anyone can say they took it.

Certificates of completion can be minted as NFTs, as can resumes and badges. The difference between NFTs and a regular old PDF is that an NFT is on the blockchain - a transparent, distributed database - for everyone to see. It’s public. All transactions are timestamped. So you can’t fake it or remove a credential. This builds trust. The person who’s reading your credential knows that it’s valid.

Synthesis School plans to distribute micro-credentials as NFTs. These credentials can be anything from "Building a Compiler” to getting an endorsement from a well-known person at a particular point in time. Students use these NFTs can show off their skills at a more granular level than is currently available.

Conclusion

NFTs are not just silly avatars that you can buy and sell on the internet. They are pieces of art, tickets of access, and proofs of transactions. These things are part and parcel of a functioning society. So expect to see them everywhere.

Thanks for reading.