From the very first block that was digitally mined there has been a dark cloud over cryptocurrency and a stigma attached that fuels the ever-growing fud (fear and doubt) that the only type of individuals who actually use and transact crypto are scammers, money launderers, the Devil himself, shady exchanges and papa Elon Musk.

Whilst crypto has been proven to have countless real world use cases and at the time of writing a market cap of 2.5 trillion dollars with bitcoin holding around half of that making it bigger than almost all banks in the world, digital currency is still in its early adoption phase, It’s new. Just like anything new whether its a fresh Jack Harlow song or a UI update on TikTok there are going to be people who love to hate. Que NFTS.

NFTS, (non fungible tokens, I’m not sure if its legal to put commas inside of parenthesis but yolo, for those of you wondering what the hell non fungible means here is something I ripped straight from google: a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided) are arguably still in the innovator stage because not everyone who is into crypto is into NFTS but everyone who is into NFTS are predisposed to crypto, ok actually there will be a tiny percentage of consumers who only buy NFTs with their fiat credit card, but to my guess it would have to be close to 98% of NFT purchases are made with some form of cryptocurrency, predominantly Ethereum.

The past 9ish months of my life could be summed down to 4 things, my son, crypto, NFT’s and half baked Ben & Jerrys ice cream. I found myself getting lost in hours of deep thought with the possibilities and applications that NFT’s could be utilised for. It felt like for the first time in my life I was actually early to something, most of my discoveries sit in that late majority phase of adoption I was coming into environments that had already worked out most of its quirks and the NFT environment could not be further from what I was accustomed to.

Being a massive supporter for the future of NFT’s I was naively surprised to see such a strong view point from those that opposed NFT’s. I had a hard time understanding why someone would be so against NFT’s becoming mainstream after restraining myself and backspacing many replies to misinformed opinions online I narrowed the biggest points against NFT’s down to a few narratives:

1. Why would anyone spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a monkey jpeg when I can just right click and download it.

2. NFT’s are just a way for criminals to wash their money and avoid taxes, no one is really paying thousands of dollars for pixels.

3. NFT’s don’t solve any real world problems therefore is a fad and will die once the hype moves on.

There are hundreds of arguments for and against mass adoption of NFT’s but these 3 are the most common I see online, I want to address them.

“Why would anyone spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a monkey jpeg when I can just right click and download it”

In 2020 there was $34.59 billion dollars spent on microtransactions in gaming. the current model of games are incredibly pay to win, the blockchain is flipping that on its head and the play to earn model will take on market dominance in the future for the sheer fact that people prefer to be making money than spending it and if they can have fund playing a game whilst earning money its a win win.

Picture this you purchase a skin for $30 in Overwatch that skin is forever trapped on that platform, You get bored of Overwatch after a few too many toxic dps’ that won’t switch and you never pick up that game again. Now imagine you are able to sell that skin to another player and that skin has actually appreciated in value and you make a profit on it. This is the reality and is already implemented in many NFT blockchain games such as Axie infinity where some players are able to make more playing the game than minimum wage in their country.

Another good point to note is that as our lives become more and more digital, people will find anyway to stand out and gain clout. Anytime you see a profile with a blue check mark next to their name whether you like to admit it or not that person’s opinion, views and recommendations are going to carry much more weight than @cryptoguru4lyfe on twitter. So what is the blue checkmark if not a bunch of pixels? To bring it back to the argument of “why buy it if I can just download it” the simple response is, because you won’t own it.

”NFT’s are just a way for criminals to wash their money and avoid taxes, no one is really paying thousands of dollars for pixels.”

I’m someone who doesn’t engage in any criminal activity other than maybe surpassing the speed limit by a couple of numbers sometimes and my biggest NFT purchase was 5 ETH or around 20,000 USD. Yes just like fiat currency, there are people who take advantage of loopholes in laws and try to squeeze every dollar past the tax man.
Whilst governments around the world are scratching their heads about how and what to do about cryptocurrency they aren’t just going to sit on their hands and let billions of untaxed dollars go. We will see some sort of regulation and or crackdown on wash trades in the future but to use the argument that NFT’s are only used for criminal activity and to look past all of its utility is incredibly stupid.

”NFT’s don’t solve any real world problems therefore is a fad and will die once the hype moves on.”

NFT’s have the potential to completely transform real world markets and could very well change the way we transact everything, from real estate to vehicles. The Blockchain and NFT’s with the use of smart contracts can record any sort of data, money or asset on the blockchain. An alarming statistic about land ownership shows that only 30% of the global population have legally registered their rights to their land and property. The blockchain could completely solve this issue and potentially cut out a lot of the hassle when buying and selling homes, Mark my words one day your home will be an NFT that you will change ownership by transferring the NFT from your digital wallet. That is just one example of how NFT’s can solve real world problems.

I honestly could ramble and type for hours about Crypto, NFT’s and the Blockchain which is part of the reason i’ve decided to let mirror take my blogging virginity.

• Raymu.eth