Nifty Corporates

Commercially, if the internet changed how products are sold, web3 changes what products are sold.

He argued that VISA turned what’s historically been a cost center into an asset on the balance sheet. If marketing spend becomes a profit center, that could dramatically increase companies’ marketing budgets and alter how they spend them. VISA purchased CryptoPunk #7610 for 49.5 ETH. Already, the CryptoPunks floor, the lowest price you could pay to... See more

Within the next five years, nearly every consumer company, and many B2B companies, will be web3 companies, just like nearly every company became an internet company in the early 2000s. They’ll use tokens, embedded DeFi, and NFTs to strengthen network effects, increase switching costs, build novel user experiences, improve margins, and turbocharge g... See more

New brands need ways to bootstrap early demand and build loyalty without spending all of their money on Facebook and Google ads. A new DTC sneaker brand might bundle NFTs with online sneaker purchases that are more rare the earlier you are, or even show off your customer number. The Allbirds #1 NFT would be a weird, cool status signifier among cert... See more

It’s still incredibly early for NFTs. If the target market is ultimately “anyone who buys anything online” (which it should be), and over 2 billion people have made an online purchase, then only 0.01% of the target market has purchased an NFT, using OpenSea’s 292k all-time traders as a proxy.

In 1999, during the frenzy of the dot com bubble, practically every company built a website, and any company that added “.com” to their name soared in value. One 2001 study in The Journal of Finance found that companies that added “.com,” “.net,” or “Internet” to their name saw their stock prices increase 74% in the days following the name change.

As with everything in crypto, early participants are disproportionately rewarded. There will be diminishing returns -- the 100th company to buy a CryptoPunk or Bored Ape will get a fraction of the press and attention that the first does.

Corporates might also give NFTs to their users that grant them access to NFT-gated communities and experiences. Some people will just want the product they bought, and not the access, and could sell their NFTs to people who just want the access, not the product, for a discount.

Over the next twenty years, NFTs will transition from novel to normal. I think we’ll look back and wonder how commerce happened at all without digital ownership, a liquid, always-on global marketplace, and items that come with experiences baked in. As with the internet, the companies that dismiss NFTs and web3 will be left behind.