Nft > everything else

Had a great call yesterday with @MicroM43 discussing the upcoming changes we'll be making to @SpaceRidersXYZ. Micro has been a longtime holder of Space Riders and has always supported us throughout our journey. He’s incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to blockchain, serialization, and using NFTs from both a technical and business standpoint. It was refreshing, insightful, and a big help. The future is bright.

~20 founders and builders met in Miami for 4 hours discussing how the NFT industry must mature. Team members and founders from @MetaMask, @opensea, and top collections showed up at @IglooInc HQ to discuss what needs to change. This post is meant to be a starting point, not a definitive recap. What we discussed does not apply to every project. Some are strictly crypto-focused, and that's fine. Here are the 5 things that stuck with me: 1/5: NFTs aren't the product. And the word itself is radioactive. The market alone is no longer enough to sustain the category. The founders in the room want to escape the "crypto casino" frame and become something closer to Pokémon, Rolex, fine art, country clubs, designer toys, or a TCG. The NFT itself is one part of the business: > the receipt > the identity layer > the membership layer > the collector layer > the coordination layer But there is more: > licensing > retail > media > distribution > emotional attachment > recurring revenue > products Nobody buys a Pokemon card for the cardstock technology. Nobody waits in line for Supreme for the supply chain. No one buys an Piguet for the clock tech. Good NFT brands stop acting like crypto projects. They act like brands, media companies, and consumer businesses. The word "NFT" itself is probably permanently damaged. I almost never tell people outside of crypto that I have an NFT brand. In their mind, the word triggers "scam" before I even finish the sentence. The industry is looking for replacements like "digital collectibles" or "tokenized assets". But outside of an investor/crypto audience, the technology layer should be consumer-invisible. Nobody says: "I bought a JPEG compressed with advanced image protocols" "I streamed an MPEG-4 encoded file" "I transferred a TCP/IP packet" The abstraction layer has to disappear. The brand wrapper has to be the thing. I don't see @bearish_af as an NFT company. For us, NFTs are one tool wrapped around a thesis: build cool things people like. For people outside of our industry, NFTs must be downstream of something larger. -- 2/5: The industry has a love problem, not a liquidity problem. The best parts of NFT culture were never just financial. They were: > identity > taste > friendship > inside jokes > shared language > digital tribes > lore > collecting > weirdness > belonging At its best, NFT culture made the internet feel smaller, stranger, and more alive. You could travel to any city and find your people. You could show up with a PFP and immediately have context. You could collect something not only because you thought it might go up, but because it said something about you. This matters. And I think the industry forgot how important it was. When everything becomes about floor price, liquidity, exits, and incentives, the culture starts to rot. The question is not just: “How do we bring in more buyers?” The better question is: “How do we build worlds people actually want to be part of?” Because the projects that survive long term will not only be the ones that create financial upside. They will be the ones that create emotional gravity. The ones where people want to stay even when the chart is boring. The ones where the community itself feels like the product. -- 3/5: There are actually two completely different businesses hiding inside "NFTs." 1. Web2 consumer / IP / revenue business 2. Web3 financial / speculative business Different physics and audiences. Web2 looks like: >retail > licensing > toys / games > emotional attachment > MRR / revenue Web3 looks like: > speculation > liquidity > status > trading > leverage > cycles Most projects try to fuse these into one product and get crushed by the contradiction. Web3 holders demanded utility. But when utility became the whole story, it capped the mythology. At minimum, the two need separate strategies, teams, P&Ls, and success metrics. The Web3 side creates early alignment, cultural ignition, and capital formation. The Web2 side gives the brand durability outside the bubble. When a community gets trained to only care about price, the project becomes structurally unstable until there is a deeper reason to belong. You don't have to pick. But you have to separate if your goal is to break out of the crypto bubble. -- 4/5: Founders are deeply traumatized. Every founder in this space has lived through some combination of: > burnout > betrayal > community resentment > unrealistic expectations > price collapse > toxicity > emotional exhaustion > community turning on the founder > culture decay If you ever see a founder disappear, step back, or go quiet, it is probably because of that. Everyone still believes in the category. Almost nobody trusts the market. Which is why the conversation kept collapsing into three questions: > how do we survive? > how do we monetize? > how do we change sentiment? The anonymous PFP is empowering and corrosive at the same time. The same identity layer that made the culture powerful can also make it brutal for the people building inside it. -- 5/5: Utility can cap upside. This one hits hard for real builders. The moment you ship utility, you ship a spreadsheet. And the moment a spreadsheet exists: > ROI expectations appear > entitlement appears > price-to-value math appears > finite valuation models appear Culture doesn't behave rationally. Rolex isn't valuable because of utility. Birkin isn't valuable because of utility. The Mona Lisa isn't valuable because of utility. They're valuable because: > status > mythology > emotional meaning > social signaling > collective belief > scarcity > narrative Punks proved this. No utility, no roadmap, no promises. Just first, scarce, and mythologized. Still standing. The trap most projects fell into: they needed near-term cash, so they shipped utility. Utility paid the bills and capped the ceiling at the same time. -- Final thoughts: This felt historically important because the room finally sounded like operators instead of traders. 2021 was: > greed > novelty > chaos > speed > extraction > infinite optimism This was: > distribution > positioning > retention > emotional durability > monetization > onboarding > consumer psychology > culture design > operational sustainability The industry is remembering that culture has to be felt before it can be financialized. -- There were real next steps discussed privately. I’m leaving those out for now, but the important part is the coordination from people that really care about this industry and its people. Thank you @LucaNetz for organizing, and everyone who was able to participate. I am incredibly bullish on the people still here and what we can build from here.

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