NFTs and Web 3.0 - News and Thoughts

In the past week some I read some interesting news about the NFT future plans, and it suggests that NFTs are on the edge of going mainstream. While many of you might be thinking that it is already happened, we must keep in mind that crypto is not mainstream yet. I would agree that NFTs are mainstream in the crypto space but not outside of it yet. Nevertheless, some of the following news might be very interesting and could force the whole crypto space in a very favorable position in the future.

NFT Index Fund

The first news is that Bitwise launched an NFT Index fund. Although it is only accessible for accredited investors so far it looks like an interesting idea and definitely a step in the direction of adoption. Currently, this fund consists of ten collections, amongst them are well known collection like Crypto Punks which are weighted 33.9% or the Bored Ape Yacht Club which take 32.6% of the portfolio. With those two collections taking almost 2/3 of the whole fund is a little concerning because it does not look like a well balanced fund. On the other hand, you could argue that these two are the most successful ones which gives them the right of having such a big share of the fund. In both cases it will be interesting to see which other collections might find their way into the fund later on.

One of these collections might be the new released Adidas NFT Collection which actually backed by the Bored Apes Yacht Club. This collection managed to raise over 43 million US Dollars in the timeframe of 72 hours which is insane. It looks like it is on the number two spot of the most frequently sold items on OpenSea based on the trading volume. In total there were 30.000 items offered and it will interesting to see which use cases adidas thought for these NFTs. By the time of writing this collection managed to be even on the number one spot.

Coinbase Plans

Some more interesting news are coming from Coinbase and their wallet integration. Their data suggests that more than 50% of crypto holders do more than just holding or trading their crypto. It looks like the crypto community is starting to utilize the token it is offered more and more. This also suggests that some focus might go towards NFTs. That is why Coinbase is also shifting their focus more onto NFTs and the metaverse in general. They are looking to build an identity on-ramp into the metaverse with the help of the Ethereum name service. This would be a very interesting use case for NFTs and an interesting development for sure. This would mean that the main value proposition of NFTs and blockchain domains would be a decentralized identity in the future.

I have different feeling about this. While I do think that this might be a revolutionary step towards Web 3.0 and more interesting use cases and new ways of making money, I also feel a little of a false promise. We have to be careful to some degree because more big companies are starting to invest large amounts of money into the metaverse and web 3.0. Examples are like mentioned above Coinbase or Facebook/ Meta. It is important to not forget that by doing that they do not want to make the world a favor but generating the most profits in the long term. And while they are selling their new metaverse as decentralized, it is very clear that they are the ones in control, so I would not be to happy about their announcements.

Conclusion

All in all I must say that I am very excited about the idea of web 3.0 and all the new inventions and technologies that we might get to use. I really hope though that the idea of decentralization wont get lost or at least that there wont be a monopoly on the metaverse. I guess only time will tell but until then I am more than excited to track the progress.

Published by ga38jem on
LeoFinance
On 22nd December 2021

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta