Hello Academy, many of you are new and wondering what an NFT is. Why it holds values, and how you can possibly understand that value and learn to use it yourself.

People in the world are no longer looking for a service. Everyone is searching for meaning, identity, belonging, connection, and status.

The pursuit of capital often muddies our ability to fully share our genius with the world. Artists signed to a label are more likely to push out a sloppy track to get the job done, a company may skip hiring an artist or a UI designer because they think AI is "good enough".

The rush to NFTs was no different, their value was mostly from speculation, as a sort of "meme" by the rich people who could afford them. Deals were made behind the scenes and we saw so many "success stories" about blockchain and NFTs.

Now where are we?

We are at the stage in a market where the speculation is all but completely dried up. People who were once eager in the past to invest in a project based off merit, have much more clarity on the risk and what assets they invest their money into now.

During the bullmarket of 2021, I heard a lot of marketing bullshit. The most cringe thing I heard many popular twitter people repeat often was calling certain NFTs "Blue Chips".

Typically this wouldn't be a big deal, some rich dude saying something stupid would just stay in Wallstreet, or in between a few friends in a pub. However, because of COVID-19, Clubhouse, Social Distancing, & Twitter Spaces, this was one of the first times in the history of the internet where we could actually listen to extremely wealthy people talk freely.

No TED talk, or podcast with an advertisement in a Gold Plated font that said "Learn How To Make $20,000 For Just $22.99 $19.99. Real convos with blips, egos, and pure takes on money.

While the ear-hustling started off great, I noticed so people failing to realize they were now addressing a global market. Countries outside of America, speak english. But I noticed their english was great, but they were not comprehending the nuance in Gary Vee's content on NFTs as he was selling them. Which meant they were digesting marketing and sales terminology, from a guy that just learned the basics of the tech a few months ago.

We have no data, no longitudinal studies on it, and no real way to properly assess the reason for so many people coming onchain besides one fact that isn't publicly discussed often which is, the dollar's value is incredibly powerful in other countries.

These are people that don't typically have access to the stock market, so Bitcoin and Crypto and NFTs opened up a new way to trade and make money, bypassing their government.

Crypto is kind of like dissociating. We pretend that the government is evil and that the paper money is bad so that we feel smart for trading that paper away for memecoins. But then we realize the celebrity coin that launched has no value because nobody cares, and it plumments and we're left with nothing but remnants of who we used to be before we bought the bullshit fantasy coin.

Forming tribes of like-minded people around a single goal predates any form of technological advancement. It's the reason we are alive, and it's the reason why the great pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, and all the other 7 wonders of the world exist.

Having community is the root to prospering in everything we do wether it's in the real world, or in the digital world online. When you're alone, you're by yourself, but when you have a group of people all aligned to the same ideology and goals, you become undeniable.

If you can leverage your achievements, you have the ability to gain many opportunities, control a lot of the space, and learn a lot of cool things just by aligning your mentality, not just with money, but also our relationship with her, how much we pay attention to her. How she works when she's programmable and inside the computer.

The strongest communities are bridges, not islands. Celebrities and Internet Personalities don't know that much about blockchain because they're rich, and don't need to. They can simply pay someone else to do it and to sell their product.

Blockchain and NFTs shine though, because they have the unique ability to preserve and store data and some of that has value that people are willing to pay for.

Having art onchain has created the only way we humans have ever been able to purchase and own digital art, and say "That's in my account, it's mine. Across the internet." and that's the undeniable fact and magic of NFTs. It sparks fruitful dialogue and meetings.

That's what separates NFTs from dropbox, iCloud, or google drive. They're separate from the control of a company, the database that stores them is run by nodes the same way that the internet is run, it preserves their space in the digital world.

At the end of the day it is only a tool, with many different shapes. But the greatest value they have is being able to create a collection of digital things connected to you, that represent you online.

And because of that, we are able to build onchain and use the tool in a way that brings a lot of people a sense of joy and connectivity online that wasn't previously possible. Onchain accounts, that hold digital art, tokens, and games, are becoming the new way we not only collect things online, but exchange ideas and represent ourselves.

~ Q