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Before we answer this question, let's unpack what's so interesting about digital collectibles. I mean at the end of the day, brands have been offering these in physical form for years. I remember growing up in a little town in New Zealand and going to a Shell station and getting a Rugby player figurine. It was pretty cool and I got much more attached to that gas station than the others. My parents definitely soon understood, going to the gas station was one of my favorite activities all of a sudden.
But hasn't this all been done before? Why does doing this digitally matter? And what’s all this craze with NFTs.
Well, there's a few attributes we think about that are different to physical collectables that can make digital collectables valuable. At first glance, digital can scale, bring people together globally and be shared. But there's 3 other aspects to digital collectables that can make them worth owning.
#1. Digital Collectables Help Us Find Our Tribe
To date, the tools to understand someone's interests has been very hard to facilitate across the internet. Though it’s always been possible, the NFT wave has given the world momentum to begin adopting this because many businesses share this vision and understand the power of it. Reddit with avatars, Starbucks with badges, Twitter and IG with PFPs and Ticketmaster with events.
We can verify who owns what. Knowing Justin Bieber owned a Bored Ape instantly made Bored Apes more valuable. If you create a digital collectible, any brand is opening the door for these affiliations. This is a huge broadcasting opportunity and acts as both an endorsement and a way to mix with people you gravitate towards. If you're a brand, you want to be on this!
Take the big celebs away and it still matters. We make many buying decisions on what our friends do. Again, this is a huge opportunity.
So where does community come in? Well, the value of a community often is part valued at who is in the community and what they can do. First off though, we want to understand who we are joining.
#2. Digital Collectables Help Us Tell Our Story
NFTs drew the world in because they had a face and that could tell a story far better than words. We're tired of hearing the old saying that a picture tells a thousand words, but it's true. NFT art was new. It made us feel something. Bored apes are seriously interesting to look at. Some made me smile. Some gave me some distaste, but that was fun.
This added a whole new dimension and people gravitated towards NFTs because they gave us something to talk about.
Brands struggle to create something for us to talk about. They struggle to tell a story. Art has been the mechanism for this since the first cave paintings.
#3. Digital Collectables With Utility Can Be Assets
Utility is the final piece that many of the NFT projects have been missing. Without utility, we're likely treating collectibles as investment vehicles.
Adding utility to collectibles allows us to truly feel like we’re getting a good deal. Without utility we rely on speculation or social proof because there is no price anchor.
Given the whole crypto crash and FTX situation, finally the digital collectibles market is going to mature. Brands are going to have to offer real value to customers, and so they should.
The Future Of Digital Collectables
Though the bad actors and pump and dump schemes left a sour taste in many of our mouths, we believe that the days of over priced digital art is over and the world will gravitate to real world value.
Whether we like it or not, there’s millions of early adopters with digital assets they own and want to share. And it’s very clear that people are very excited to share what they own.
We believe it’s only a matter of time before everyone will begin to showcase many of the digital things they own to express who they are. Especially if what they own offers value through helping us connect, tell a story or adding utility to our lives.
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