Hey what’s up – I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog for a bit, mostly because I’ve been very focused on Youtube and once I got comfortable with it, it just felt like a much more natural and creative way to share thoughts and stories. However, I after making a couple nft themed videos, I realized I didn’t wish to become a nft youtuber, so my blog rises from the death again. In this article, I’ll share some of my personal NFT plans for 2022.
Warning: While writing this article I was in a silly yet unusually honest mood, so please read this article as if it was written by a slightly sarcastic yet well meaning asshole… because it was.
Thoughts on the market and sustainability of NFTs
I first got into NFTs in March of 2021, it took me longer to really start totally believing in them though. Truth be told, I was just experimenting and playing around for a long time, which I believe was the case for everyone but it wasn’t always ok to admit it, wagmi gm. But in truth, I wasn’t sure what to think. Now, even though the crypto bubble is in danger of bursting or at least going bearmode for the next several months, NFTs in the photography space seem more sustaibable than ever before in my eyes. This is not even related to any specific market condition as much as it is just my brain getting used to the idea of NFTs in general, which is a wild concept to wrap ones head around… Even for someone like me who has been into crypto much longer. My hunch is that a market shakeout is going to be healthy, a little too much euphoria around recently. But the cat’s out of the bag and this tech isn’t going anywhere.
My earliest mint back in March
If I had to make a prediction, the easiest future to foresee is that it’ll be just like other crypto markets – when the money’s too easy, everyone and their mom wants to be an NFT artist / crypto guru. When the times are tough, only those with foresight and passion will stick around, but they’ll be handsomely rewarded once the next cycle comes around.
I think the biggest mental flip for me happened when I started also personally collecting nfts and I realized how fun and addicting it was. Now, I’m not super hardcore about it, I’ve not spent more than 0.35 eth on a single art piece yet. Mostly because I’m a pussy and think these are extremely speculative investments, but also because I like owning art from multiple people. And I like to think of myself as a talent scout who’s able to pick out prospects once they’re young and undervalued. I spoke more about this in my previous writeup. Aand also because I haven’t actually been seriously following the profitmaking / flipping side of the business, it’s more of a hobby for me. It’s probably a good rule to never spend more than you can tolerate to lose. Some people are pure collectors, but due to my background in crypto investment and investment in general, I find it difficult to turn that part of my brain off, especially when even on the lower end we’re still talking of thousands of dollars, and frankly I feel like almost everyone who says they only care about the art and community and not money are sus and not to be trusted.
Anyway, I’ve been focused on my own collections first, not to mention all the other photography related stuff, in which I’d include my Youtube channel. So unfortunately I can’t give a more expert take on the exact take on high end collectible photography NFTs. Now despite being a self admitted uninformed person on that front, even I have a couple opinions.
First, 1/1 art rules. I like the idea of scarcity. When there’s 50 editions of the same piece, I have a hard time seeing how that is ever going to be anything beyond fun on a budget. But just thinking of the demand required to make something like that very profitable for investors, without sketchy fuckery going around behind the scenes, I don’t really see that for most people. Then again, most NFTs in general won’t be profitable. It’s like angel investment in a way – a few winners could potentially offset the other bad investment that’ll go to 0.
Then a litlle on the other blockchains, Tezos, Solana, etc. In my opinion, even tho eth is not perfect, the first mover advantage alone is too much to overcome. I wouldn’t mint or buy on other blockchains in a serious way. I’m not an expert on altcoins, but it’s always easy to have a cheap transaction cost and theoretical advantages over something when nobody is actually using your coin. And there’s always a bias in some people who missed the boat initially and now want to be early on something else, but once tjos alt matures or fails (let’s face it, fails) they’ll be off to another new shiny coin… this is a long topic, but in my opinion, if you’re here long term, it’s better to be the small fish in a big pond than a huge fat fish in a tiny pond. But sure, if you see photography NFTs and Apes and whatnot and find yourself thinking “HMM NOT RISKY ENOUGH!” lmao, then this might be worth looking into. Again, I don’t really know shit, but I do know more than people who just learned about crypto 4 months ago and now think Safemoon and SHIBA are the only true investments.
Haterz
Oh, sustainability, as in, the environment? Anyone who still believes NFTs are in any way significant in that regard have not done their research and I no longer care much to convince them otherwise. It’s pretty clear some people have made hating nfts a part of their personality, for whatever reason, so instead of being interested in the actual truth, they’ll find the propaganda articles very easy to believe. Unfortunately in these times that’s quite common. Someone else can fight this fight, it doesn’t interest me. I tried back in March a few times, but it’s just like any other political argument – religious in nature, people have made up their minds. Be prepared to lose some of your followers once you get into nfts for the first time. Fortunately, they’ll be the dumbest ones.
Tokyo Stories – My OpenSea Collection and the Upcoming Book
This is my current main focus on the nft space. It’s 30 of my favorite or most notable photos I’ve taken in Tokyo between 2017 and 2020, just before the pandemic begun. That felt like a great time to curate it, as Tokyo has been my photographic home but I also haven’t been able to enter the damn country since feb 2020, and trust me, not for a lack of trying. I once wanted to move into Japan on a more permanent basis, and I still kind of wish to do that, but it seems impossible to even enter so that may never happen.
Currently, I’ve sold about half of the collection. My marketing strategy has mostly revolved around tweeting photos and occasionally dropping the link on my twitter. I don’t do as much social networking in the space as would be optimal, because I have difficulty following my own advice. It’s not my strength, I like the idea of simply sharing nice art and staying patient. Also, I don’t like twitter spaces, most of them just give me social anxiety, or worse.. boredom. JUST KIDDING I haven’t actually been on many since clubhouse was a thing, for whatever reason they just don’t interest me. But, as I said above, I believe in this for the longer term, genuinely, but that switch only truly happened within the previous few months. I’ll stick around for a long time, this won’t be my last mint. At the same time, I don’t want to mint too much stuff at once, as I fear it may make me look greedy and or oversaturate the market. I’m not sure if that’s based on reality or not though, there are no real rules. But if I ever sell out this collection, I’d like to mint something from Korea, my more recent photo work. Probably something more scarce than a collection of 30 – in hindsight, I may have minted too many for the Tokyo Stories collection. But then again, it allowed me to price pieces at 0.3, and a few at lower than that, which is an easier floor price to act as a gateway for many. Myself included. Without lower prices of collection, I’m not sure if I’d ever got as addicted to the collecting part personally.
Photo Book as a collector perk
I like making photo books. But they’re expensive and a lot of work, and when self printing, not very profitable at all. The financial incentive isn’t there, other than doing it for passion. Unless you get a publisher. I’ve made a book in the past, and I quite like how it came out. But it also has only about 50 pages and I can’t sell it for much less than 70usd without taking a loss. Of course it could be optimized a bit, I could bulk order, find the cheapest suppliers and set up my own shipping, still wouldn’t really be super profitable though unless I was able to sell thousands of copies. And it’d take valuable time away from other things.
Or… I could do the same thing, but offer a photo book as a perk to my NFT collectors. 30 copies, hold one of my nfts on a (yet to be announced) date in early 2022, and I will contact you and send you an exclusive, 30 copies only photo book related to the collection. It’ll cost me close to 100 usd per book and shipping, times maximum 30. But it’ll still be worth it if I sell pieces for 0.3 eth or more. I don’t really need to do this, but it feels right – I get to make a photo book and send it to my most serious supporters, and it should help my sales, which would make this more profitable than the old way of doing this anyway. Furthermore, if I do a good job long term, my collectors should be able to resell their pieces in the future, if they wish to let go of them.
It’s not a strategy without risks of course, and I don’t think I’ve seen others doing it yet (although some have included prints in their nft sales, so its pretty similar). In theory, I stand to lose money if this doesn’t result in additional sales. And it may make resales more complicated, but the way I think of it is that once I’ve sold the nft token and sent out a book, it’s now up to the new owner whether they’d want to sell their copy of the book in addition to the nft in case of a resale.
Also not gonna lie, it worries me that I have a few anonymous collectors and I have no idea how to contact them and whether they even want a book, but I’ll worry about that later.
I haven’t finished the book design yet, but I’m close. Waiting for the 1st draft prototype to be shipped to me. If you’re a collector, follow my twitter for updates.
NFT Scammers
Many opportunists have decided to take advantage of the influx of new vulnerable victims in the space. Don’t download stuff off of twitter or ig dms or unverified emails and get a cold wallet for the majority of your collections. This stuff is boring but important. It’s the reason I don’t accept twitter dms from people I don’t follow.
What’s the best platform?
Honestly, it’s OpenSea. You can get in without being in mr cool guy club, it’s easy to mint and resell, it has brand recognition. Foundation is also fine if you can find an invite, and if the overlords at Superrare accept you, a filty peasant, onto their awesome exclusive platform for only cool people (not me yet), then I guess they also have some prestige tied into the platform. But nobody will buy your art just because of the platform. Almost everything else is more important.
Conclusion
Just to clarify, I’m riffing here. None of this is fact. I might be totally wrong. This blog is my safe space! This was for entertainment purposes only. Just thought it’d be a good time to share my real actual thoughts and process with you guys, because in truth, nobody really knows what’s gonna happen here. Some of my words may appear harsh or straight up delusional, unfortunately there’s no way to write a honest and hopefully good article on this topic while self censoring too much. The world of investment and crypto, weirdly enough, doesn’t mesh that well with the overly positive wagmi sentiment, because by default there has to be winners and losers in the world of investment. I’m also somewhat hesitant pressing that publish button due to the probability that some of the stuff I said is going to be completely wrong in just a few short months and I’ll look like a damn fool. So the best way to look at my words, and any words in this space really, is just as one person’s opinion, some interesting data to consider, but ultimately it’s up to you to draw your own conclusions, take nothing personally.