I'm a little less sanguine.

I do think people are beating up on NFTs in ways they haven't been able to beat up on shit since they discovered furries, and I think they should feel bad about that. I also think that the current generation of chattering class has finally come around to understanding that "digital things have no value because they can be reproduced endlessly" and there's no way in hell they'll come around to "blockchain things have value because they can't" before they're embittered and shaking their fists at the clouds.

But I also think the blockchain is terrifying to interact with. I rarely do it. It's funny - if you send a wire transfer you go to the bank and fill out a form and double-check it and the teller double-checks it and enters it in and triple checks it and says "here goes" and even then, you've still got do-overs. It's still a gentlemans' agreement between bankers. There's still clawback.

"Give me your passcode and the money is gone forever" is a hard place for the normies to live.

It's also pure Randian nonsense to presume that the only reason government exists is money. Graeber pointed out in The Utopia of Rules that states exist to hold a monopoly on violence. You belong to a state so that no one but that state can use violence on you, and you have an agreement with the state as to what you must do to avoid violence. A bunch of crypto-nerds and a bunch of Proud Boys coming together will end up with a bunch of rich Proud Boys and a bunch of blood on the tiles.

I read a book on Paul LeRoux. I won't recommend it. The author doesn't understand Paul LeRoux. Tries, fails. The author dances mightily around the idea that he created bitcoin. He did. I have no doubts about this. It slots entirely too well with everything else Paul LeRoux did. And because Paul LeRoux is under proffer, every dime he made committing crimes has been legally surrendered to the United States so Paul LeRoux isn't gonna say shit about Bitcoin until he's out and beyond the reach of the Treasury.

But Paul LeRoux literally tried to set up a libertarian kingdom in Somalia. Then tried to overthrow the Seychelles to do the same thing. There's definitely a "we don't need no steenking government" intent behind much of crypto and just like Paul LeRoux, it's gonna fail.

People want their do-overs.

those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Are we talking about essential liberty here? I think the freedom to get a chargeback on your credit card is the sort of thing people gonna want forever. After all, civilization evolved to mediate disputes and with crypto, there are no disputes - everything is forever irrevocable.

Likewise, you didn't buy a cryptopunk because it was cool, you bought a cryptopunk because your friends and community thought it was cool. Which is worth more - a cryptopunk or a cryptokitty? Why? There's nothing technical there, it's all fashion. I would argue that the fundamentals are better for cryptokitties - they appeal less to Twitterbros, yeah, but they were also the NFT that broke Ethereum. The only reason Flow exists is that Cryptokitties demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that a blockchain for collectibles needed to be more feature-rich and responsive than Ethereum. Ten, fifteen, fifty years from now Cryptopunks could be Edison's DC lightbulbs while Cryptokitties are Westinghouse.

There's also the unfortunate aspect that from an artistic standpoint, randomly-generated algorithmic stuff has never fared well. We like our art to be artistic. Ideally, the normies want it to be pretty. I think NFTs will provide a lot of opportunities for creativity and innovation but I can't get behind anything I've seen so far as an objet d'art.

Did you know that you can doodle on the ETH2 beaconchain? Each persistent pixel will cost you (checks notes) one hundred thousand dollars. Yeah you can edit your graffiti each epoch (hour) and get it to draw another pixel so if you've got patience and time (and a hundred thousand dollars) you can put together something impressive. Or, you know, dickbutt.

Wander into the heart of the beast and what are they going for? What profound statement for the ages are they building?

That'll be a triforce some day. And remember - every pixel is a hunnert grand.

I think there's some paradigm-shifting stuff afoot. I think the deck is being shuffled. I think cryptopunks will have value in the future as collectables.

But I refuse to call them art.

Art's coming, I think. But I mean we're what, 20 years past the mind's eye videos? And computers are still unacceptable in artwork.