I don't think that. I think money can exist independent of government. Of course it has in many forms, but I mean in a way that is more useful to more people than a governmental money. As for difficulty for newbs, these are still very early days. It's insanely more user friendly than it was in 2017, and many more people are using Ethereum regularly. Axie Infinity has 110k active players as I type this. I'd put my money on Kleiman rather than LeRoux, but it doesn't matter much. I think bitcoin will ultimately fail. Definitely CryptoPunks. I have a gob of kitties, including some Gen0's. Kitties got boring real fast and there's so many variations and kitties that 1) it's difficult to tell most of them apart, and 2) there's a bunch of kitties that look just like yours. It was an interesting moment in Ethereum, but the kitties weren't as interesting as the gas fees. IMO CryptoPunks succeed as art, because they have a nice aesthetic, they represent something similar to many people, and they are the center of a conversation about something new. Of course, I am of the opinion that it is all art, only that most of it is very uninteresting. I do think that an NFT collapse is imminent, and that most of the NFTs that are being swapped right now are going to become worthless really fast. Many thousandaires are going to be made of those that feel like millionaires atm. The horizon I am talking about above is a 10-20 year one. I didn't buy my CryptoPunk as an investment. That would have been a more difficult decision. I do see them as a Picasso or Warhol for these times. Warhol didn't let you mint free sneakers if you owned his work, but I bet he would have found it an interesting development.It's also pure Randian nonsense to presume that the only reason government exists is money.
Which is worth more - a cryptopunk or a cryptokitty?
Paper money is what created Venice. It created Flanders. It created Shanghai. Paper money means "finance" basically and I agree, crypto is orders of magnitude more versatile than "banks." But none of those trading powers would have existed without navies and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the money is or what it does. What matters is where the rubber meets the road. If I were Visa? I'd be prototyping the shit out of crypto escrow. I'd roll that shit out ASAP. First to the post on this one - if I gotta pay Visa 1% to get a service agreement that allows me to contest charges I'ma sign up. If I have a choice between buying insurance per transaction or buying it all the time, I'll pick and choose. If I can get miles? Bully. Hey maybe I can get pennies for viewing ads. Now you're talking about a centralized organization running on the blockchain, and it's going to be taxed. THAT is how the normies are gonna blockchain - they'll use Metamask by Visa. And it'll probably run Tether or whatever. It'll be big monolithic organizations assuming the risk for a percentage, same as it ever was. We're switching from phone lines to fiber but for the normies it'll still be a telco world. Normies bought beanie babies. Still do. 110k players on Axie Infinity? Million users on NBA Top Shot. I'm not saying "I'm right, you're wrong" I'm saying I feel your certainty is misplaced. "Cryptopunks...have a nice aesthetic" is a judgement call. Some people love Jeff Koons. I've never met them but I can objectively argue they exist. More people know Thomas Kinkade, though. Everybody knows the Mona Lisa. But everybody owns Maxfield Parrish. The market cap for all Punks is what, $5b right now? I believe we've definitely reached a point where the market is TBTF. Once the taste-makers get ahold of it there's no letting go (short of a scandal, and art scandals have to be outsized). NFTs-as-art have the additional advantage of legal tax evasion. Since there's nowhere for the article to physically reside, there's no tariffs to be charged. That's a good 20% incentive for piling into jpegs over Jackson Pollacks. There's also the constant online marketplace which changes the broker equation. But I don't think the question has even been properly posed yet, let alone settled. I'm a long-term guy and we're still this side of the event horizon.