Despite the bad rap, NFTs can be a force for good – Cointelegraph Magazine

Crypto is like a double-edged sword, one good piece of news is followed by ten bad reactions. It’s like being the parent of the hyperactive kid in the kindergarten — he breaks other kids’ toys, bounces off the walls like a demon and the other parents hate him, but you know he’s a sweet, thoughtful and kind soul who will one day find the cure for cancer.

And as you stand surveying the debris of his day in kindergarten with the other parents giving you the evil eye and the Montessori teacher sadly shaking her head, you cannot wait for that day to come soon enough.

So, in crypto, one step forward is the introduction of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Finally, something that everyone — including your non-tech or finance friends — can get their teeth into and understand.

I listened to a radio program yesterday where during the weekly film roundup a reviewer spoke about Quentin Tarantino producing NFTs of unused pages of his Pulp Fiction script. Sure, he is being sued by Miramax, but the reviewer positively salivated over the term NFT.

“I’m not tech or finance,” she said. ‘But I like talking about NFTs and Tarantino.”

So NFTs are mainstream. Noobs still get hung up on the Beeple sale ($69 million at Christie’s in March) much in the same way the OGs regard the eye-watering 2017 Tezos ICO that raised $232 million or BlockOne’s epic twelve-month raise of $4 billion the following year. These are the milestones when the money gets silly and crypto gets onto the mainstream news feeds.

But, the backlash has already begun. The amount of energy “wasted” in generating NFTs is a very serious issue currently doing the rounds. If using energy to produce cryptocurrency is seen as wasteful, then expending large amounts of energy to create NFTs of low-resolution cartoon JPGs sounds positively frivolous. A sort of let them eat cake moment in crypto history.

This is why it is good to seek out educators who can balance the rhetoric, to counter the inbuilt prejudice or sheer misinformation bandied about like…

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