Something I've talked with @themarkymark over since time in memoriam
What constitutes as value and how do you create it?
In the early days of steem when steem-engine was borne, people rushed to create their new tokens. This was something that was only reserved for hardcore developers in the past, and hiring them is likely to set you back quite a bit.
Now Steem-engine (still feel dirty using the word steem lol) then allowed users to quickly and effortlessly create their own tokens at the click of a button removing the need for a middleman.
This prompted a new wave of tokens being borne out of thin air and new value being created when there was previously none -- some tokens like "Cat token" springs to mind that bought Neoxag off the market to help Neoxian City.
It spurred a new era of value popping out of thin air; and all of a sudden people had something of worth!
Sadly, over time, most tokens died a horrible death. Some faded away quietly into the darkness never to be seen or heard from again, others went kicking and screaming as they plunged into the eternal cavern of oblivion.
From all of this I learned that the real issue isn't about creating value, because value is created all the time, all over the world.
The main problem is maintaining value -- because to sustain value over time is very hard and complex.
Is this a fundamental flaw with cryptocurrency?
Well,
no.
It's a flaw with humanity.
Imagine for a moment that cryptocurrency was a product you were selling on Amazon. This year it's amazingly popular and everyone wants a piece of it and you're earning hand over fist.
But the following year only a few want to buy.
So to reinvigorate the product you add new colours to it, maybe it spins three times instead of two, or maybe it boils water to faster than any other kettle. You do this to maintain popularity and hold the interest of new and old buyers alike.
This is all we're doing with our crypto's,
Holding interest.
Nothing more.
Value and human interest are interchangeable words in my opinion, but highly subjective. What I find valuable and find interesting you may find a big pile of dog poop.
And that's okay, each to their own. We all cherish and value wildly different things.
We see memetokens right now defying everything I've ever learned about crypto in the last 10 years -- but then that all translates to human interest. A lot of people somewhere are interested in massive shit tokens that do absolutely nothing.
Will they be popular in 10 years?
Probably
Maybe.
If someone invents a payment processor and hooks it up to a chain unifier that lets you spend whatever crap token you hold at the shop -- then yeah, meme tokens will be wildly popular for a very long time.
I can see this coming too.
Buying my next car with LGN? Hell yeah!
Which brings me to my next point.
Say someone invents an app that lets you spend any crypto you have at the high street shops, no matter what chain you exist on.
Hint: You should check out agglayer because this is being worked on -- as far as I'm aware it's nearly completed.
Wouldn't that automatically give all cryptos immediate value? No matter the token?
You could probably buy bread and milk with Lassecash - scary, I know, but then that dude could focus more on convincing us the world is flat rather than how cool his token is. It already has value, no need for anything else.
This is when we will switch from obsessively counting the pennies, to attention.
In the future it's going to be all about the attention, not about the money.
I say this because when there's lots of attention then the money will flow.
I mean you could argue it's always been about the attention, yes; where there's concentrated attention then there is big money.
But then that's not always been the case -- most of hive runs on a shoestring held together by some sticky tape, yet there's lots of attention here.
But the attention I'm talking about is going to be the type of attention from the masses, rather than the odd hipster we find on hive (like me! Yes, I consider myself a hipster too haha).
So I think, ladies and gentlemen, now is the time to build for raw attention, for when we onboard the masses they're going to need things to do!
And that is where the fun begins.
