The blockchain space has been busy as 2024 gets underway. The Bitcoin ETF approval drama last week created a lot of activity, speculation, and interest. It was curious to see how things played out. I wrote prediction #1 and #2 below before the ETF was approved, and I intentionally avoided editing things to take into account this new info since I want to offer a valid prediction for the entire year starting Jan 1, 2024.
With that said, I was trying to write this newsletter for publication last week. However, it turns out that going from no newsletters to three weekly newsletters in a row was too ambitious. Because I think the weekly cadence was simply not enough time for me to get things together, I’m going to schedule out the 2024 Look Forward newsletter for 2 weeks from now, so Feb 2 instead of Jan 26.
Word to the wise, I’m particularly excited about Prediction #4 (not that I think I’m more likely to be right, but there’s an activity for the year that I’ve become increasingly looking-forward to as I wrote the prediction), so if you look at only the headline predictions and read just one in detail, I’d suggest that you check out #4.
As always, please feel free to reply with your thoughts. And if you like the newsletter, please give it a like.
7 Predictions For 2024
By Elliot Koss, Founder @ Future Mints
Last week I reflected on 2023 compared with the general predictions I had made in January 2023. It was a fun exercise to make some predictions at the beginning of the year, which was made even more enjoyable by seeing how much I got right and wrong. I wonder what I’ll get right and wrong with this year’s predictions.
For 2024, I decided to make a change to how I structure my predictions. Instead of repeating last year where I meandered through a variety of ideas and only declared one explicit prediction buried at the bottom of the newsletter, I’ve decided to write 7 predictions that can be measured in some manner with an explicit criteria for being ‘right’. For some predictions, I used a +/-20% range from the predicted number. Others, I gave a minimum threshold that needed to be exceeded. And the last 2 are written as predictions, but they’re more like goals for Future Mints (even though I’ll focus on that exclusively in the next newsletter). Anyway, this should make for a more enjoyable (and objective) reflection at the end of 2024.
1. Ethereum Will Increase 50%
To be right, Ethereum would need to be valued on Dec 31 between $3,293.71 and $3,764.25 (20% of a 50% increase is $235.27, so $3,528.98 +/- $235.27, respectively).
ETH price on Jan 1, 2024 - $2,352.65
[I left everything intact for this prediction with only minor edits]
If you know me, you understand that I like to state my biases upfront and as clearly as I can. So let’s start with this: I’m an Ethereum maxi. I own more ETH than any other cryptocurrency. I believe that in 5-10 years, Ethereum will be the dominant blockchain that has the highest market cap, because it’s the main blockchain that people are using to build useful things. You can read last year’s The Future of Blockchain, Pt 2 for more details on that idea.
In 2023, I made only one real prediction: That Ethereum would double. If we use the 20% plus or minus threshold, then I was right, because ETH went up ~90%.
Of course, just because I got that one prediction right means very little. It’s like a coin toss - each one is independent from the other.
I have this fundamental belief that Ethereum’s increasing utility makes it increasingly valuable. How much more valuable is not something I have a precise opinion on at this time other than to say that I think it’s worth a lot more than its market cap today. By multiples.
In general, 2022 saw the price of Ethereum take a massive beating, dropping 68% ($3,766.74 on Jan 1, 2022 to $1,195 on Dec 31, 2022), because the market got overheated from the vaporware posing as real utility on Ethereum and all the activity during the 2021 and 2022 NFT craze. The general global economic meltdown which led to a reduction in investor interest in the riskiest of assets (which Ethereum is a member today) was also a big factor in the battering that Ethereum took in 2022.
Many of the people who don’t understand blockchains (or were rightly annoyed by all the trash-talking from the NFT / crypto bros) were overjoyed by what they perceived as the demise of Ethereum and Bitcoin in 2022. But I felt like the market had overcorrected, because there was still fundamental value and long-term technology being built. That doesn’t just go away, because some money leaves the space. And if AI was going to steal the spotlight, that was great, because some of the best technology is built while no one is watching.
Which is why I felt like Ethereum would quietly see a big increase in 2023, hence the prediction to double last year.
In 2024, I feel like Ethereum will continue to grow, but it just won’t be as quick as 2023, relatively speaking. Still, going from $2,350 to $3,500 would represent a big nominal increase.
2. Bitcoin Will Increase 30%
To be right, Bitcoin would need to be valued on Dec 31 between $54,767.49 and $60,067.57 (20% of a 30% increase is $2,650.04, so $57,417.53 +/- $2,650.04, respectively).
BTC price on Jan 1, 2024 - $44,167.33
[I left everything intact for this prediction with minor edits]
Long-term, I think Ethereum is going to outpace Bitcoin (though I still own some Bitcoin and continue to buy more), because Ethereum has actual utility (which will increase demand for the currency) whereas Bitcoin is just digital gold with minor utility. To put this into relative terms, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has outperformed gold by about 6.5X over the past 100 years. Once Ethereum reaches a certain utility threshold, I expect that it should begin to consistently outpace Bitcoin.
Even though that utility threshold hasn’t happened yet, nor will it until blockchain technology goes mainstream (which I do not expect to happen in 2024, see prediction #4), I still believe that Ethereum is going to outpace Bitcoin in 2024.
In 2023, Bitcoin grew 154% which was partly due to the fact that in 2022, Bitcoin lost about 65% of its value ($47K to $16K).
For the sake of this prediction, I’m going to use the Yahoo! Finance “Closing Price” as the barometer (FYI, I haven’t vetted what ‘closing price’ for a 24/7 traded cryptocurrency means on Yahoo! Finance). On Jan 1, 2024, this was $44,167.33, so a 30% increase would be $57,417.53 on Dec 31, 2024.
Considering that the all-time Bitcoin high is $68,789.63, a 30% increase in Bitcoin’s price would represent a major step forward in 2024. A 50% increase would be just shy of the all-time high, which seems unlikely given that 2024 will likely be an exciting year but not so exciting that I think Bitcoin will break fresh ground with a new all-time high.
The reason for this positive outlook (but not excessively so) is simple: There’s an increase in demand for risk and an appetite for Bitcoin.
The economy is relatively stable with most of the guidance expecting a modest increase in the S&P 500 (I have my own prediction in #3 below) due to an expected soft landing from the tough economic environment we’ve seen since COVID started and a slowdown in the inflation rate. As a result of this relative stability, more investors will seek higher-risk investments that have the potential to deliver higher returns. Bitcoin has become an increasingly attractive investment since it represents (for the masses) the next phase of technology. Since most people have no idea how Bitcoin and Ethereum are different, other than their names, they look at Bitcoin as the ‘gold standard’ of cryptocurrencies. Long-term, I think it’s going to turn out to be silver instead of gold.
We can see this at the institutional investor level with the forthcoming Bitcoin ETF which is being reviewed by regulators (it was finally approved by the SEC on Thu, Jan 11 - after I wrote this part). Shoutout to ATX DAO (one of the leading city-based, legislative-focused DAOs of which I’m a proud member), where there has been a robust discussion about the regulatory and investor community sentiment. To summarize, there is was concern that the SEC is was going to block the Bitcoin ETF. The SEC has given pushback on various aspects of blockchain technology, in particular the staking elements that provide income in exchange for locking up your tokens (which the SEC considers a security based on the Howie Test). With that said, some investment firms have been sending positive signals that they believe the Bitcoin ETF will be approved (turns out they were right).
The truth is that the result of the Bitcoin ETF is immaterial. If it’s approved, that will bring a rush of money into Bitcoin and potentially unlock the floodgates of more investment. This could help increase the price of Bitcoin well beyond this prediction purely on the positive sentiment. This could overheat the Bitcoin price and create more volatility in the near term, but it would largely be good. If the volatility materializes, then it’s anyone’s guess where Bitcoin lands in 12 months. It could be up 30%. It could be up 50% (which would be near its all-time high). It could be down 10%. EDIT: I didn’t consider the well-reasoned point others made that the reason Bitcoin didn’t immediately rise was due to the fact the approval may have already been baked into the current price by investors who were following all of this closely, likely helping BTC grow 150%+ in 2023.
If the Bitcoin ETF is NOT approved, that’s actually not bad news for Bitcoin. The fact that there’s this much attention on creating a Bitcoin ETF means that we’re getting close to a tipping point. The increased awareness and interest in Bitcoin should help bolster the price. In this scenario, the price growth would likely be slower and more modest, but I believe this path would result in a fairly steady 30% increase by the end of 2024.
The price of Bitcoin may be one of the more interesting things to monitor in 2024, especially as all of this drama unfolds. EDIT: Now that the SEC made a decision, looks like I may have been wrong, because a week later it seems like we’re back to being boring again.
3. S&P 500 Will Increase 10%
To be right, the S&P 500 would need to be valued on Dec 31 between $5,151.41 and $5,342.21 (20% of a 10% increase is $95.40, so $5,246.81 +/- $95.40, respectively).
S&P 500 closed at $4,769.83 on Dec 29, 2023 - last closing of 2023.
“Cautious but optimistic” seems to be the prevailing stock market sentiment. There are people on both extremes (bulls and bears) with the main concern related to inflation and whether we have a soft landing. Growth in 2023 was higher than expected with the S&P 500 growing by 25%.
I tend to agree that 2024 will see positive growth. It seems that when COVID’s impact was combined with Russia invading Ukraine, both negatively impacted global trade which sunk the economy in 2022. Inflation has been high as a result of the tough global movement of goods, but 2023 is when things began to stabilize, so it seems. This has led to a lot of positive sentiment heading into 2024, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. We still need to see how the Fed responds to interest rates. If they execute the reductions that are expected, we could see the 10% growth that I’m predicting (which is generally in line with the last 100 years average YoY growth rate of 10.5% for the S&P 500).
The regulators have been operating fairly predictably the last couple years, so I anticipate that the Fed will continue to (more or less) respond as expected. So long as there are no surprises, we should see the market grow fairly steadily.
There are 2 dark clouds on the horizon. The first is the 2024 election and the other is a potentially massive Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into Apple that could turn into an antitrust lawsuit.
Originally, I wrote this long-winded breakdown of the Apple situation and the 2024 election, but I don’t think it was too useful for shedding more light on this specific prediction. So here’s the shorter version:
The 2024 election will probably cause some hiccups, but I don’t think anything major is going to happen that will hurt the markets dramatically. We’re definitely not in a good spot, politically, but I’m unconvinced that we’re at the boiling point that would cause disruption to the global economy. Maybe events will occur this year to change my opinion, and I’m still going to have a contingency plan ready in case I’m wrong. But I think there’s a much better chance that nothing materializes this year (despite the news cycles making it sound like civil war is imminent) and life continues as normal in the US, albeit with a little more shouting.
Re: Apple’s DOJ situation, this may wind up forcing Apple to build their platforms in a more open manner over the next couple years (disclosure: I own some Apple stock). It could hurt Apple a little (they seem to have lost a few key cases the past few years such as what’s happening with the Apple Watch), but Microsoft has done fine since their antitrust issues two decades ago. I suspect if the DOJ does bring a case, it’ll make a lot of news headlines, rattle the markets a little, and then blow over as things stabilize. There may be a potential for blockchain technology to bridge a gap here and increase the openness of all tech companies, but that’s a longer-term prediction and out of scope for today.
To sum it up, I think the S&P 500 will post a 10% gain in 2024.
4. Blockchain Technology and NFTs Will Not Go Mainstream
Finding some objective way to measure this one was hard. Zippia published a report at the end of 2022 showing that 300M people (3.9% of the world’s population) used the blockchain for cryptocurrency and that there were 82M Bitcoin wallets, but this prediction is more about using the technology for a non-monetary use case than simply having money in a wallet or buying a cryptocurrency. Plus, I haven’t seen an updated report for 2023.
Dappros did this analysis quantifying worldwide blockchain developers, but they don’t do it every year and I don’t know how they counted ‘blockchain developers’. For instance, am I considered a solidity developer because I deployed a smart contract? I’m pretty sure I didn’t post something publicly on GitHub (most of my repos are kept private).
So I decided to find a report that shows NFT ownership like this one from 2022 showing 9.3M in the US (~4% of the population) have ever owned an NFT.
Then, I rediscovered the Starbucks Odyssey experience, and I feel like I found a great way to measure mainstream adoption, even if it’s imperfect. For context, Starbucks’ Rewards program had 33M members as of 2023, and there were 46.8K people in 2023 who earned the Level 1 Starbucks Odyssey ‘stamp’ (aka NFT).
And now that the qualifiers are out of the way…
To be right, two things must happen:
<10% of the US population will have ever owned an NFT by the end of 2024
AND
<500K people would need to earn Level 1 of the 2024 Starbucks Odyssey stamp (hasn’t minted yet because you can’t earn enough points yet). If more than 500K people earn this stamp, then we can say that NFTs have gone mainstream (even though that’s <2% of the Starbucks Rewards program users).
I read this 2024 crypto outlook article in Techcrunch by Polygon’s Chief Legal Officer, Rebecca Rettig. She wrote one of the best outlines of the crypto regulatory landscape as well as an incredibly useful review of some of the best-in-class examples of blockchain technology in use, so you should definitely read what she has to say.
Rebecca is incredibly smart and well-positioned to make her predictions, and I share her optimism about the blockchain landscape.
With that said, I feel like there is still more infrastructure to be built in order to support mainstream adoption of even the most basic blockchain use cases.
Starbucks is probably one of the few existing brands to engage in a meaningful and useful way with NFTs and the blockchain, and yet they are still likely a couple years away from introducing a truly mainstream use case for blockchain in their primary rewards program.
The Starbucks NFT Rewards program (called Starbucks Odyssey - join their waitlist!) is a way for Starbucks Rewards members (the NFT program is tied to your regular rewards account) to spend time engaging with the Starbucks brand by completing activities that earn points (and stamps) and then being able to use those points for ‘benefits’ like merchandise. I signed up for it in January 2023 (shoutout to Club CPG, one of the few the NFT communities I still remain fairly active, which first alerted me to the Starbucks Odyssey program), but other than the initial signup and reading an occasional email Starbucks would send me from time to time, I never really engaged with the product. However, I checked it out as a part of researching these predictions which renewed my interest. A lot.
The ‘stamps’ (aka NFTs) you earn are being sold in a dedicated Starbucks Odyssey marketplace (meaning you can make real money, perhaps enough to fund your caffeine habit).
Looking at the marketplace (this is a separate link of the Nifty Gateway-powered marketplace), 46.8K people earned the Level 1 Starbucks Odyssey stamp / NFT, and the biggest stamp / NFT is a collection of 65K.
One of the stamps / NFTs generated close to $850K in secondary-market trading volume while another one of the stamps / NFTs generated almost $500K in trading volume.
Starbucks’ stamps did $3M in volume, and with a 7.5% creator royalty, that’s $225K. The ROI may not be high for this initial test, but that’s certainly more revenue than I expected.
I wasn’t engaged in the program other than setting up an account in January 2023, but now that I’m using Starbucks Odyssey as the barometer for this prediction, I’m also making a resolution to engage with it and try to earn stamps on a monthly basis. Who knows, maybe I could make enough money to cover my coffee spending at Starbucks for the year. I intend to journal about the experience and publish something at some point, so stay tuned for more. Oh, and join with me! I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this new version of a rewards program.
I love that Starbucks is playing with the blockchain and working towards finding something that could resonate with a mainstream audience, but I don’t think they’re there yet.
And the reason for that is the broken crypto wallet, which I wrote about last year. Until there’s a better way for users to engage with the blockchain that doesn’t require so much mental energy or require so much risk, it’s going to be nearly impossible for blockchain technology to go mainstream. The technology is simply too complex. Even Starbucks’ smartly simplified version of NFTs requires having a Polygon wallet, collecting the NFTs via the wallet, and then using the wallet to engage with the blockchain. In each instance, the wallet is central to taking full advantage of the Starbucks Odyssey experience. While some of us love playing with new technology, it’s far too complicated for the average user, and the crypto wallet is impossibly complex today. Perhaps, I’ll learn that Starbucks has handled this in an elegant manner and come to eat my words, but being able to trade NFTs does require on-chain interactions, which can be scary for the newcomer while the experienced people have developed ways to manage the risk.
I will need to play with more wallets in 2024 to try to identify who’s doing it right, and I will say that I’ve noticed some good design enhancements to Metamask. But there is so much infrastructure required to make the crypto wallet a truly good and reliable experience. The risk of having your NFTs stolen, because you interacted with a malicious smart contract is very high. Even people who are knowledgeable about these things know that it’s likely they’ll one day be the victim of a scam, hack, or social engineering attack. It’s why there exists this concept of a cold and hot wallet (one for secure items that never interacts directly with the blockchain outside of wallets you control completely and another for doing transactions with others on the blockchain).
But there is no true safety net. If your NFT or crypto gets stolen, too bad. There’s very little recourse. And there certainly aren’t consumer protections enacted by the government that are similar to credit cards (where you’re basically protected from any unauthorized transaction as long as you identify it within 60 days) or your bank account (where you have FDIC insurance for up to $250K per account in case your bank goes bankrupt).
Plus, there’s way too much technical jargon and actual code showing up in my wallet transactions. I can write code. I have written smart contracts. I can go into Etherscan and make sense of what I’m seeing. And I don’t want to see the code of each transaction. Plus, there’s often little you can understand from what’s shown in the prompt before you confirm the transaction in your wallet. To understand more, you’d have to go to the smart contract itself. It’d be like having to read 5 pages of a technical contract for each purchase at a convenience store. There’s nothing convenient about it. And you may lose all your money if buy from the wrong place. It’s not going to fly for the average consumer, and even the ones who can do everything I’ve described don’t want to do it all the time. I know I don’t. I want some guardrails, and to go mainstream, guardrails are required.
There are ways the crypto wallet can be upgraded to mitigate these risks and alleviate these pain points. But they’re going to take a while for someone to do it well. And while I think whoever that is will make progress in 2024, if the technology isn’t available already, then it’s unlikely we’ll see mass adoption in 2024. Granted, the speed of adoption is becoming increasingly fast with the expansion of social media that can ricochet ideas around the world in days instead of months or years as has happened in previous years and decades. But I still think mass adoption isn’t happening in 2024.
To get people to walk towards the blockchain will require a more magical experience than we see today. Maybe something will be built in 2024 that has the chance to break out in 2025, but I feel like we won’t have enough progress for true mainstream adoption until late 2025 at the absolute earliest. And even then, 2026 or even 2027 is the more realistic bet.
There is a difference, though, between mainstream adoption and another crypto bull market, which I do believe is coming in 2025 or 2026. There’s just a little too much uncertainty on the horizon with the upcoming election cycle plus AI will continue to hog VC money and consumer interest, so I can’t imagine 2024 being a banner year where blockchain and NFTs are in the headlines like 2021 and early 2022. And in any event, I don’t think blockchain and NFTs will go mainstream in 2024.
5. AI Will Continue To Hog VC Money
To be right, in 2024 VC investments in AI-related startups will need to be at least 4x more than in blockchain / crypto-related startups. In 2023, ~$50B was invested in AI vs $10.7B in blockchain / crypto related startups.
The general thesis is that we’ll continue to see AI technology advance over the next year with big headlines that will draw consumer and investor attention while blockchain and crypto technology will quietly be focused on building infrastructure.
Chat GPT will open up their store, which will allow more people to create their own custom version of Chat GPT with a model that’s trained for a specific area. Because anyone will be able to leverage the general AI technology that OpenAI has created to focus on specific areas, there will likely be an explosion of AI technology deployed at companies. There are already hundreds of use cases that touch on the perimeter of what is possible, and the discussion within companies is heavily focused on how AI can be leveraged to create a competitive advantage.
On the flip side, basically no one is talking about how to use blockchain technology at their company. I saw this in 2023 when talking with people outside of the crypto space. When it came to AI, they were excited. When it came to blockchain, they mostly felt like it had no utility. This doesn’t mean that blockchain doesn’t have cool use cases that are being built. It’s more that we have not yet seen the killer use cases that will make companies eager to spend money on the technology. Because there aren’t many paying customers at this time, there’s little reason for VCs to invest as heavily, especially when an equally promising technology that has a multitude of clear use cases has millions of eager buyers who are evaluating what to buy, not if they should invest.
The rationale for this prediction is probably one of the most straightforward. In fact, a 4 to 1 ratio is likely going to be low, because there will be an explosion of AI use cases that continue to stretch the limits of what is possible.
The overarching concern that we’re building AI tools and putting them into end users’ hands before they’re ready will not stop the push forward to incorporate AI tools into more products. Even if we see a major problem as a direct result of AI implementation, I expect that 2024 will continue the trend of software eating the world and AI will help more businesses do increasingly more work with less humans.
6. Future Mints will launch a new product and attract at least 500 users
To be right, a new product must launch before 2024 with a login, RSVP system, and social connections. Plus at least 500 valid emails must be in the system.
Ok, this one is a little easy, because it’s more like a goal than a prediction since I can control the outcome. Launching a new product (there is a very basic signup page already floating around that is only useful for people who live in Austin, TX - ping me if you want the link) means an MVP where users can login and use the product to RSVP for the monthly dinners I’m currently hosting. And my goal for 2024 is simply to get something out, which means that it’s unlikely to make many waves. In fact, the 2024 version of the product may not even include a blockchain use case. I’m still putting the roadmap together, so we’ll see what I plan to add this year.
Even as you read that, you’re probably thinking, that’s a little boring. After all, the MVP will be little different from a small sliver of features that you could do on Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup, Eventbrite, or any number of other apps that enable in-person event signups.
The entire point of the product is to take existing experiences and upgrade them in a way that only blockchain technology can provide, but in order to do that, I have to create my own version of these existing experiences. And since most people are still not clear how to even use the blockchain for anything useful (or at best skeptical), I need a Web2 way (ie email-based login) of introducing them to the Web3 experience (ie wallet-based login). My entire thesis rests on the fact that the biggest friction point for blockchain adoption is bringing an experience to users that is similar to what they already do while upgrading key aspects in ways that only the blockchain can do.
I won’t share too much beyond this until I have a clear product vision ready, but I will say that many elements of Future Mints will be adopted and integrated into this newer product. The chief one being a community focus. Also, the Future Mints Genesis and Annual Pass (Season One) will unlock features in this new product, though when that will happen, I’m not sure. It could be 2025.
While I intend to spend a good chunk of my spare time working on this product and bringing something new into the world (again), I don’t expect it to be met with any real user demand. I would like to get 500 people signed up for the monthly networking dinner email list, which is my target for 2024. I intend to do this manually with the existing website which is basically a landing page with a one-sentence description and an email input form.
I’m hoping that my modest goals for this year are realistic, so I want to make a prediction that it will happen. I’m going to try to bet on myself more this year.
7. The Future Mints blockchain fundamentals book will be completed, but it won’t publish until 2025
To be right, I need to publish my first rejection letter from editors / publishers since I will only submit to editors / publishers once I have a completed manuscript.
This is another one that I mostly control, so it’s more of a goal than a prediction. With that said, I believe I have a plan in place that will result in completing the blockchain fundamentals book that I set out to write at the beginning of 2023.
Once the manuscript is completed, I will put together a submission plan for publishers and begin trying to find someone who will publish the book (if you have any suggestions or leads, I’m all ears). While I’d be open to self-publishing as a last resort, I’d like to see if I can generate enough interest to work with someone else who would publish the book. Even the best writers with amazing books have notoriously struggled to get their first book published, so I would expect that I will receive dozens, if not hundreds, of rejection letters, and even then I may not find someone else to publish what I’m writing. Since I only intend to send out submissions once I’m ready to engage working with a publisher, receiving at least one of these rejection letters will prove that I hit my prediction for this year.
However, I’m not sure if I’ll publish this book in 2025 for two reasons.
First, I’m not sure that there will be sufficient interest in blockchain technology. This is probably something the publisher will have to advise me on. The Bitcoin ETF (which was only approved by the SEC a little more than a week ago at this point) is going to increase some interest in cryptocurrencies, and the talk of 2024 will likely be when an Ethereum ETF will be approved and launched. However, the masses see cryptocurrencies mostly as a monetary instrument, and if you’ve followed anything I’ve written, you’ll know that I’m most excited about the new capabilities that the blockchain enables, not so much the financial / monetary aspects. So while 2024 may bring more eyeballs to the space, I expect that most people will be focused on the financial aspects and not the consumer aspects. This brings up the question as to whether there will be sufficient demand for a book that talks about what you can actually do with the blockchain.
Granted, this is not a great reason to delay publishing the book (assuming I finish all the writing). Perhaps there’s more value in publishing the book as soon as I can to try to gain a little more credibility instead of publishing when things are trendy again. That’s a valid criticism that I’m going to weigh this year.
With that said, the second reason is the one that I think is going to necessitate the delay. I have repeatedly promised to Future Mints NFT hodlers (both Genesis and Annual Pass) that they’ll receive a free copy of the book, but I don’t want to just give people who hold the NFT a free PDF of the book that can then be uploaded and shared. This defeats the value of holding the NFT since anyone could give you a PDF copy of the book once it’s been unlocked. I literally bought and sold an NFT to do exactly what I just described back in 2022 (or maybe end of 2021). It was a novel way to sell the book for like $300 a pop (I sold it to someone else for like a $10 loss which made sense to me, but there was also the creator + marketplace royalty and gas fees), but it was ultimately a failed NFT use case in my view. I need to identify a way to protect the book as a digital asset, otherwise I’m also undermining the entire argument that the blockchain can unlock new use cases such as a new way to access digital assets.
Plus, I may not want everyone who has ever or will ever own a particular NFT to access the book. I may only want one redemption per NFT. This may be a practical matter since I’m currently unaware of a way to enable someone to access a digital asset (ie the book) only if they own a specific NFT. In other words, the NFT is a key that unlocks access to the book’s content, but only if you have it in your wallet. If you don’t have the NFT in your wallet, then you can’t access the book. Apple, Amazon, and other digital book stores don’t support this concept yet.
Instead, because the blockchain technology isn’t mature yet, I’m expecting that I’ll have to generate a redemption code for the book that will enable someone to download the book from Apple, Amazon, etc onto their device. The book would sit in their personal library and be subject to the terms that Apple, Amazon, etc set on the digital books purchased through their store.
In that scenario, I’d only want to enable the digital book to be added to one person’s library per NFT.
If I let anyone who owned the NFT get a redemption code, then there’s the risk that someone shares their NFT with others and simply generates a new redemption code each time, which could result in a single NFT generating an infinite number of redemption codes where everyone who ever owned the NFT would have permanent access to the book (instead of only access while owning the NFT), defeating the purpose of making an exclusive benefit to the Future Mints NFT hodlers similar to the PDF scenario.
So I have specific requirements for what I’d like to do with the Future Mints NFT benefit. Perhaps someone has already solved this problem (I’ll have to do some research - please reply to this email with any leads / companies so I can check them out and save time), but I’m unaware of a solution yet.
This means I may have to cobble together my own solution where a user connects their wallet, I validate their NFT, confirm that it hasn’t been redeemed yet, and then provide a code in exchange for redeeming the NFT. I may even have to write something to the NFT’s smart contract. Or perhaps, because I didn’t plan this far ahead, I may not actually be able to do anything with the existing smart contract, in which case I’d need to exchange the NFT for another NFT in order to do this redemption per the concept I outlined above.
Whatever solution I wind up deciding upon, I’m pretty sure that this is going to require a bit of effort. While it may sound like the Future Mints NFT access for redeeming this book is a silly thing to spend time on, I fundamentally believe that blockchain technology will change the way we operate in this world, and the only way the world will change is if someone decides to make the change. If no one has come up with a good solution for NFT redemption for a book or digital asset, I could create a potentially new idea and then showcase it to others. If someone else likes what I’ve built, I could potentially offer a service to help others do the same thing. At the least, this could be another chapter in the book, explaining how I handled the digital redemption of the Future Mints NFT for the book.
Wrapping Up
I hope you enjoyed the 2024 Predictions. I had fun coming up with them and writing them out in detail (sadly, I’ve never been accused of being brief). If you have any comments or feedback, please reply and let me know. Also, if you read this far, please give this newsletter a Like. Thanks!
In two weeks, I plan to publish the 2024 Look Forward plan for Future Mints. I’ve already started spending a little time thinking about the year ahead, and I’m far enough along in my planning (I’m using OKRs) that I feel like being open about my goals for the upcoming year will help my accountability. I’ve already shared a little in this Predictions newsletter, and I can’t wait to share more in a couple weeks.