Thread by @AnthonyLeeZhang

Thesis: crypto developers should explore the broad idea of "non-transferable tokens" (NTTs)

In the classical economy, there are many instances where firms attempt to limit the transferability of products they sell

A few examples:

- Tickets (concert, airlines)
- Video games (steam), other e-content (e-books, movies)
- Parking spaces

There's a couple motives for this.

- Price discrimination: firms may want to charge diff prices to diff parties. Transferrability makes this impossible
- Limiting speculation/bubbles: ticket "scalpers" buy tickets to flip, which may crowd out fundamental buyers

Econ theory suggests that, in some cases, limiting transferrability can improve social welfare. For example, in the case of price discrimination, limiting transferrability can allow low-price sales to parties that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford the goods

Crypto seems to be a tech that allows programmable limits to transferrability. Some parties are already exploring this, such as (I believe) @GetProtocol's ticket platform

Taking a step back from econ theory:

A transferrable good is an "asset", in the sense that it has fundamental value, from using it, and financial value, from potentially selling it. A non-transferrable good, after its initial sale, has no "financial" value

Programmed limits on tranferrability modulate the extent to which an asset is purely "fundamental" versus "financial". For example, a concert ticket with taxes on aftermarket sales is a partially de-financialized asset

"Limits on transferrability" thus seems like a part of the token design space, which has demonstrated + potentially socially valuable use cases in traditional markets, that crypto can potentially do much better from a technological standpoint

Unsurprisingly, this already exists, apparently

https://twitter.com/eric_ruleman/status/1394018071384367109

cc @lisajytan