Thread by @IntuitMachine

The business model of NFTs is to conjure up the impression of exclusivity. That's not unlike many other business models:

https://twitter.com/DGlaucomflecken/status/1484679759829209090

Let's not forget that FaceBook began by pandering to exclusivity (i.e. owning an email address in a prestigious university). All economics requires scarcity, exclusivity is a kind of scarcity that exists in a world of abundance.

Many don't recognize the two sides of decentralized ledger technology (i.e. blockchain). On one side is the idea that exclusive control of the network is prevented. On the flip side, the network makes possible human notions of scarcity in a virtual world of abundance.

A function of religion is for humans to transcend their own cognitive biases. This transcendence involves seeing the world beyond our immediate and earthly perspectives. Religion is the virtualization of reality.

Religion offers humans the promise that scarcity in this world leads to abundance in the afterlife. The virtual world offers abundance, but we are unfamiliar with and hence uncomfortable with abundance.

Hence we invent new kinds of scarcities in the virtual world. So it should be no surprise that cryptocurrencies and NFTs can be as real to many as their counterparts in the real world. They are real because they tickle our cognitive biases as to how we believe the world to be.

The problem with abundance is that it counterintuitively leads to scarcity. A scarcity that is a consequence of our own cognitive limitations. The internet made conspicuous scarcity of attention. This led to its exploitation and the rise of trillion-dollar corporations.

Abundance is problematic for human beings because we have limited minds. We fear worlds of unlimited diversity. We fear worlds that are in constant change. We seek the familiar and the status quo.