Fuck AI

Yeah, I kind of agree with you. Both NFTs (and cryptocurrency as a whole) and AI are overhyped - and in the same ways and by a lot of the same shitty people - but cryptocurrency's core product line is a lot more useless than AI's.

I mean, crypto supporters have been saying for almost twenty years (sigh) that Bitcoin and its successors are disruptive technology, that it's too early to see what they can really do, that Bitcoin is going to change the world someday... LLMs, for all their sins, went from zero to integrated into half the devices on Earth and half of private sector employees' workflows in less than four years. Looking at an actual disruptive technology really brings into focus the complete bullshit of cryptocurrency hype.

NFTs were a thing before they became associated with monkey images. They have a real use case, and arguably are the most useful thing in the whole cryptocurrency space. I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out on this. And before you ask, I don't own any NFTs.

NFTs were never meant to represent ownership rights to monkey pictures, and that is indeed a stupid use case with absolutely no utility. They were intended to represent ownership rights to tangible, real-life assets, like stocks, bonds, or land. The idea was that you could have any of these assets, which in real life typically take the form of a paper certificate or digital book entry, and then replace it with an NFT so you can do fun stuff with it. Most of the benefit comes from two properties: firstly, that everything done on a blockchain needs to be authenticated using cryptographic keys, and secondly, the calculations which occur must come from public source code which people can audit and trust (note: blockchains typically punish excessively complicated code by making it more expensive to run), and therefore automated programs can carry out many actions typically entrusted to humans.

Let me give some actual examples o real-world utility:

• Land registry: An NFT deed can be recorded on a public blockchain. Past transfer history can be seen, and transferring that deed would require a cryptographic signature from the owner. Depending on how the system is designed, it can also be made to require a secondary signature, which could represent a notary stamp issued by a notary public. This system is much more resistant to low-level deed fraud which pops up on local news channels from time to time.
• Public asset transfers: The land registry concept can be expanded to include everything, including bonds and stocks, all of which would require cryptographic signatures to transfer, and which leave records of the transfer, useful for law enforcement purposes or to detect fraud.
• Virtual mortgage: An NFT can be mortgaged, and that mortgage could also be optionally crowdfunded (if the system allows for it). Interest payments would be calculated automatically, and the presence of the mortgage would encumber the deed token which prevents it from being transferred. While the technical capability exists to allow the token to be repossessed and auctioned off automatically if the mortgage is defaulted, obviously this is not a good idea to automate and there would need to be court supervision
• Escrow: A deed token can be held by an automated escrow which transfers the deed upon payment of an agreed purchase price.
• Collateralised loan: Similar concept to the mortgage, but can use an NFT representing some other tangible asset instead, like stock certificates and bonds.
• Auctions: NFT deeds, bonds, and stocks can be sold at auction by automated auctioneer programs which automatically collect payment from the winning bidder and transfer the token. This can be combined with the escrow from before.
• Stock exchange: Stock exchanges already sort of exist. They are called DEXes. But with NFTs that represent actual stock then they can operate as real stock exchanges. The benefit of doing it this way is that because everything is public and verifiable, it's easier to catch and prove securities fraud and insider trading.
• Government bond: Government bonds can automatically pay out their interest and maturity according to the terms of the bond. They can also be pledged as collateral for loans (see above).
• Identity control: It is possible to restrict any or all functionality for any given NFT by defining the accounts allowed to interact with it. The reason I mention this is because it is usually desirable to know who the real-life identity behind an action is. It is possible to design a system where only accounts tied to real-world identities can interact with the financial system.