NFTs Are Attracting A Lot Of Star Power From Hollywood; Should We Be Worried?

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Lind­say Lohan, Jim­my Fal­lon, Paris Hilton, Matt Damon, and Reese With­er­spoon. These are only some Hol­ly­wood heavy-hit­ters that have thrown their weight behind NFTs and cryp­to in the last few years. In recent mem­o­ry, Lind­say has prob­a­bly been the most vocal about it, and the reac­tion from the Twit­ter­verse has been mixed, prob­a­bly skewed more towards out­rage than acceptance. 

As with every­thing involv­ing celebri­ties, there is some con­tro­ver­sy around the increased involve­ment of celebri­ties in the NFT space. There seems to be a lev­el of inter­con­nect­ed­ness between celebri­ties, the pow­er­ful agen­cies that rep­re­sent them, and NFTs. Super agen­cies like CAA have large stakes in the NFT mar­ket­place, Opensea, and they also hap­pen to rep­re­sent celebri­ties like Jim­my Fal­lon. Reese With­er­spoon is also mar­ried to Jim Toth, one of the agen­cy’s most pow­er­ful agents. 

The con­clu­sion that most skep­tics seem to be draw­ing is that these celebri­ties are gear­ing up for what one expert called an ‘‘expand­ing, inter­con­nect­ed, celebri­ty-based Web3 finan­cial, cul­tur­al com­plex.’’ The ques­tion we then need to answer is, are NFTs pow­er­ful enough to stand on their own and not require this much star pow­er to push it? 

Who stands to gain?

Jor­dan Fried, CEO of NFT.com, responds in the affir­ma­tive to this sim­ple ques­tion, ‘‘The answer is quite frankly a sim­ple yes,’’ Fried opines, ‘‘Like every one of us, celebri­ties and the agen­cies that back them are only try­ing to get a slice of what is sure to be the next big game-chang­er in the finan­cial mar­kets. It helps that such rec­og­niz­able faces are throw­ing their weight behind NFTs, but it could be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive if not done properly.’’

‘‘What con­cerns me more and what has con­cerned me since NFTs came on the scene is that the com­mon man would prob­a­bly sleep on it long enough for these celebri­ties and the big tech entre­pre­neurs to monop­o­lize the game.’’

Fried is a blockchain evan­ge­list and cryp­to-cap­i­tal­ist. He’s the founder of NFT.com and the Chair­man and CEO of Immutable Hold­ings. He has helped launch a score of suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies, from being a found­ing mem­ber of Hed­era Hashgraph
HBAR
(Hedera.com) to being Buffered VPN’s co-founder and CEO. 

Hav­ing watched many trends come on the scene and gain noto­ri­ety and being a bene­fac­tor of most of them, includ­ing Cryp­to, Fried recent­ly admit­ted in an inter­view: ‘‘The inter­net is kind of unfair in the way it oper­ates. In exchange for free search­es, social net­work­ing, or free mes­sag­ing, we give up the right to our data, and we become the product.’’

Fried is among the few stake­hold­ers in the NFT mar­ket that have pushed for more involve­ment from ‘‘mere mor­tals’’ (to quote Matt Damon in his Crypto.com advert) in the NFT space. He seems adamant that in the (near) future, peo­ple will have a par­al­lel dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty, and avatars, cryp­to wal­lets, and dig­i­tal goods will be the norm. In his words, ‘‘If done right this could be a great lev­el­er that makes the world a lit­tle bit fair­er. Every day peo­ple stand to gain a lot.’’

Star power

In all fair­ness, not all celebri­ties have jumped on the NFT band­wag­on. Mul­ti­ple Gram­my Award win­ner Kanye West has recent­ly come out with a post on Insta­gram where he bashed NFTs while still leav­ing room for poten­tial future involve­ment in typ­i­cal Ye fash­ion; ‘‘My focus is on build­ing real prod­ucts in the real world. Real food, real clothes, real shel­ter. Do not ask me to do an [exple­tive] NFT…ask me later.’’

The OC super­star Ben McKen­zie has also bashed celebri­ties’ con­tin­ued involve­ment in push­ing NFTs and has warned peo­ple not to take finan­cial advice from celebri­ties. Ben’s log­ic is cor­rect in many ways, and it is more than like­ly that these celebri­ties are only look­ing out for them­selves. How­ev­er, by that same log­ic, these celebri­ties ought to at least pos­sess some degree of belief in the poten­tial of NFTs to risk invest­ing in them. 

If we are not to take our advice from celebri­ties, we have to turn to the experts to fig­ure out how the NFT boom should unfold going for­ward and how we can get involved. 

‘‘Decen­tral­ize NFT own­er­ship’’ is Fried’s sim­ple sug­ges­tion and the mod­el that has informed NFT.com’s strat­e­gy. ‘‘This is why we built NFT.com as a plat­form gov­erned by users and for the users. The users run our plat­form. They can own their pres­ence and page on the plat­form, mint their coins, and cre­ate and sell their NFTs.’’

This strat­e­gy is unique and, if wide­ly repli­cat­ed, has the poten­tial to cre­ate more fair­ness in the world and recre­ate the effect of the ear­ly cryp­to boom where instant mil­lion­aires and influ­encers were created. 

The idea of dig­i­tal assets or NFTs ties in per­fect­ly with the meta­verse, which is wide­ly agreed to be the future of tech. So it is easy to see NFTs gain­ing wide­spread accep­tance and main­stream adoption. 

NFTs would like­ly get legit­i­ma­cy from wide­spread accep­tance and adop­tion among every­day peo­ple. This kind of mass involve­ment is a far bet­ter reg­u­la­tor of the val­ue of NFTs than the back­ing of Hol­ly­wood and big tech players. 

Would NFTs be the game-chang­er for tech and the finan­cial mar­kets? It does appear to be on track or doing just that at the moment, but to reit­er­ate the instruc­tive words of Ye, “ask us lat­er,” and we would undoubt­ed­ly have a clear­er picture.

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