NFT: Empowering Artists and Charities to Embrace the Digital Movement

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Depend­ing on who you ask, NFTs are either an excit­ing new way to invest or a bear­ish and over-hyped sec­tor. Be that as it may, jour­nal­ists, investors, and col­lec­tors have been pay­ing close atten­tion to the growth of the NFT mar­ket over the past year. NFTs con­tin­ue to be one of the most pop­u­lar Web3 entry points, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for every­one from casu­al art enthu­si­asts to cryp­to bil­lion­aires to own a unique asset stored on the blockchain. 

As NFT vision­ar­ies recent­ly point­ed out, NFTs also have the poten­tial to be used for amaz­ing caus­es beyond col­lect­ing dig­i­tal assets. Over the past six months, com­mu­ni­ties have launched NFTs to increase sup­port for caus­es such as tes­tic­u­lar can­cer, human traf­fick­ing and the war in Ukraine. While many believe the NFT trend is final­ly on a path to sus­tain­able growth, its poten­tial as a tool for char­i­ties is poised to reach excit­ing new heights in the months ahead. 

This mis­sion-dri­ven inno­va­tion is not a new con­cept for the cryp­to and Web3 worlds. Meta­verse worlds con­nect peo­ple who might oth­er­wise nev­er have met in the real world. Dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies and DeFi have cre­at­ed finan­cial access and free­dom for mil­lions, if not bil­lions, of peo­ple. In the space close­ly relat­ed to longevi­ty (the sci­ence behind health­i­er, longer human lives), advances in research are allow­ing peo­ple to live com­fort­ably in their bod­ies longer. The world we live in today is very dif­fer­ent from what it was just five years ago – and it’s not stop­ping. The next thing to be dis­rupt­ed (or, in my opin­ion, improved) will be char­i­ta­ble giv­ing through NFTs.

Relat­ed: NFT Phil­an­thropy Demon­strates New Ways to Give Back

Show your support

In the mid-2000s, we saw a trend where sup­port­ing your favorite caus­es became all the rage. Bright yel­low Live­strong wrist­bands, WWF shirts and tote bags embla­zoned with char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion logos have become an easy way for peo­ple to show the world they care about a cer­tain cause. While bumper stick­ers and print­ed water bot­tles remain a com­mon way for peo­ple to show their phil­an­thropic side today, there’s a lack of high-qual­i­ty, high-lev­el rewards that pro­vide the same expo­sure. . When donors donate to a char­i­ty, their con­tri­bu­tion is usu­al­ly rec­og­nized only with a thank you note and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have their name inscribed on a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque. It’s defin­i­tive proof, but it lacks the engage­ment and com­mu­ni­ty that peo­ple find inspiring. 

NFTs relat­ed to char­i­ta­ble dona­tions are mak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of char­i­ta­ble sup­port trendy in the dig­i­tal world. Char­i­ty-cre­at­ed NFTs aren’t just devel­oped with a cause in mind – they’re also designed to be engag­ing and excit­ing. Pur­chas­ing a mis­sion-focused NFT also yields a beau­ti­ful piece of dig­i­tal art to show the world. As Insta­gram and Spo­ti­fy pre­pare to bring NFT func­tion­al­i­ty to their plat­forms, the future of NFT-based dona­tions appears to be increas­ing­ly social. There is poten­tial for com­mu­ni­ties already on these social plat­forms to ral­ly behind mean­ing­ful caus­es, as we saw with the Twit­ter com­mu­ni­ty help­ing fund a mem­ber over­whelmed with high med­ical bills. The cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty has proven itself to be a pow­er­ful force time and time again, which makes me con­fi­dent of a bright future for NFTs and charity.

NFTs benefit artists and foundations

While there’s a lot of atten­tion paid to the lat­est celebri­ties join­ing the NFT craze and new drops with rare art, what buy­ing an NFT actu­al­ly means for a char­i­ty is less explored. I have already men­tioned that it is time for the phil­an­thropic sec­tor to embrace the cryp­to wave, because adopt­ing dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies and tech­nolo­gies like NFTs can attract vision­ary investors eager for inno­v­a­tive ideas and new ways of look­ing at the world. . 

When these vision­ar­ies, or any­one else, pur­chase a goal-ori­ent­ed NFT, they have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to unique­ly show their sup­port for a cause. It’s also impor­tant not to over­look the artist in these con­ver­sa­tions. Cre­ators are using NFTs to rede­fine their rela­tion­ships with sup­port­ers, includ­ing encour­ag­ing their fans to sup­port the caus­es they care about. There is a pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion that buy­ing NFTs is a new way for investors to spend money. 

Mis­sion-dri­ven NFTs chal­lenge this nar­ra­tive by show­ing the world that NFTs are a way to unite char­i­ta­ble giv­ing and artist sup­port. They allow orga­ni­za­tions to ben­e­fit from new tech­nolo­gies while remain­ing true to their mis­sion and val­ues. I believe longevi­ty is one area that will embrace this tech­nol­o­gy with ease. Longevi­ty sup­port­ers are for­ward-think­ing lumi­nar­ies who also hap­pen to be cryp­to enthu­si­asts – a per­fect match for NFT-relat­ed dona­tions. Hope­ful­ly we’ll see more about that very soon.

Relat­ed: Where Men Want­ed, Women Did: Empow­er­ing Female Cre­ators with NFTs and Crypto

A new approach to charitable giving

In gen­er­al, the phrase “char­i­ta­ble giv­ing” has had an ele­ment of “old-fash­ioned” phil­an­thropy. It reminds me of writ­ing paper checks mailed to your favorite 501©3. Sure, it always makes you feel good to sup­port a cause, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of ongo­ing com­mit­ment. Build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of pas­sion­ate, inno­va­tion-dri­ven sup­port­ers is an incred­i­ble way for char­i­ties to reach new audi­ences and achieve their fundrais­ing goals. How­ev­er, it will take a shift in the way we think about giv­ing to make it a reality. 

In my opin­ion, the new char­i­ta­ble dona­tion is cryp­to-native, social and decen­tral­ized. By accept­ing cryp­to dona­tions direct­ly, you can donate direct­ly to foun­da­tions, with­out hav­ing to cash out your cryp­to and incur tax lia­bil­i­ties. The social ele­ment of giv­ing will allow you to high­light the caus­es that mat­ter most to you through your NFT col­lec­tion. And it will be tru­ly decen­tral­ized, which means any­one, any­where in the world can sup­port impor­tant caus­es. While donor recog­ni­tion din­ners may be a thing of the past, a vir­tu­al net­work of con­nect­ed sup­port­ers with diverse back­grounds and per­spec­tives offers an excit­ing alter­na­tive future. NFT-based util­i­ties are also an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful tool to help com­mu­ni­ties track mem­bers and reward con­tri­bu­tions with ben­e­fits and access to exclu­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties and ser­vices beyond the dis­tri­b­u­tion of a dig­i­tal image. 

We are liv­ing longer and live in a more con­nect­ed soci­ety than ever. It fol­lows that we should then be more sup­port­ive and con­cerned about phil­an­thropy – but, to do that, we need to bring char­i­ta­ble giv­ing into the fold.

The views, thoughts and opin­ions expressed here­in are those of the author alone and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect or rep­re­sent the views and opin­ions of TBEN.

Gar­ri Zmudze is Man­ag­ing Part­ner of LongeVC, a Swiss and Cyprus-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm accel­er­at­ing inno­v­a­tive star­tups in biotech­nol­o­gy and longevi­ty. He is a sea­soned busi­ness expert and angel investor with sev­er­al suc­cess­ful exits in biotech and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. He is a long­time sup­port­er and investor in biotech com­pa­nies includ­ing Insil­i­co Med­i­cine, Deep Longevi­ty and Basepaws. 

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