» HADOUKEN « would you buy a video of KD's first 3-pointer as a net for $600?
Because I'm selling one!
To be clear, I purchased it for $300. Insane? Not really. When taken into consideration that multiple Lebron James and Zion Williamson videos have been sold for six figures, my immutable piece of NBA history actually feels more like a steal.
Just a few weeks into its open Beta, NBA Topshots is all the rage among the cryptocollectibles community. A motley crew of speculators, blockchain enthusiasts, degenerate gamblers, /wallstreetbets-types and bona fide professional basketball geeks, the NBA Topshots landscape is as diverse as it is wild — the Discord is P-O-P-P-I-N. Created by the company that brought us Cryptokitties, the world’s first cryptocollectible that was responsible for slowing down the Ethereum blockchain to a crawl, NBA Topshots is essentially digitizing the trading cards market. And by doing so, they are further developing the notion of “digital scarcity” — a concept I wrote about in some detail a few months back — through what’s known as Non-Fungible Tokens (indivisible crypto assets that identify information stored on a blockchain).
Built on the Flow blockchain, each NBA Topshot “Moment” (or, as the kids say: “Mome”) is a 5 to 10 second clip of varying importance/excitement from the 2019 - 2021 seasons. Released once-to-twice weekly in 3-card packs, these videos range from mundane assists to historically significant Moments (like my KD Mome). And if you are an astute reader, I’m sure you guessed it: the packs sell out fast, oftentimes breaking the Beta in the process — yesterday’s release wreaked havoc as members of the community desperately tried to get their hands on as many of the 25,000 available packs. At $9.99, each of the 3 cards you receive, no matter how terrible they might be (have a look at some of my shitty Momes), are likely trading for more on the secondary market. After hours of error messages, being locked out of my account and scouring Discord for answers, I was able to secure 2 packs. That’s right: a pathetic 2.
And when you open the pack, boy do they give you a memorable experience! Gen Z friendly rap music and ambient (though kind of raucous) stadium noises emit from your device as the packs spin, flash and explode on your screen. There’s confetti, whistles, buzzers and all kinds of celebratory auditory and visual effects. The copy is cute and ironic. The whole thing feels like a Sprite commercial.
By the way, did I mention that the dopamine rush is enormous? You find yourself thinking like a crackhead: How much are these cards trading for on the secondary market? Can I justify a higher price because the serial number on this Moment is oddly relevant (e.g., owning the 2323 out of 2500 Lebron dunk)? Should I have left the pack unopened — will there be some weird voyeur economy 20 years from now? Who from my social circle needs to know about this?
The most exciting part about the entire experience is postulating about where this technology may go. Currently, these Momes are short videos that were produced elsewhere and imported to the blockchain in “scarce” amounts. What happens when videos are created explicitly for this purpose — videos that can only be accessed through this technology? How much would a young aspiring coach pay to purchase 1-of-10 videos of Phil Jackson teaching the triangle offense with commentary from Jordan and Pippen? What about “signed” Moments: when limited edition videos come with an interstitial of a player talking about what it was like to live in that Moment? Finally, what happens when these Momes are integrated into other technologies — when you can build memorabilia cases inside your virtual home in Animal Crossing or some yet-to-be-developed Decentraland metaverse?
It’s really amazing to see the concept of “title” and “possession” come rushing back into the conversation. And it’s happening while we continue to entrench ourselves in subscription services — Netflix, Spotify etc. — that were once (still?) heralded as the end of ownership. Simply put: scarcity + ownership = compelling no matter the asset. And as we continue to be suspicious of the institutions upon which our global society was built, we will look to park our assets elsewhere. In a world where stonks only go up, money printer go BRRR and basically everything you learned about our financial systems have seemingly been debunked in the last 10 years, is it really that odd that some people would rather “invest” their dollars in digital representations of NBA history rather than depositing them into accounts overseen by the overlords who don’t seem to know which direction is up sometimes?