Words matter. “The limits of my language means the limits of my world,” Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote. This is one of the reasons why I welcome the recent discussion about words to describe end-user use cases and technological developments in the crypto community. Crypto – do we still use that word? (Yes.)

Base has recently started using ‘onchain‘ to describe many of the phenomena previously associated with the term ‘web3’ – a word I’ve increasingly tried to avoid after the last cycle. It can have a pretentious connotation and lead to negative reactions. During a panel at Bright Moments Paris, I also learned about the history of the hyphen in technology penetration: many technological concepts have in common that as they evolve and get closer to mass adoption, they drop the hyphen if they have one. E-mail became email, on-line became online. Now it’s ‘onchain’. Other words get dropped completely as the technology matures, like cyberspace or information superhighway in the early days of the World Wide Web.

Words matter. They also construct our worlds. ‘NFTs’ and ‘crypto’ are seen differently people’s eyes than ‘digital collectibles’ and ‘onchain’. At 0xNXT, the creative studio for Mercedes-Benz’s onchain digital art and digital collectibles activities, we have been using the term ‘digital objects’ instead of ‘NFTs’ since our launch in May 2023. This seemed to us to be the more accessible term. Of course, we use “blockchain-based” and “blockchain technology” when we go one level deeper into the technology, but we have learned that explaining the use case (“What is unique and what can I do with it?”) is a better onboarding than the technological background.

Concepts and words evolve. Some are dropped, others stick. It will be very interesting to see how sticky ‘onchain’ is during the approaching bull market.

This post was first published on my Mirror blog.

One reason centralized exchanges have flourished is because of the high access barriers today’s self-custodial solutions, wallets and hardware security devices, still have. We have seen where this approach has led us.

Self-custody software interfaces are still rudimentary, can be confusing and current hardware security devices are clunky, look like USB sticks (which can distort the perception and make it look like the owned assets are actually stored on the device, like a hard drive) and can be hard to set-up for regular people.

Security has to to be convenient, too. We need the self-custody experience and products to be better. In other words: We need to repackage crypto hardware, software and experience as consumer products. Over the last couple of days, we saw two important signals, which I want to point out: amanda0x‘s call for a better wallet software experience and the introduction of the e-ink Ledger Stax, co-developed with Tony Fadell.

Reimagining the experience around interacting with digital art, digital collectibles and cryptocurrency is essential to push blockchain-based technology to the next level. This growing realization in the community is an important first step.

I hope that three other essential experiences—on-ramp, discovery and display—are next. Centralized exchanges are still an important on-ramp channel; Instagram feeds and TikTok are still better discovery tools than a marketplace like OpenSea; and I still have not found a beautiful, quick way to display my NFTs especially in a smart phone environment.

A more consumer-friendly experience will be crucial to improve in order to onboard the next million users. Let’s do it.

This post was first published on my Mirror blog.

There is this anecdote about Joe Kennedy, JFK’s father, who got out of the stock market shortly before the Great Depression, because his shoeshine boy gave him investment tips. It is now referred to the Shoeshine Boy Indicator.

I think we’re at a stage of the NFT (collectibles) market, where scams, rug pulls and unethical influencer behavior are everywhere, with some estimates as high as 80% of all current NFT (PFP?) projects. This comes in addition to the usual “number go up” and “to the moon” shills and paper hand “accusations” for those taking profits, which have long been common in NFT collecting.

There definitely is an NFT speculation cycle going on right now, which evidently has to come to an end some time. Everybody and their mother are talking about NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

But right now, in my subjective perception, the promises of “get rich quick”, which attract average retail investors frustrated by stock and ETF performances through influencers leveraging their audience to sell NFT projects, are broken more often than not. Since I believe that markets are narratives, the more a “current NFT projects are scams” narrative hardens, the more likely is the current speculation cycle to end—the bubble to burst.

When, that of course is the question.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that

• every new NFT project is a scam at the moment,
• the NFT speculation bubble burst is coming right now,
• it will be permanent or
• that I’ve lost all conviction in new NFT projects

—but more DYOR and caution is definitely advised in the coming weeks and months.

This post was first published on my Mirror blog.