NFTs and Private Clubs for SHIB - Social Spaces for Crypto Coins
What’s fueling the rise of SHIB? There’s some evidence that they’re engaged in a marketing blitz right now, which is fueling the dramatic price increase we’ve been seeing in the last few days. Will it last, though, is the question. (Video version below, btw.)
I took a dive into Shiba Token’s websites and announcements, looking for something resembling an actual product. Their NFT-based “social club” was the closest thing I could find -- basically using a SHIB-based NFT as a “ticket” of admission to their own “private clubs”. (Hence the fancy top hat and suit -- and developing a smoking habit too, apparently, lol.) Crypto Apes and a few other NFT projects out there have done similar things, with much success -- people seem to like hanging out with like-minded folks, apparently.
shiboshis.shibaswap.com/
Regardless of what you think of the project itself, I do think that the fact that even SHIB is getting into the “NFT as a social signal” market shows that this is probably where crypto will be moving towards in the near future. It’s often not about the NFT itself (NFT of a rock? Who cares?) but what the act of buying something signals to the rest of the world (I am someone with an ironic sense of humor -- let’s hang out!). Best not to take this market too literally, imo.
So, what does this mean for projects like Dogecoin, who’s probably feeling the pressure right now? One thing DOGE fans don’t like to talk about is the fact that their coin’s main selling point (stable, useful) actually runs counter to the idea of their coin “mooning”, making everyone rich. It doesn’t seem like they’ve come to terms with that, yet. But they do have the advantage of having a strong community backing with real developer support, so the upcoming DOGE-ETH bridge and DOGE-based meme-NFT markets could be their saving grace.
In my opinion, what will “save” DOGE from falling into obscurity is the community support behind DOGE-minted NFTs, which will be very tough for other coins to compete with since the energy behind it won’t even be close. But the way for DOGE fans to get rich off of this stuff would be through the NFT market, not the coin itself. SHIB itself is pretty clear that it's a coin made for speculation -- whereas DOGE has taken the nobler route of making a coin that might actually be useful for people to use. You can't have it both ways, though, and we're going to see this dynamic play out internally as the two coins start to compete with each other.
I took a dive into Shiba Token’s websites and announcements, looking for something resembling an actual product. Their NFT-based “social club” was the closest thing I could find -- basically using a SHIB-based NFT as a “ticket” of admission to their own “private clubs”. (Hence the fancy top hat and suit -- and developing a smoking habit too, apparently, lol.) Crypto Apes and a few other NFT projects out there have done similar things, with much success -- people seem to like hanging out with like-minded folks, apparently.
shiboshis.shibaswap.com/
Regardless of what you think of the project itself, I do think that the fact that even SHIB is getting into the “NFT as a social signal” market shows that this is probably where crypto will be moving towards in the near future. It’s often not about the NFT itself (NFT of a rock? Who cares?) but what the act of buying something signals to the rest of the world (I am someone with an ironic sense of humor -- let’s hang out!). Best not to take this market too literally, imo.
So, what does this mean for projects like Dogecoin, who’s probably feeling the pressure right now? One thing DOGE fans don’t like to talk about is the fact that their coin’s main selling point (stable, useful) actually runs counter to the idea of their coin “mooning”, making everyone rich. It doesn’t seem like they’ve come to terms with that, yet. But they do have the advantage of having a strong community backing with real developer support, so the upcoming DOGE-ETH bridge and DOGE-based meme-NFT markets could be their saving grace.
In my opinion, what will “save” DOGE from falling into obscurity is the community support behind DOGE-minted NFTs, which will be very tough for other coins to compete with since the energy behind it won’t even be close. But the way for DOGE fans to get rich off of this stuff would be through the NFT market, not the coin itself. SHIB itself is pretty clear that it's a coin made for speculation -- whereas DOGE has taken the nobler route of making a coin that might actually be useful for people to use. You can't have it both ways, though, and we're going to see this dynamic play out internally as the two coins start to compete with each other.
