Recently, we posted one of our LinkedIn “fortune cookie” ads (so called, because they’re designed to impart a smidge of “aha” with a satisfying crunch) that read like so:

As a public service, and by way of following up on the thought, The Reductionist would like to share this from Shelly Palmer who, in the opinion of someone highly unlikely to make a career pivot to blockchain mining, is among the most interesting tech experts in the blogviosphere:

“In the spirit of The Pirate Bay, a popular piracy site from the past, Geoffrey Huntley has created The NFT Bay: a repository containing 15 terabytes of JPEGs (NFT images). The site asks, “Did you know that a NFT is just a hyperlink to an image that’s usually hosted on Google Drive or another web 2.0 host?” It goes on to say, "As web2.0 webhosts are known to go offline (404 errors) this handy torrent contains all of the NFT's so that future generations can study this generation's tulip mania and collectively go… 'WTF? We destroyed our planet for THIS?!'"

Yes, you can now download every NFT that has been minted with one click. You won't own them, of course, but you'll have them. To Mr. Huntley's point, his service is for your convenience; you can (and could) always right-click and download the content referenced by (or "attached" to) any NFT, which is where Mr. Huntley's "tulip mania" comment comes from.”

To put this in perspective, let’s compare your “typical” NFT of a rare piece of art, an iconic photo, or even an “exclusive” bit of brand memorabilia with, say, the crappy little plastic toy that still comes in a box Crackerjacks. In line with the time-honored “greater fool” economics theory, figure the former will cost you anywhere from $50 up to that $538 million recently paid for CryptoPunk #9998. The price of Crackerjacks on Amazon: about 85¢ per. And that comes with free shipping and no risk of a “tulip bubble” market pop.

Now ask yourself, what do you really “own” with both; what, per Mr. Palmer’s blog you “really have”; and, what’s each really worth? Especially when you factor in the energy/environmental costs and consequences of crypto. 

Not to join the growing roster of online advertising industry finger-pointers, but there we go again, lemming-like, jumping off the cliff of cool, and taking our brand clients with us. 

Caveat pixels.