Will NFTs Save Entertainment? Of Course Not

But what can they do? ESG answers

@mangotango8X8 placed their The Batman NFT on Twitter in March.

Like your first kiss, you never forget your first “technology/business hype cycle”.

I thought of this recently reading an Economist article on 3D printing.

Sales of 3d-printing services and machines grew by more than 17% in 2021, to reach around $15bn, according to preliminary estimates for a report by Wohlers Associates, a firm that tracks the industry. However, as useful as additive manufacturing has become, it struggles to compete on cost and speed with more established ways of making things, such as injecting molten plastic into moulds or stamping out metal parts with a giant press.

Wait, 3D printing is only a $15 billion business right now?

That’s tiny, especially compared to the hype. Circa 2011 — and 2014 and 2017 and so on — 3D printing threatened to upend entire business models, if not the global economy! Stores would replace logistics with printers. Amazon would 3D print your order and ship it to you. Nike, Gucci and other physical goods retailers would go the way of the dinosaur, since anyone could print their goods anywhere!

Obviously, most of that hasn’t come to pass.

Not every new technology changes the world. In entertainment, think of 3D theatrical movies, VR, Blu-ray discs, and 3D television as potentially monumental disruptors that sort of didn’t matter. The first was expensive and consumers didn’t want it, the second hasn’t had an impact yet, the third had an impact, but got overtaken by another disruptor (streaming), and the fourth never launched.

This got me thinking of entertainment’s current “disruptor”: NFTs.

Specifically, will they “change everything” or simply fade into obscurity?