To be perfectly honest, I think NFTs are kind of silly. They’re about as silly as the notion that I’m championing them, claiming they’re solarpunk, or that I’m a crypto bro who is “heavily invested in cryptocurrency” and trying to sell your children for large Ethereum or Bitcoin purses.
I’m so “heavily invested” that I’ve never owned, mined, or spent crypto currency. I’ve never bought, owned, created and minted, or sold a single NFT.
I don’t know a whole lot about NFTs, or cryptocurrency, or blockchain technology other than some basics. I’m not a particularly technical minded person, so when I start reading or hearing about the technical details of crypto and NFTs work on a technological level, my eyes tend to glaze over and I take a nap.
My personal opinion of NFTs in particular, insofar as I understand them at all, is that they’re more energy intensive as compared to other business transactions and household energy usage. It’s my understanding that this isn’t a function of NFTs themselves in terms of something inherent to their nature, but rather it’s a function of the way the transactions are carried out, particularly the fact that they can only be paid for with cryptocurrency. While not all cryptocurrency is energy intensive, the most popular ones—including Ethereum, which is the only way to buy NFTs — are due to the way they are mined and collected. While this particular issue is surmountable for NFTs, it doesn’t seem like there is a lot of desire with the NFT community to move in that direction, though there is certainly some.
Of course energy usage and climate change aren’t the only things about NFTs that make them suspect in their current (i.e. first) and still very, very new incarnation. A common critique that I very much agree with is that they create artificial scarcity that encourages some the worst practices of capitalism such as artificial inflation, unfair distribution and hoarding of resources. There is also a concern over fraud being raised by many artists. In addition, I simply find it amusing that people are willing to pay for NFTs in the first place when you can just right click save them for free. I don’t understand why people would want to spend a bunch of money on something like that.
In general then, I’m not a big fan of NFTs. I’m certainly not their champion, and I’m certainly not heavily invested in them. Such accusations are simply sloppy slander on the part of bored and obsessive people.
But I am also willing to hear what people have to say about it. I’m not sorry for that, and it makes some people really, viscerally angry with me.
Even though I’m not a fan of NFTs, the fact is that I’m a science fiction writer who imagines future worlds. In particular, I like to imagine solarpunk future worlds where humans, technology, nature live in harmony. So if someone says that NFTs can be different and can be used for good, then I’m curious. I want to hear what they have to say. It might not change my mind, but I’m happy to listen.
A perfect example of the type of future that could be imagined was thought up by Kim Stanley Robinson in his amazing novel, Ministry for the Future. In the story, a form of cryptocurrency called carbon coins is developed that can be earned by significantly reducing use of fossil fuels and by sequestering carbon. Eventually it becomes the global standard currency, at which point blockchain digital tracking technology is attached to the currency in order to prevent super rich people from hiding their money in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.
What? Cryptocurrency helping to end fossil fuels and leading to a more equitable economy and distribution of wealth? Is that even possible?
I don’t know. But as science fiction writer, imagining and investigating futures like that is fascinating. And I believe it’s very important for our society.
But that makes a lot of people mad, which is totally their prerogative. I wish them well in their crusade against NFTs, and their attempt to destroy anyone and anything that disagrees with them. While I’m not a fan of NFTs myself, I’m going to keep focusing on ending fossil fuels and capitalism, because they are the root causes, the real problems.
If we end fossil fuel use then NFTs and cryptocurrency wouldn’t cause climate change. If we ended capitalism then they might just cease to exist all together. But getting rid of NFTs or cryptocurrency most certainly isn’t, in and of itself, going to get rid of fossil fuels and end their use.
