Well, I at least partially agree with most of that. I would say that Flybondi’s use of NFT tickets still seems like an excuse to outsource a large portion of their customee services while still taking a 2% cut of any flight changes, with minumal (if any) customer benefit. I remember while ago hearing that concert ticket vendors were experimenting with NFT tickets, and I guess I could see the use case their, but I’d still say that has trade offs with physical tickets, and could best be described as a lateral move. I’d be curious to read any info on how B2B NFTs are used, if you have any links.

I do have disagree on Zuckerberg’s VR gamble, though. AR is significantly different than VR, and he went hard on full-blown VR tech. He may be able to adapt it to AR going forward, but that’s probably going to be salvaging a loss for at least the short to mid-term. Even if it does give him a strong leg up on AR, that’s not really his gambling paying off, that’s placing a bad bet and getting lucky anyway.

You know, when reddit first started, no one minded long replies, in fact they were considered a mark of excellence and understanding.

First of all, thank you for this. It is quite possibly the funniest sentence I’ve ever read on the internet, and I will be laughing at it for the rest of the day. The gamatical errors really give it an extra layer. Absolute perfection.

Second, quantity isn’t quality, especially when it comes to writing. If it was, editor wouldn’t be a job. The length of your comment doesn’t change the fact that it is mostly pro-NFT arguments I heard in 2023, none of which materialized. Oh, NFTs could give you instant access to an apartment? That’s super helpful in a world where lockboxes don’t exist!

Finally, despite your assumption, I don’t actually think long comments are bad; I just left a very long comment to someone who said something that was actually interesting. You also assumed I was insulting NFTs because I, “just like shitting on things other people designate as safe to shit on.” But I actually didn’t insult NFTs, I just pointed out that it bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros. Which isn’t an opinion, its just a thing that happened. If you want to know what I actually think of NFTs, I answered that when I replied to the more interesting commenter. You’re welcome to go read it instead of making incorrect assumptions.

Anyway, if you don’t like the quality of the replies you’re getting, maybe consider the quality of the comments you’re leaving. Maybe you shouldn’t expect someone to listen to you or engage with you in good faith when you start off by insulting them. Maybe the problem is you, not everyone else.

Well, first, I’m very skeptical of the NFTs’ ability to resolve overbooking. Overbooking is a choice airlines make to maximize profits. We could force airlines to stop overbooking tomorrow if we wanted, and they could try to prevent losses by making tickets non-refundable or charging extra for refundable tickets (tactics they already use in addition to overbooking). It seems to me the main problem is that capitalism motivates airlines to maximize profits instead of transporting people to their destination. The obvious solution to me is to nationalize the airlines, not create a third-party aftermarket for airline tickets.

Also, the article you shared actually makes no mention of overbooking. I have to assume the solution being suggested by NFT tickets is something along the lines of, “We sell only the amount of tickets on the flight, and while we won’t refund your ticket, if you can’t make your flight, you’re free to sell your ticket to whoever you like.”

Seems like a decent enough idea, except that you need to go through the third-party NFT company to sell your ticket, you may lose value on your ticket or even not find a buyer, and you still need to make any changes to your ticket 72 hours in advance, meaning it would be useless in resolving no-shows from flight delays. You also wind up paying a transaction fee to the NFT company and the airline for any changes you make, so really it seems what’s being suggested here is that, instead of being able to get a refund on your ticket, you do the job of selling your own ticket on the free-market, and both the ticket company and airline profit from your labor. And again, since this article makes no mention of overbooking, I have to assume Flybondi will continue that practice anyway.

I also have to point out that this article was written by and unnamed, “crypto believer,” and self-published in Medium by an NFT company. It’s not exactly a great source.

All that being said, I’m sure there are uses for NFTs, just like their are uses for generative AI and VR. My point isn’t that they’re useless, just that their uses are overstated and create a financial bubble. I can see how generative AI might be useful first-draft copywriting, but it’s not capable of replacing a writers room, or even giving accurate search results. VR is great for gaming, but no matter how much money Zuckerberg threw at it, it couldn’t do anything for meetings that Zoom didn’t do better. I’m not sure what the B2B uses of NFTs are, but I believe you when you tell me they exist; they just couldn’t create value for random JPEGs. The NFT collapse bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros, Zuckerberg’s VR investment cost Facebook $60 billion, and the generative AI bubble is going to hit every single tech company and the stock market as a whole.

Yeah, but if your only example of NFTs being useful is that one of the worst airlines in the industry adopted them, that’s not a great argument. “Shitty company uses system, so system must be useful,” doesn’t really track.

I’m not sure the fact that NFTs are used by the third worst airline in the world, which the Argentinian government just fined $300K for excessive cancelations, is actually a plus for NFTs.

Yeah, I heard about most of the supposed uses in the 10 paragraphs you wrote. Anyway, since none of those came to pass, and instead a bunch or people went bankrupt buying pictures of monkeys, I’d say the usefulness of NFTs has been determined.

Everyone I know shuts off AI features on their software, yet they keep adding it to more and more software. It’s like the exact opposite of supply and demand.

Oh yeah, it’s gonna be massive. I don’t know if this will be as bad as the subprime mortgage crisis, but it’s gonna come soon, and with all the tariff instability, it’s gonna hit while the economy is already weak. It’s gonna suck.

Oh, it’s gonna be so much worse. NFTs mostly just ruined sad crypto bros who were dumb enough to buy a picture of an ape. Companies are investing heavily in generative AI projects without establishing a proper use case or even its basic efficacy. ChatGPTs newest iterations are getting worse; no one has a solution to hallucinations; the energy costs are astronomical; the entire process relies on plagiarism and copyright infringement, and even if you get by all of that, consumers hate it. AI ads are met derision or revulsion, and AI customer service is universally despised.

This isn’t like NFTs. It’s more like Facebook and VR. Sure, VR has its uses, but investing heavily in unnecessary and unwanted VR tools cost Facebook billions. The difference is that when this bubble bursts, instead of just hitting Facebook, this is going to hit every single tech company.