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“What current products and services can NFTs augment or replace? The simple answer was . . . pretty much everything.”

- the authors of The Everything Token on how they chose the title

Newsletter book review: The Everything Token

Crypto’s current comeback has not surprised its true believers, who knew it was only a matter of time.

Even amongst the faithful, however, it was not considered obvious that NFTs would be coming along for the next bull-market ride. 

To many, JPEG NFTs seemed like the modern equivalent of 17th century tulips — an inexplicable and slightly embarrassing mania unlikely to be repeated and best forgotten as soon as possible.

And yet, CryptoPunks still sell for $150,000, Ordinals have reinvigorated Bitcoin, and Pudgy Penguins, surging to all-time highs, is maybe the most unexpected winner of the year so far.

It’s hard to know what to make of all that, but at the very least I think it demands that we reconsider both what NFTs are and what they might become. 

The Everything Token, co-authored by Harvard Professor Scott Duke Kominers and Web3 builder Steve Kaczynski, is a timely opportunity to do just that.

ELI5 it for me

For those who haven’t given it much thought, The Everything Token serves as an introduction to the what, how and why of non-fungible tokens.

For those who have thought a lot about NFTs, but maybe not for a while, it’s a refresher on why we all got so excited about them in 2021.

And for the true believers whose faith in NFTs never wavered, it’s an invitation to think even bigger and believe even more.

To speak to all those categories, The Everything Token helpfully assumes no prior knowledge of NFTs or what it might mean to own one.

The authors explain, for example, that holding a JPEG NFT in a digital wallet “is kind of like storing a photo of your partner or children in the physical wallet you carry around in your pocket.”

For those who find the idea of holding a digital photo in a digital wallet bewildering, they explain that “When you own a house, computer chair, or a trumpet, you can sell it — and the same is true of many NFTs.“

So this is decidedly not one of the academic papers that Professor Scott Duke Kominers writes for Harvard Business School.

But the authors’ explain-it-like-I’m-five analogies set us up for their big-picture takes — like the assertion that “NFTs will fundamentally shift the way we buy and sell . . . well . . . everything.”  

And if that doesn’t immediately sound like a big deal to you, they will make you reconsider: “Like the Industrial Revolution or the advent of the internet, NFTs and Web3 have the power to improve our everyday lives in ways we can’t even imagine yet.” 

The Everything Token will nevertheless help you imagine a lot of different ways.

Kaczynski and Komers are true believers — but they are also reassuringly sober-minded. 

As all-conquering as they think NFTs will be, they're not suggesting you rush out to buy a JPEG of a rock (which, amazingly, would still set you back about $500,000).

It’s of course important that NFTs are tradeable — “digitally provable ownership” is the foundation for everything they could become.

But the most enthusiasm the authors can muster for the attention-grabbing prices that some NFTs have achieved is this tepid assessment: “[NFTs] can often function to some degree as investments.”

Where they really want you to focus your attention, however, is on the utility that digitally provable ownership may enable — because this is where the “real magic starts to happen.”

Some of that magic is already happening, as they document with numerous examples (StockX using NFTs to custody collectible sneakers is a particularly good one that I wasn’t aware of).

But the utility they see for NFTs remains mostly aspirational: The authors’ examples of how NFTs are currently being used are — to me — far less compelling than their examples of how they might be used.

They have a lot of ideas and many are very convincing — my personal favorite is their vision of John Deere airdropping bags of mulch to holders of NFTs linked to the purchase of a new lawn mower. 

I’m still not sure how likely it is that any of it will come to fruition — but making it more likely is why they wrote the book.

Let’s make it happen

The readers whom the authors seem most eager to reach are chief marketing officers. 

The book’s mix of simple analogies and big-picture ambitions feels tailor-made for C-suite executives who are likely to be wary of anything associated with crypto.

The penultimate chapter, Designing Your NFT Strategy, addresses that niche demographic directly, offering a practical step-by-step guide on how NFTs can help businesses engage with customers and build brands.

I hope lots of business executives take them up on it, because the book is full of fun and interesting new things they should be trying.

But one question I have is how many people — executive or otherwise — who haven't already considered NFTs would be willing to read a book about them.

Crypto as a whole has the same problem — anyone inclined to believe in the potential of crypto is probably a believer already.

To expand its user base, crypto then needs to do more than just inspire with its lofty ideals of decentralization and permissionlessness — it needs to offer real utility to people who would otherwise have no interest.

The Everything Token is a user’s manual on how to make that happen.

As ambitious as the authors are for NFTs, their ambitions for the book as user manuals are more modest: “If we can help just one company shape their strategy to be more customer-aligned, or inspire even one person to build something in this brave new world of Web3, this book was a success.”

I’m certain it will be.

― Byron Gilliam

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