This 20th-century invention might help your normie friends understand NFTs...
You probably wouldn't think of this as a "revolutionary technology" today, but it has dramatically changed the world we live in.
One of the most important innovations of the 20th century was:
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… drumroll please …
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The Shipping Container.
Shipping containers don’t exactly fit in with today’s descriptions of “revolutionary technology,” but they’ve had a big impact.
We now ship TRILLIONS of kilograms of goods internationally every year through shipping containers.
Unloading time for cargo ships went down from 7+ days → just a few hours.
Shipping costs went from $5.86 per ton → $0.16 per ton.
This expanded international trade and globalization on a MASSIVE scale.
Why were shipping containers so effective?
Containers are stackable → much more efficient transportation
Containers are intermodal → they can be used for sea or land cargo transportation
Containers are globally standardized, meaning ships, ports, trucks, cranes, etc., across the world work with the same specifications.
NFTs and ERC20 tokens are the digital equivalents of shipping containers - they are standardized containers for all kinds of goods in the digital economy.
Why are these standardized digital containers (i.e - tokens) so valuable?
Because the digital infrastructure for the storage, transfer, and trade of these assets does not have to be built separately for each asset type.
Toss your digital product or service into a token container (i.e., tokenize it), and you can plug into any of the infrastructure pieces built for these containers.
Blockchains = infrastructure for transfer & accounting of digital assets
DEX/Marketplace = infrastructure for trade of digital assets (example: Uniswap, Opensea, Blur)
Wallets = infrastructure for storage of digital assets
Lending/Borrowing Markets = infrastructure for lending and borrowing of digital assets.
And token containers can be used for a lot more than you think.
Of course, they can be used for tangible assets:
Money (Stablecoins)
Stocks
Bonds
Legal Contracts (like Insurance)
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But also, intangibles.
It’s an abstract idea, so it’s hard to see the full potential yet, but this could have a HUGE impact on the digital economy, much like shipping containers did for the physical trade economy.
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