NFT Uses For Business Settings

CEO of WAGMI Games | Digital Marketing Pioneer | Serial Entrepreneur.

Let’s face it, NFTs in many respects don’t have the best reputation. In fact, I like to jokingly call them the three-letter bad word. I find that there are multiple reasons for this misconception.

For some people, it is a simple lack of education. They have no clue what NFTs are, but they believe the negative headlines. For others, a very limited NFT education gives way to “right-clicker mentality,” referring to the ability of anyone to technically right click and save an NFT image, as well as a lack of technological confidence. Novelty is hard to trust, especially in the world of finance. But in reality, NFTs are so much more than just JPEGs with a price tag thrown on them. There are countless business applications for them outside of trading in speculative bubble markets. Many just don’t know it yet.

Background On NFTs

NFTs are now a market that is projected to be worth $231 billion by 2030. Still, many people have no idea what they are. The reason for this is simple: NFTs are new. Relatively new, that is. When the internet was first burgeoning, people thought it was a fad as well. It took time for people to open up to it.

Just like the internet once was, I believe NFTs are a novel technology. This is by no means a way to say that NFTs will have an internet-sized impact on the world. It is, however, a way to describe the current phase of NFT adoption. I believe more business leaders need to learn what they are and how to utilize them.

While NFTs can be defined as “unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated,” I find there is an easier way to describe them. Ethereum defines them as “tokens that we can use to represent ownership of unique items.”

Novelty And The News

In the end, an NFT is simply a digital asset that you own, provable on the blockchain. Businesses can use NFTs for memberships to programs, tickets to events, access to special events and even rewards programs. For example, Starbucks recently launched a platform on the Polygon chain. NFTs can be given for free or sold, and being that it is what comes with the NFT—not the NFT itself that is valuable— this can be a fairly low-cost way to attract and retain customers.

The majority of people do not actually know what an NFT is or what they are used for. They do see, however, countless headlines that point out NFT scams, frauds, exchange issues, rug pulls and more. One way that businesses can fight these misconceptions is simply not using the term NFT but rather what it is used for: skins or characters in gaming, membership cards, digital assets, etc.

NFT Use Cases: The Gaming Industry

Gaming, ticketing, music, art, real estate, voting and government documentation: NFTs are already impacting industries around the world. They are changing them for the better, and they are changing them for the people.

Not only is it an exciting future for NFTs, but it is an exciting present for business owners. For the average business, leveraging this new technology can create opportunities to re-engage new customers. NFTs in the future may even replace outdated database systems as the technology matures and becomes widely accepted.

NFTs have already found a way to make gaming better than it already is. Usually, when consumers spend money on in-game assets, those consumers do not actually own what they purchase. According to Statista, global gaming audiences spent approximately $61 billion on in-game content last year. By 2025, that number is projected to be over $74 billion. Those figures represent a large amount of money spent on something the consumers do not actually own. Web3 gaming is using NFTs to change this.

Not only have NFTs opened up the possibility of ownership in gaming, but it has also provided the ability to monetize leisure time. Being in the Web3 gaming space, there has been a lot of Ponzi-like “play to earn” games that have exploded and crashed just as quickly. I believe this has contributed to the black eye on Web3 projects. However, changing the language from NFT to digital ownership is just one way to break down the proverbial wall for traditional gamers. There may be a future with NFT-powered games where people may be able to recoup some of the money spent by selling assets on secondary marketplaces.

Changing Perceptions

Video games using NFTs have been around for longer than many people know. Even in the traditional gaming community, many do not know anything about NFTs or crypto. In the same way that people don’t know about NFTs in gaming, many people probably don’t know about NFTs in real estate. In the end, it is up to business leaders to help change the perception of NFTs. It comes down to championing real-world cases, adding value to the consumer and, from a brand perspective, coming up with other ways to refer to NFTs.

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