I Created the Tough Teddez NFT project Because I Suffer From Severe FOMO.
I am not your average blogger so forgive me if the format in which I write is one you are not used to. I promise you I will write in plain language that anyone can understand.
I will start off by saying up until around 18 months ago I had no idea what an NFT was. I was just chilling at home in Minnesota when my my older brother Darryl (who still lives in New York — where I was raised) called me one Saturday in March of 2021 and tells me to check out this new thing in the crypto space called NFTs.
While we were on the phone he ask me to look up Lazy Lions online, I find them and OpenSea — the NFT Marketplace — for the first time. As an artist, I look at the artwork and I am amazed. I am automatically drawn to the concept but I still had no idea what an NFT was. My brother did not know a lot either he just knew that these NFTs were going to increase in value and make the owners ‘Millionaire’.
At the time the Lazy Lion NFT was around 250 dollars. I did not purchase one even though I had the money at the time. I didnt know enough about the MFT market. Today Lazy Lion NFTs are worth over $4,500 😭 I cringe every time I think about it.
“SO WTH IS A NFT?”
I can best explain it like this:
N.F.T. is an acronym for NON-Fungible Token, so let’s break it down because that just makes it more confusing. According to the dictionary, nonfungible means not easy to exchange or mix with other similar goods or assets: non-fungible property/assets/funds.
According to Wikipedia, A non-fungible token (NFT) is a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger, that can be sold and traded. Types of NFT data units may be associated with digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. Because each token is uniquely identifiable, NFTs differ from blockchain cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.
I am sure this doesn’t help you truly understand what an NFT is.
Fungible means it can be replaced with something of the same value. A dollar bill is fungible because it can be replaced with a dollar bill. But if you loan me one dollar I don’t think you care if I return the same exact dollar bill that you gave to me.
Non-Fungible simply means one of a kind, cars are Non-fungible because two cars that look exactly the same have different vehicle identification numbers. If I borrow your car you want the same exact car back.
When it comes to NFTs like the Tough Teddez each NFT is unique and different and has a specific Token ID. which brings us to explain what a Token is. A token can be an NFT or a Coin so Tough Teddez NFTs are Tokens and TedCoinz are also Tokens.
I created an NFT project because I suffer from severe FOMO.
Ok so I was not diagnosed with FOMO but I fell in love with NFT’s. The concept behind them the way they look, how they are made all of it I needed to know more.
As I did my research I learned alot and the more I found out about the NFT space the more I wanted to learn to create my own. I alos noticed that although this is supposed to be a decentralized space their are some major players getting all the attention.
There are so many great projects coming out, and many of them have great potential. The challenge is that most of these projects become so unattainable that it causes many of us to miss out. Then FOMO kicks in and we are purchasing the scraps or the smaller projects. No disrespect to the unknown artist out there with the unknown NFT Project. I am rooting for you because I too am a small NFT project.
When we distilled the entire NFT industry down it has moved very quickly from being unknown to known by a select few. Some of those folks like in most economies have players who happen to have big bucks.
I started the Tough Teddez NFT and DAO as a way to help the everyday person learn about and play in the NFT space without fear of losing hard-earned money. As a member of the working class, I think it would be great for me to start a project that could help other members of the working class take part in a fast-growing, up-and-coming industry.
We’re Still Early…
Ask yourself this question: How many traditional industries have been significantly changed by the advent of NFT technology?
The answer, so far in my opinion, is pretty close to zero. Right now, the only one I can think of is digital art (we’ve still yet to see any major changes to the traditional art world — things like certificates of authenticity via NFTs, etc.).
That’s not to say NFTs aren’t knocking on the door… although many have been saying it for a long time now, the intersection between NFTs and video games (both play-to-earn and traditional) is heating up like never before.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the point really is this — we’re still early.
When it comes to NFTs, we’ve discussed a lot about how the education you’re giving yourself and the research you’re doing may well be the best investment possible. But when it comes down to the bottom line, I get that you want to start putting some skin in the game with real hard cash (or ETH 😉).
There are usually a few reasons why somebody in this position will not have invested any money into NFTs up to this point (and is reluctant or struggling to make the jump).
1. High Barriers to Entry
NFT prices, particularly when they’re priced in ETH terms (as most of them are), can be very expensive for one person to burden on their own. It takes somewhat of a nest egg to buy into some of the projects that already have momentum.
2. Support System
As a result of NFTs being foreign to so many people and having a mixed reputation to those who don’t know much about them, oftentimes our journey can be a little lonesome. This is simply because there aren’t very many people around us who can help. To some, this can be daunting because it makes them doubt themselves: “Why isn’t anybody else I know doing this? Will I look foolish in front of my family and friends? It’s easier and safer if I just don’t invest in NFTs, that way I know for sure that I won’t lose any money.”
This is the self-talk I hear a lot of when I ask people about their particular NFT experiences, and it can be a real problem.
3. Caution
Totally fair.
If you find your own position in NFTs somewhere along these lines, I’d like to present to you a potential solution today. It’s something we’ve addressed before, but I think it’s important enough to go into a little more detail.
Ask yourself this question: How many traditional industries have been significantly changed with the advent of NFT technology?
Currently, a few “big” projects (BAYC, CryptoPunks, 1/1 Art) take up almost all the space when it comes to things like market share, news, and major ecosystem developments. This is evident by just looking through the last few weeks of this newsletter.
When it comes to real application though, we are still not even in the first inning of the NFT game. How do we know?
We’re Still Early…
Ask yourself this question: How many traditional industries have been significantly changed by the advent of NFT technology?
The answer, so far in my opinion, is pretty close to zero. Right now, the only one I can think of is digital art (we’ve still yet to see any major changes to the traditional art world — things like certificates of authenticity via NFTs, etc.).
That’s not to say NFTs aren’t knocking on the door… although many have been saying it for a long time now, the intersection between NFTs and video games (both play-to-earn and traditional) is heating up like never before.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the point really is this — we’re still early.
When it comes to NFTs, we’ve discussed a lot about how the education you’re giving yourself and the research you’re doing may well be the best investment possible. But when it comes down to the bottom line, I get that you want to start putting some skin in the game with real hard cash (or ETH 😉).
There are usually a few reasons why somebody in this position will not have invested any money into NFTs up to this point (and is reluctant or struggling to make the jump).
1. High Barriers to Entry
NFT prices, particularly when they’re priced in ETH terms (as most of them are), can be very expensive for one person to burden on their own. It takes somewhat of a nest egg to buy into some of the projects that already have momentum.
2. Support System
As a result of NFTs being foreign to so many people and having a mixed reputation to those who don’t know much about them, oftentimes our journey can be a little lonesome. This is simply because there aren’t very many people around us who can help. To some, this can be daunting because it makes them doubt themselves: “Why isn’t anybody else I know doing this? Will I look foolish in front of my family and friends? It’s easier and safer if I just don’t invest in NFTs, that way I know for sure that I won’t lose any money.”
This is the self-talk I hear a lot of when I ask people about their particular NFT experiences, and it can be a real problem.
3. Caution
Totally fair.
If you find your own position in NFTs somewhere along these lines, I’d like to present to you a potential solution today. It’s something I’ve addressed before, but I think it’s important enough to go into a little more detail.
That’s Why I Started a DAO (a decentralized autonomous organization).
What is a DAO?
Think of a DAO like a group wallet where everybody gets to vote on how the money is used. Further, everybody gets a proportional vote equal to the amount they’ve staked in the pool.
DAOs are more than just group wallets though. Overarchingly, they’re the latest and greatest way of how to structure an organization. Any organization can be turned into a DAO.
How would any changes be made without a CEO or traditional hierarchy of decision making?
A DAO could be used to allocate tokens to the users of the platform (perhaps based on activity, contributions to the platform, etc.), or alternatively, anybody could buy these tokens off the open market and participate in the voting procedures.
If the users believed a change needed to be made, anybody could propose the change (this happens through DAO toolers such as Snapshot Labs), and it would be voted on by all token holders. The kicker — all of this is automated through blockchain technology.
WHERE IS THE TIE-BACK TO NFTS?
You may have already connected the dots, but you can use DAOs to solve the NFT investing problems we talked about above.
Are NFTs too expensive? Create a DAO with friends and pool your money.
Worried about taking the NFT plunge by yourself? Create a DAO with friends and do it together.
Before just recently, though, you may have looked at me and asked how to actually create a DAO? After all, we are dealing with smart contracts on the blockchain here.
If you didn’t personally know a programmer, you would’ve been out of luck. That is until Syndicate DAO came out with their very own (extremely simple) DAO builder.
Firstly, by creating an efficient solution for pooling money with others and investing in assets, DAOs unlock a new level of economic activity in the asset classes they are involved in, because barriers to entry decrease by orders of magnitude.
The benefit isn’t just to the asset though, as we just stated, this democratizes access for market participants like rarely before.
Let’s try and go full circle and connect a lot of what we’ve been talking about today.
At the start, we discussed how NFTs are yet to really crack the mold of any existing markets, and why that suggests we’re still early in the lifetime of the technology.
Well, what better time to be in a DAO then?
It would also be remiss of me to suggest that the only benefits of a DAO are for combining money with your friends — although a DAO may operate as a typical investment DAO, that doesn’t mean it can’t also be other things.
One idea I’ve had for a while to illustrate what I’m getting at here is a Learn to Earn DAO. We simply don’t have enough educated people right now. For many reasons, crypto is dominated by programmers, coders and developers, and in a field that is supposed to be the new beginning of the traditional world, this simply isn’t acceptable. What I’d love to see is an investment DAO created where all members are NEWBIE’s, and, as part of our brand, we aim to promote Newbie involvement in the space.
This is just one example of the power a DAO can hold, particularly during these days where there simply aren’t that many in existence.
Aside from being awesome investment vehicles and having the potential to represent or promote a greater message, DAOs can also be awesome Web3 coordination tools. What I mean by this is that cryptocurrency as a sector might be the vastest in the world (or at the very least the fastest moving), and what this means is that nobody has time to keep up with all its moving parts at once.
A DAO gives you the opportunity to divide and conquer — curate a group that is well-balanced between their focus in Web3 and we can build a powerful community of people who keep each other knowledgeable and informed.
With DAOs, we’ll one day have thousands of people coordinating hundreds of millions of dollars in investments in the same ways major institutions operate today.
We’ll likely see some DAOs purposed entirely for the purchase of 1 or 2 high-priced assets such as Bored Apes or CryptoPunks. As we said earlier, the mere amount of new capital that will flow to these assets as a result of DAOs may be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
As time goes on, the ratio of individual investors to DAOs will decrease dramatically.
If you want to be an early adopter, look no further than the potential The Tough Teddez DAO.
Become one of the first members. Who knows where you can be in 5, 10, 20, or 50 years if you start today.
The link to Tough Teddez website, where you can find everything, you need if you’re interested in joining our DAO https://www.toughteddez.com
Will you take the plunge?
