18 | The Rant
CRYPTO
CRAZY
Buying and selling a token representing a bottle of whisky that you’ll never have the chance to drink is a very modern madness Written by Blair Bowman
I
f you happen to follow me on Twitter to take advantage of in the highly unregulated world of (@MrBlairBowman) you’ll have no doubt seen blockchain. The unregulated nature of blockchain and that I’ve been flagging some major issues I have cryptocurrency is perhaps its main USP. with NFTs tied to physical bottles of whisky. As I have been repeating ad nauseam on Twitter lately, you If you’ve not seen or heard of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), can’t open, share and enjoy a digital token, in short you can’t they are, according to their advocates, ‘the future of digital drink an NFT, so what is the point? One of the reasons seems transactions’ in Web 4.0, the supposed next phase of the to be that this new way of ‘purchasing’ whisky via an NFT is internet. I don’t have the space to go into the finer details really aimed at those who have no interest in ever opening or of blockchains and NFTs here, so I will start by making the drinking whisky. They can effectively resell the tokenisation of assumption that you have Googled this information. the whisky at a future date for profit. I am not entirely against the idea of blockchains, NFTs and One of the other major issues around NFTs at the moment the like. I actually own a few cryptocurrencies that I have been is that the amount of energy used to create the transaction investing in for a few years. What I do have a problem with on the blockchain is mindboggingly enormous. According is the idea of a digital token representing a physical object. It to a Fortune Magazine article from 2021: ‘Currently, a single makes no sense. The non-fungible token is non-fungible, it’s in Ethereum transaction consumes as much electricity as an the name (non-fungible meaning something that is unique and average U.S. household uses in a workweek – and has a carbon cannot be replaced). But a bottle of whisky, in our example, footprint equivalent to 140,893 Visa credit card transactions is inherently very fungible, meaning or 10,595 hours of watching YouTube.’ that it could very well be lost, stolen, So, if you are to buy an NFT on the damaged, copied or faked. This is Ethereum blockchain, be it a computer why I am so vehemently against the generated image of a cartoon ape or a You can’t open, share idea of a digital token representing token that represents a whisky, this is and enjoy a digital token, the amount of energy used to create the a physical asset. In my opinion it is the Emperor’s New Clothes of Web 4.0 entry on the blockchain. If at a future so what is the point? and wide open for corrupt charlatans date you decide you wish to take physical
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04/05/2022 14:41:48
