Jesse Schwarz could’ve bought a Lamborghini. He could’ve placed a winning bid on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. He could’ve paid off a mortgage.
But instead, on a recent Monday morning, the 32-year-old entrepreneur logged onto a platform called NBA Top Shot and, with a few friends, spent $208k on a video clip of LeBron James dunking.
Schwarz doesn’t get the broadcast rights to the clip, or even a physical copy of it: He owns a few lines of code that prove he’s the owner of a unique digital asset.
“My family thought I was crazy,” he tells The Hustle. “But I’ve never been the kind of person who invests in traditional things.”
His purchase is one of several bafflingly expensive digital collectibles sold in recent weeks, including:
These assets, called non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have courted an explosion in interest that we haven’t seen since — well, GameStop.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
NFTs have caught the attention of tech investors (Mark Cuban), the high-brow art world (Christie’s auction house), and major corporations (Nike) alike. And everyone from Lindsey Lohan to the rock band Kings of Leon is flooding the market with high-priced virtual creations of their own.
But what exactly is an NFT? What makes them so valuable? And what might the future hold for these digital assets?
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), defined
Let’s start by breaking down the 2 key words here:
A non-fungible asset is something unique that isn’t readily interchangeable. Think of a rare sports card, an antique car, or a piece of land. This differs from a fungible asset like cash (a $5 bill is always worth $5, no matter who owns it, or what condition it’s in).
A token is a type of virtual currency that lives on a blockchain and represents a specific asset, like a piece of digital artwork.
So, in simple terms, an NFT is a documentation of ownership of a one-of-a-kind digital asset.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
An NFT can represent any kind of digital asset: a piece of artwork, an audio file, a video clip, a plot of virtual land.
The NFT isn’t actually the piece of artwork itself; it’s a piece of code on a digital ledger (blockchain) that points to where the artwork lives — usually on a server somewhere else.
Still confused?
Picture a Hot Wheels car.
In the physical world, you go out and buy a Hot Wheels collectible at a store, or an online marketplace like eBay. You pay cash — more for a rare one, less for a common one — and in return, you receive a tangible object made of metal and plastic.
Here’s what that (simplified) process would look like in NFT form:
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Why go through all this trouble to create some digital asset when you could just buy a real Hot Wheels car? What’s the value-add here?
Physical collectibles face a few challenges:
It can be hard and/or time-consuming to verify authenticity: An original can be faked, forged, or replicated.
It can be hard to trace an object’s ownership history: There’s often no public record of a collectible’s lifetime journey.
Historically, the legitimacy of digital assets has been even trickier to validate since the internet is amok with copies of copies of copies.
NFT evangelists say that blockchain technology solves these issues.
By publishing a work on the blockchain, the artist is creating an immutable, verifiable public record of its authenticity.
Take CryptoPunks, one of the first NFTs, created back in 2017.
Only 10k CryptoPunks were minted — each one a simple character with a set of unique traits. For any given punk, you can view a full transaction history of bids, offers, sales, and ownership records.
We can see that the most coveted punk, #6965, originally sold for $1.1k and switched hands a few times over the years before fetching the princely sum of 800 ETH a few weeks ago (~$1.5m at the time).
Cheers to whoever bought this thing in 2018 for $3k and sold it 2.5 years later for a 511x return. Note: the price reflects how much Ethereum was worth at the time of purchase. (Zachary Crockett / The Hustle)
That someone shelled out $1.5m for a piece of code designating them the owner of a pixelated ape wearing a fedora seems to defy any semblance of rational market behavior.
After all, the image above can easily be captured with a screenshot, downloaded, or recreated by any Redditor with access to Microsoft Paint.
So what makes this thing — or any NFT, for that matter — valuable?
Why NFTs are booming
It may seem like NFTs came out of nowhere, but they’re an innovation that has been in the works for several years:
2017: NFTs first garnered widespread public attention with CryptoKitties, a game in which users breed and trade digital cats.
2018: A mini hype cycle led to VC-led investments, and platforms were created to buy, sell, and mint NFTs (like SuperRare, OpenSea, Rarible, and Nifty Gateway).
2019: Big brands like Formula 1 and Nike entered the space.
2020: The market for NFTs tripled in size, to $250m+.
But in the first few months of 2021, we’ve seen an NFT explosion.
In February alone, the 10 most popular NFT collectibles saw a 400% average MoM rise, totaling nearly $400m in sales volume.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
This can largely be attributed to one platform: Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot, which launched in October of 2020 with the basketball league’s backing.
On Top Shot, users can purchase digital packs that contain NFTs called “moments” — short video clips of NBA highlights, like a memorable dunk or steal. Like physical trading cards, some moments are common (1k+ copies) and some are extremely rare (1 of 1).
Caty Tedman, the head of partnerships and marketing for Dapper Labs, tells The Hustle that the platform now has 511k registered users and $301m+ in sales only 5 months into operation.
Experts The Hustle spoke with say the rapid rise of NFTs like Top Shot is a perfect storm of a few larger trends:
COVID-19 has made us more plugged into virtual spaces: More people working from home = more time interacting in virtual spaces = more openness to the value of virtual goods and services.
A boom in cryptocurrency (and a larger acceptance of the ethos of decentralization) has generated interest in other digital assets.
Major institutions (like Christie’s auction house) have lent NFTs credibility and prestige by jumping aboard.
Non-fungible goods often thrive during times of economic turmoil: Rare coins, for instance, saw price spikes during the Great Depression, the stock market collapse of 1987, and the 2008 recession.
“People are realizing, ‘Wow, I can do all these things — meetings, happy hours, whatever — virtually,’” says Hrish Lotlikar, CEO of an AR-based metaverse called SuperWorld. “That gives way to, ‘Wow, I can buy assets virtually too. I don’t need physical money.’”
On SuperWorld, you can buy NFTs in the form of virtual real estate. East 66th St. in NYC could be yours for just 500 ETH, or ~$822k! (via SuperWorld)
SuperWorld is part of another burgeoning space in the NFT world: virtual real estate.
On the platform, Earth is split up into 64B parcels of land — each an NFT with a set of unique coordinates — which can be bought by users and monetized with virtual ads.
Similar worlds, like Decentraland, have seen massive growth in recent years. At launch in 2017, parcels would go for $100 a pop; today, they can fetch up to $80k. Last month, an anonymous buyer shelled out $1.5m for a 9-block virtual estate on the gaming platform Axie Infinity.
“Buying land today in virtual worlds feels a lot like buying land in Manhattan back in 1750,” writes Janine Yorio, head of real estate at the online investment platform Republic. “It is also insulated from the COVID-induced volatility of the real-world real estate industry.”
But the question of “value” remains.
Objectively, a video clip of LeBron James dunking isn’t worth $208k. A cartoon cat isn’t worth $100k+. A selfie of Lindsey Lohan isn’t worth $59k.
Of course, the same can be said of any physical collectible.
An original 1960s Hot Wheels car is made up of a few pennies’ worth of metal and plastic, but it might sell for upwards of $50k on the market. A painting — some wood and pigmented oil — can fetch millions.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Like most things in the world, the value of an NFT comes from extrinsic, not intrinsic, factors, including:
Authenticity: Physical collectibles have all kinds of authentication mechanisms, and none are particularly efficient (even acclaimed art appraisers have been duped by forgeries). By contrast, the originality of an NFT is cemented on the blockchain.
Scarcity: Many NFTs are one-of-a-kind or limited. For instance, only 10k CryptoPunks were released. Of those, only 24 are “apes.” And among the apes, just 1 dons a fedora.
Transferability: It can be resold to nearly anyone around the world, meaning it has a broader pool of potential buyers.
Immutability: The code and metadata of the NFT can’t be changed, lending it permanence.
Utility: Some NFTs can serve functional purposes, generate revenue, or be exchanged for physical assets.
Many NFT collectors see a future for the tokens in increased “real world” integration.
With Top Shot, for instance, we may see NBA players offering court-side seats and meet-and-greets in exchange for certain moments.
Inside of the virtual world Decentraland, Decentral Games is building a virtual casino where people can play poker tournaments. Buying (and wearing) certain NFT clothing items — say a digital $1k jacket — will get you a seat at certain high-roller tables.
But ultimately, an NFT is only worth what someone else will pay for it.
And that makes the future a bit uncertain
In the wake of several high-profile NFT sales from well-established artists, a glut of lesser-known artworks have flooded the market.
Some critics have raised doubts that NFTs are just a fad driven by hype, similar to 2017’s initial coin offering (ICO) bubble. Others have stated that the massive influx of buyers and sellers will eventually taper off, and only truly rare, desirable NFTs will retain value.
Schwarz with his LeBron James NBA Top Shot moment (Jesse Schwarz for The Hustle)
Schwarz — the Trends member who dropped $208k on the LeBron James video — remains optimistic.
“A lot of people tell me, ‘I can watch the same clip on YouTube for free,’” he says. “Anyone can watch it. But there’s only one original verified by the blockchain, and that scarcity is what makes it valuable in the long-term.”
His NFT is one of only 49 moments from Top Shot’s co-called “Cosmic” set, and it’s the only LeBron James clip in the series.
“It set a record for the most expensive sports NFT, but in my opinion it was the best value buy on the whole market,” he adds.
“Communication is one of the most important skills you require for a successful life.” — Catherine Pulsifer, author.
I’m one hundred percent in agreement with Pulsifer, which is why my evaluation of candidates begins with their writing skills. If a candidate’s writing skills and verbal communication skills, which I’ll assess when interviewing, aren’t well above average, I’ll pass on them regardless of their skills and experience.
Why?
Because business is fundamentally about getting other people to do things—getting employees to be productive, getting customers to buy your products or services, and getting vendors to agree to a counteroffer price. In business, as in life in general, you can’t make anything happen without effective communication; this is especially true when job searching when your writing is often an employer’s first impression of you.
Think of all the writing you engage in during a job search (resumes, cover letters, emails, texts) and all your other writing (LinkedIn profile, as well as posts and comments, blogs, articles, tweets, etc.) employers will read when they Google you to determine if you’re interview-worthy.
With so much of our communication today taking place via writing (email, text, collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, ClickUp, WhatsApp and Rocket.Chat), the importance of proficient writing skills can’t be overstated.
When assessing a candidate’s writing skills, you probably think I’m looking for grammar and spelling errors. Although error-free writing is important—it shows professionalism and attention to detail—it’s not the primary reason I look at a candidate’s writing skills.
The way someone writes reveals how they think.
Clear writing = Clear thinking
Structured paragraphs = Structured mind
Impactful sentences = Impactful ideas
Effective writing isn’t about using sophisticated vocabulary. Hemingway demonstrated that deceptively simple, stripped-down prose can captivate readers. Effective writing takes intricate thoughts and presents them in a way that makes the reader think, “Damn! Why didn’t I see it that way?” A good writer is a dead giveaway for a good thinker. More than ever, the business world needs “good thinkers.”
Therefore, when I come across a candidate who’s a good writer, hence a good thinker, I know they’re likely to be able to write:
Emails that don’t get deleted immediately and are responded to
Simple, concise, and unambiguous instructions
Pitches that are likely to get read
Social media content that stops thumbs
Human-sounding website copy
Persuasively, while attuned to the reader’s possible sensitivities
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: AI, which job seekers are using en masse. Earlier this year, I wrote that AI’s ability to hyper-increase an employee’s productivity—AI is still in its infancy; we’ve seen nothing yet—in certain professions, such as writing, sales and marketing, computer programming, office and admin, and customer service, makes it a “fewer employees needed” tool, which understandably greatly appeals to employers. In my opinion, the recent layoffs aren’t related to the economy; they’re due to employers adopting AI. Additionally, companies are trying to balance investing in AI with cost-cutting measures. CEOs who’ve previously said, “Our people are everything,” have arguably created today’s job market by obsessively focusing on AI to gain competitive advantages and reduce their largest expense, their payroll.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that most AI usage involves generating written content, content that’s obvious to me, and likely to you as well, to have been written by AI. However, here’s the twist: I don’t particularly care.
Why?
Because the fundamental skill I’m looking for is the ability to organize thoughts and communicate effectively. What I care about is whether the candidate can take AI-generated content and transform it into something uniquely valuable. If they can, they’re demonstrating the skills of being a good thinker and communicator. It’s like being a great DJ; anyone can push play, but it takes skill to read a room and mix music that gets people pumped.
Using AI requires prompting effectively, which requires good writing skills to write clear and precise instructions that guide the AI to produce desired outcomes. Prompting AI effectively requires understanding structure, flow and impact. You need to know how to shape raw information, such as milestones throughout your career when you achieved quantitative results, into a compelling narrative.
So, what’s the best way to gain and enhance your writing skills? As with any skill, you’ve got to work at it.
Two rules guide my writing:
Use strong verbs and nouns instead of relying on adverbs, such as “She dashed to the store.” instead of “She ran quickly to the store.” or “He whispered to the child.” instead of “He spoke softly to the child.”
Avoid using long words when a shorter one will do, such as “use” instead of “utilize” or “ask” instead of “inquire.” As attention spans get shorter, I aim for clarity, simplicity and, most importantly, brevity in my writing.
Don’t just string words together; learn to organize your thoughts, think critically, and communicate clearly. Solid writing skills will significantly set you apart from your competition, giving you an advantage in your job search and career.
Nick Kossovan, a well-seasoned veteran of the corporate landscape, offers “unsweetened” job search advice. You can send Nick your questions to artoffindingwork@gmail.com.
MONTREAL – Politics, public opinion and salary hikes south of the border helped push Air Canada toward a deal that secures major pay gains for pilots, experts say.
Hammered out over the weekend, the would-be agreement includes a cumulative wage hike of nearly 42 per cent over four years — an enormous bump by historical standards — according to one source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The previous 10-year contract granted increases of just two per cent annually.
The federal government’s stated unwillingness to step in paved the way for a deal, noted John Gradek, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it plain the two sides should hash one out themselves.
“Public opinion basically pressed the federal cabinet, including the prime minister, to keep their hands clear of negotiations and looking at imposing a settlement,” said Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University.
After late-night talks at a hotel near Toronto’s Pearson airport, the country’s biggest airline and the union representing 5,200-plus aviators announced early Sunday morning they had reached a tentative agreement, averting a strike that would have grounded flights and affected some 110,000 passengers daily.
The relative precariousness of the Liberal minority government as well as a push to appear more pro-labour underlay the prime minister’s hands-off approach to the negotiations.
Trudeau said Friday the government would not step in to fix the impasse — unlike during a massive railway work stoppage last month and a strike by WestJet mechanics over the Canada Day long weekend that workers claimed road roughshod over their constitutional right to collective bargaining. Trudeau said the government respects the right to strike and would only intervene if it became apparent no negotiated deal was possible.
“They felt that they really didn’t want to try for a third attempt at intervention and basically said, ‘Let’s let the airline decide how they want to deal with this one,'” said Gradek.
“Air Canada ran out of support as the week wore on, and by the time they got to Friday night, Saturday morning, there was nothing left for them to do but to basically try to get a deal set up and accepted by ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association).”
Trudeau’s government was also unlikely to consider back-to-work legislation after the NDP tore up its agreement to support the Liberal minority in Parliament, Gradek said. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party has traditionally toed a more pro-business line, also said last week that Tories “stand with the pilots” and swore off “pre-empting” the negotiations.
Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau had asked Ottawa on Thursday to impose binding arbitration pre-emptively — “before any travel disruption starts” — if talks failed. Backed by business leaders, he’d hoped for an effective repeat of the Conservatives’ move to head off a strike in 2012 by legislating Air Canada pilots and ground crew to stick to their posts before any work stoppage could start.
The request may have fallen flat, however. Gradek said he believes there was less anxiety over the fallout from an airline strike than from the countrywide railway shutdown.
He also speculated that public frustration over thousands of cancelled flights would have flowed toward Air Canada rather than Ottawa, prompting the carrier to concede to a deal yielding “unheard of” gains for employees.
“It really was a total collapse of the Air Canada bargaining position,” he said.
Pilots are slated to vote in the coming weeks on the four-year contract.
Last year, pilots at Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines secured agreements that included four-year pay boosts ranging from 34 per cent to 40 per cent, ramping up pressure on other carriers to raise wages.
After more than a year of bargaining, Air Canada put forward an offer in August centred around a 30 per cent wage hike over four years.
But the final deal, should union members approve it, grants a 26 per cent increase in the first year alone, retroactive to September 2023, according to the source. Three wage bumps of four per cent would follow in 2024 through 2026.
Passengers may wind up shouldering some of that financial load, one expert noted.
“At the end of the day, it’s all us consumers who are paying,” said Barry Prentice, who heads the University of Manitoba’s transport institute.
Higher fares may be mitigated by the persistence of budget carrier Flair Airlines and the rapid expansion of Porter Airlines — a growing Air Canada rival — as well as waning demand for leisure trips. Corporate travel also remains below pre-COVID-19 levels.
Air Canada said Sunday the tentative contract “recognizes the contributions and professionalism of Air Canada’s pilot group, while providing a framework for the future growth of the airline.”
The union issued a statement saying that, if ratified, the agreement will generate about $1.9 billion of additional value for Air Canada pilots over the course of the deal.
Meanwhile, labour tension with cabin crew looms on the horizon. Air Canada is poised to kick off negotiations with the union representing more than 10,000 flight attendants this year before the contract expires on March 31.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
HALIFAX – Ottawa is negotiating a $500-million bailout for Nova Scotia’s privately owned electric utility, saying the money will be used to prevent a big spike in electricity rates.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made the announcement today in Halifax, saying Nova Scotia Power Inc. needs the money to cover higher costs resulting from the delayed delivery of electricity from the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric plant in Labrador.
Wilkinson says that without the money, the subsidiary of Emera Inc. would have had to increase rates by 19 per cent over “the short term.”
Nova Scotia Power CEO Peter Gregg says the deal, once approved by the province’s energy regulator, will keep rate increases limited “to be around the rate of inflation,” as costs are spread over a number of years.
The utility helped pay for construction of an underwater transmission link between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, but the Muskrat Falls project has not been consistent in delivering electricity over the past five years.
Those delays forced Nova Scotia Power to spend more on generating its own electricity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
