Full disclaimer: this is a mental exercise, not a full blown post, or something that I thought of before starting to write. It's just something that I try to figure out as I go along.
TBH, I started to feel a bit intrigued about all this airdrop thing a few months ago. Don't get me wrong, I am ok with money manifesting out of thin air. It's like walking down the street and finding a 100 dollars bill. That's cool. Free money.
But, you see, it would be quite different if instead of a 100 dollars bill I would find a 1000 YEN bill. Or 100 RON bill. I gave these examples because I have a little bit of an idea about those currencies. I know there are countries behind them, and they aren't just colorized paper, lying on the ground. They carry out real value. This value depends on the country that printed that bill, on the treaties they have with other countries, on their actual economy and inflation policy. Some bills will be more valuable than others. But they have verifiable value.
Now imagine I would find a bill that says: 100 FTS, and that would be the currency of a country called Futuristan. (FWIW, my Romanian friends will understand why I didn't name the currency FUT, but that's another story). Futuristan is a non-existent country, just established. It may or may not continue to exist, but it already has a currency.
And they didn't distribute that currency everywhere, to anybody. No, they airdropped it in a country they want to be frens with. That's how I explain "you qualify for our airdrop because you already hold some tokens of this type". It's like they give the token away only if you already live in a specific country. The better placed you are in that country, the more tokens they aridrop to you.
Now, the 100 FTS bill doesn't have any value yet, simply because the country that printed it just came into existence. It may have some value in the future (it's called Futuristan for a reason, our example country) but for now it's only a promise.
If the people that created Futuristan are well known, if they know how to tell stories about their future country, if they have some track record for their skills, that promise looks interesting.
If I'm not risk averse, I may just hold that token. You never know, in the future (doh), Futuristan may actually be a thing.
But if I'm risk averse, I will try to get rid of that token as fast as I can. Some may say: why getting rid of it? Why don't you just hold it? There are no costs associated with holding.
Well, this is one of the inflection points. There are costs associated with holding something. We live in an attention-hungry world, and the mere fact that I spend my attention on something carries some value. If I spend my attention in something not worthy, then I already lose stuff. It's called "opportunity cost". Instead of watching a newly born country, I can keep my attention on other countries, with a proven track record, and focus on increasing my portfolio there, making sure I am not missing opportunities.
On the other hand, though, if I would be to establish a new country, how do I get my message across? Airdrops are a very convenient way to spread the news about that. They are promises waiting to be fulfilled, wrapped up in marketing. And they are fast.
But as the attention economy keeps growing, it will become increasingly difficult to keep your attention on all these countries. Every new country will ask for some attention from you: to get the tokens, to delegate them, to secure them, to verify their status, etc. We are not there yet, but I believe there is a certain threshold after which holding tokens is simply not worth the time. You, as a holder, can't spend even those minutes every week to check on the charts, news and numbers, and the fact that you're not actively maintaining interest will eventually extract any existing value (as little as it is) from the tokens.
They will be just colorized paper laying on the ground.
Don't get me wrong. I love money manifesting out of thin air.
But money is money only in relationship with other people. I always say that "all the money in the world is in other people pockets". It has value only because there are these people, otherwise it is not money at all, it is just empty matter. Paper, or bits in a computer, whatever, if there aren't people interested in my type of money, there is simply no money. At all.
Thoughts?
Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash