"But the frenzy around NFTs right now is instructive. Because much of the hype is pure status-seeking."

"And that’s a healthy reminder that people will always find value in being early to the next thing, part of the innermost ingroup of something cool."

"NFTs are evidence of your cultural bona fides. They are proof of passion (PoP)."

"Social networks made social capital -- that is, popularity and influence -- scalable and quantifiable."

"NFTs take this to the next level."

"They provide the infrastructure, tools and economic incentives to turn every art form, media consumption and cultural behavior into a more transparent and verifiable status game."

"The social returns to prescient taste and committed fandom just went up dramatically."

"But these techniques had two issues."

"First, they required a certain degree of obnoxious spamminess. For someone to notice your coolness, you had to broadcast it to everybody, and, well, that’s not that cool."

"Second, for the most part, they don’t represent much investment on the part of the poster or much assistance to the creator of the experience. It’s fun to become the ‘mayor’ of a hot restaurant."

"But what’s really cool is to have been an early customer or even an investor way before it became popular."

"Crowdfunding satisfied a lot of these needs, and it’s not surprising it continues to be popular and powerful. But it does have two weaknesses."

"Projects are usually all-or-nothing propositions."

"you’re not an investor, so there’s no financial return on your investment. There’s not even much social return."

"It’s way too early to know exactly how, but all of this will have a weird and pronounced impact on our cultural and economic behavior."

"Proof of passion (PoP) will raise the rewards for accurate prediction-making and early adoption."

"Cultural fads will trend faster as we all look to jump in early so that we can prove we were there later not to mention profit from it."

"At the same time, some will be rewarded for steadfast support for an early project even after it has blown up."

"More positively, establishing a track record through proof of passion may finally enable a scalable business model for independent cool-hunters and curators."

"Those who consistently invest in overlooked and underappreciated items that then wildly succeed will be sought after."

"Further upstream, PoP dynamics might even change how projects are conceived and produced in the first place."

"In the simplest version, a creative team could tokenize their project at its earliest stage allowing regular fans the ability to prove their passion as buyers from day one."

"it’s possible for creators to tie directly economic flows to these items, enabling holders of assets to receive revenue from the project as it launches."

"Beyond specific projects, tokens may reshape the nature of patronage and community building."

"But NFTs finally solve some of their main challenges, namely that they are hard to scale and that as they scale, the status associated with being a member diminishes."

"All of this erodes the value of ‘traditional’ media companies and cultural institutions since individuals will be more able to provide proof of passion without branded legitimization and artists will be able to fund their creative endeavors by selling proof of passion to their engaged communities."