ICOs were, in many cases, offering a completely different vision for what air quotes

crypto was supposed to do and be in the world. And frankly, we've been fighting battles because

of that ever since. NFTs are obviously tied to the underlying technology architecture,

but otherwise have almost nothing to do with what else is going on in the finance and money

side of Bitcoin and Crypto. No one is using hash masks as a global settlement currency or looking at

NBA Topshot as an inflation hedge. In other words, there is no narrative competition.

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io and Casper and produced and distributed by CoinDes.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, March 2nd, and last night I saw Diplo, Dead Mouse, and Paris Hilton in a clubhouse chat talking about NFTs.

So I think it is highly reasonable to ask, are NFTs just this cycles ICOs?

As I mentioned before, the way that I think about the breakdown is that

it's a show about power shifts. The particular dimension of power shifting that I tend to focus on

is economic, although I do love my geopolitical shows. And usually I'm thinking about those economics

on a macro level versus in the context of any one industry. That's why sometimes

when people ask me why I'm not covering other things in the crypto industry outside of Bitcoin,

it's not necessarily because of a disinterest in those things, although sometimes that's a part of it.

It tends more to be due to the fact that I'm focused on these big macro power shifts and

Bitcoin is at the center of so much of that, while other parts

of crypto simply aren't at least not yet. This is also the reason that I haven't spent as much

time on NFTs. I gave it a headlining spot on last week's weekly recap show, but that was pretty

much it. That said, I at least wanted to do this show for a couple reasons. First, there is no denying

how central to the crypto industry narrative NFTs have become. Over the last couple weeks

...