CEO of ApeCapital says both NFTs and good cryptocurrencies will increase by a lot over the coming years

499Block：Today we have invited Kane — CEO of ApeCapital, and Matt Powers from O3 Labs to talk about the next wave for NFT! Thanks to Matt bringning 3 HackerPunks for the community members.

Matt：Hello 499Block! Hope you’re all doing exceedingly well! I’m here to give you some quality alpha!

499Block：K Hello Kane, could you give a brief introduction about yourself first? Then we move to Matt~

Kane：I go by @shitizen_kane on twitter, I worked with real estate before I learned about bitcoin in 2017. Then I started learning as much as I could about it and was hooked.

From there it was a metter of time until I got into other chains and NFTs in general.

499Block：That was Impressive experience, great, let’s move to Matt!@mattO3CommDirector。

Matt：Absolutely! I’m Matt from the USA. Previously, I worked in communications for a fortune 500 software company in the USA. It was there that I first learned of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in 2017. After talking to several software engineers within the company and finding them to have limited understanding and enthusiasm around the idea, I bought my first cryptocurrency, 1 Litecoin (regrettably). I’ve been an investor and blockchain enthusiast since then. I joined O3 Labs in 2020 after meeting the CEO at a blockchain meetup in Shanghai.

He was thrilled with my passion for crypto and brought me into the growing company almost immediately. I was similarly excited to get started. Now, as Communications Director, I focus on building partnerships with other companies and organizations within the space as well as managing our social media platforms on Twitter and Medium in addition to our marketing campaigns.

499Block：Another great experience of Matt! We will learn and gain so much from today’s AMA! Now let’s move to the first question!

At present, most of the current NFT applications are concentrated in art collection, DeFi, and games. What other areas of NFT applications are worth looking forward to?

Matt：In my opinion, NFTs are most closely associated with a person’s online identity and used to affirm social status. Those with NFTs from some of the most renowned projects like Bored Apes, Art Blocks, or even CyberKongz demand notoriety because they either got into the project very early or they’re very, very wealthy already.

Personally, I’m obsessed with the potential for online gaming + NFT + play to earn functionality. I think that if users are able to earn and own things (think land, armor, gold, vehicles, cahracters etc..) within a game whether it be a metaverse or just a really fun, addictive game then that token, game, and NFT are going to do very well. We’ve seen it with Axie Infinity, but we haven’t seen it arise elsewhere and it won’t stay that way for much longer as the model is emulated.

That said, I think NFTs functioning as social tokens within an exclusive club or organization is worth looking forward to. For instance, if a company like Disney issues an NFT as a social token or any promotional sale, then there’s going to be a lot of traffic into the space and that’s what we’ve already seen — the space becoming more and more mainstream as time goes on. I mean, Stephen Curry bought a Bored Ape and Snoop Dog is going to have a party in the SandBox!

Kane：For me, electoral systems that use NFTs is something that I really look forward to.

Publicly auditable voting systems are desperately needed since the current electronic voting systems used in a lot of countries’ elections

have some security issues that lead to voters not trusting the results.

NFTs can be a key part of this new system, and I expect to see it being used in major countries this decade.

There are also many other interesting use cases that are being explored

such as NFTs as admission tickets for events and NFTs that can be used to verify ownership of a given product and help reduce counterfeits.

NFTs are still a relatively new concept and I expect to see the number of use cases go up over the next years.

499Block：Awesome, you said very clearly! There are opinions that the value of art collections such as NFT avatars will exceed the market value of Bitcoin. How do you view this statement? Could @mattO3CommDirector go first?

Matt：Sure! I think it’s possible! What do we know: The revenue produced from online gaming in the world exceeds 1 trillion and that’s very close to the current market cap of bitcoin today. Bitcoin’s price sits at around $57,750 and is near its all time high. If we consider a game making an NFT avatar that’s playable and then the game gains steam and other games copy this model then we’re looking at something that could take place if all of the stars align.

The greatest value of NFT is that compared with digital products, it has actual ownership, non-duplication, permanent storage and free circulation. Its scarcity makes people have the desire to collect. NFT and art enthusiasts have this need to collect that’s been around forever, so it could happen, but I see it as unlikely because art can continue to be made while Bitcoin has scarcity built into its formula.

Anybody who has been paying attention to the NFT space over the past 3 months can see that NFTs have enormous potential. More utility must be incorporated to justify their current market prices though. Otherwise, normal people can’t and won’t want to own them. Anybody can right-click copy and paste, but if there’s a yield simply for owning the NFT via the own-to-earn model, other than its potential sale price, then that will be highly attractive. That’s already happening with CyberKongz.

Kane：It will be interesting to see if that really happens.

In my opinion, both NFTs, good cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin’s market value will all increase by a lot over the coming years.

Maybe when other NFTs use cases become popular, but I don’t expect profile picture NFTs alone to exceed BTC’s market value, at least not in this cycle. It’s possible, but IMO it’s unlikely. I’ll be watching.

499Block：Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. NFT currently seems to be a game for the rich. Are there opportunities for ordinary investors? What are your views on NFT fragmentation?

Matt：In short, yes, but one must be very early!

There are opportunities for ordinary investors if you get into projects at mint or very early when projects hit the market. Currently, one of the best ways for ordinary people to get in on the NFT action is via new NFT environments like Solana, Luna, or Immutable X, in which gas fees are very low comparable to those on the ETH blockchain. I highly encourage people here to check out Immutable X (IMX) which is going to absolutely explode because they’re somehow avoiding ETH GAS fees while also onboarding quality projects like Moody Krows.

The process of NFT‘s fragmentation is a kind of asset redistribution. I think it will solve the current problem of low liquidity.

Nowadays, the high value of NFT collections is a very common thing, which has brought a high threshold for ordinary investors. When fragmented NFTs allow for divided ownership, the threshold for everyone to enter the market will be lowered, which meanwhile brings higher liquidity into the NFT‘s secondary market.

In general, the emergence of the NFT fragmentation protocol provides a good solution for liquidity problems, but this is only the first step, and there is still a long way to go in the future. However, with the growing maturity of the NFT market, the strengthening of community consensus and the development of the metaverse, the liquidity problem could be further alleviated when NFTs come to the masses.

I highly encourage a close look at Solana, Luna, and IMX NFTs. OpenSea isn’t the only place to get high upside NFT assets.

Just remember, the earlier you are, the greater the potential return!

499Block：What’s your opinion on that? Kane

Kane：I agree, with Matt.

Established NFT collections that are considered blue chip are definitely out of reach for most people that are getting into NFTs now,

but they can also get in early in some new project for around 150–300 USD and

see it achieve blue chip status and make them a lot of money if they are lucky enough (which has proven to be more common than most people would like to think).

There are a lot of risks in this ecosystem but also lots of opportunities.

NFT fragmentation/fractional ownership of NFTs is something I’m excited about since it allows new people to own a part of the most famous NFTs and at the same time also allows big investors to diversify into the ones that would otherwise not be for sale.

I think it will play a major role in the NFT market, helping to take it to new highs.

499Block：Some new NFT standards are emerging, such as upgradeable, combinable, etc. What changes will it bring, and which ones do you think are the most correct and useful?

Matt：We all know that the altcoins usually follow BTC and ETH into the green!What if it goes red before the end of this q4. The most-correct is a strange way to put it.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the evolving NFT and NFTs that can be used to mint other NFTs. They create exclusivity and value within that particular NFT community. We’ve seen how people who bought apes from BYAC were able to turn their apes into mutants using serum. CyberKongz allows owners to earn $Banana just for holding the NFT. That creates immense value for its holders.

Our HackerPunk NFTs which we’re giving 3 away today also have a utility. Users will be able to mine $O3 on our platform using them, so any utility or value add for NFTs is better than it merely being a static asset to be bought and sold. That’s what makes digitized NFTs where ownership can be tracked more valuable. We know who the owner is and can reward him/her for having faith in the project.

I think upgradeable, combineable, and yield-earning NFTs are all very exciting because they’ll be able to do something!K Your turn!

Kane：For me it is hard to say where will it take us or which of those will end up being useful.

I see a lot of potential use cases for those in games. “Leveling up” the NFT, combining NFT items to make them more powerful, etc.

If NFTs end up being used for critical things like national ID and marriage certificates then those features will certainly be more useful. We are still early so we still have a lot of experimentation to do.

499Block：Interesting to see what’s gonna happen. NFT successfully brought in more people to the crypto world. What impact did this have on the crypto market? What other changes will there be?

Matt：Well, we saw ETH continue to dominate when it comes to the DAPP market and we saw the meteoric rise of SOL due to ETH $GAS issues during NFT mania and SOL’s ability to create an NFT ecosystem extremely quickly! Then SOL had the downtime and that drained them of momentum!

What other changes? People are getting rich off of images and placing them as their avatars on social media to display their status.

Future changes have been touched upon. @K is absolutely right when he says they’ll be played with in games and leveled up! I also think there’s a big market for Veracity since they have the tech to authenticate NFTs!.

Kane：The first changes, generally speaking: things will probably get a lot more user friendly, fool-proof and mobile.

As more and more non-technical people arrive, existing projects, platforms and wallets will all have to adapt to this if they want to stay relevant.

Popular blockchains will really be tested (like Matt pointed out, the Solana downtime was one of these tests) as the number of users and transactions will increase exponentially.

This will probably cause a big shift in the markets from blockchains with a lot of friction to the ones that are easier for newcomers to interact with.

499Block：Such a rewarding discussion with Kane and Matt, we’ve learned a lot and have better insight in the industry for future investment! Now we move to the second section for O3 Swap AMA! Question to @mattO3CommDirector

O3 Swap has just released the first batch of NFTs: O3 Hacker Punks, can you tell us about it?

Matt：Yes, there are 10k and they’ll be exclusively used to mine our $O3 coin when V2 is launched later this October, so they’ll have utility in addition to their value as exclusive pieces of O3 memorabilia!

They’re inspired by and a tribute to commemorate the biggest white hat hack in cryptocurrency history, the Poly Network Exploit. They have historical value for that reason!

Kane：Are you launching it on Poly or another chain?

Matt：We’re currently on 5 chains including ETH, HECO, BSC, POLYGON, and Neo! We’re launching tomorrow on Arbitrum!

Kane：Awesome, I’ll definitely check it out.

499Block：We know that O3’s NFT is the only pass to participate in V2 mining. Can you tell us about the progress of O3 Swap V2? @mattO3CommDirector

Matt：That’s right!Sure, we’ll be launching very soon! And we’ll be revising our tokenomics to have deflationary measures where $O3 will be burned.

499Block：@mattO3CommDirector Anything else would you like to share about O3 Swap before going to free question section?

Matt：I just want to encourage users to go to o3swap.com , connect their metamask wallets, and try to do a swap.It’s super easy and user-friendly and I’m sure you’ll use it more than one!

499Block：All right! Thanks to Kane and @mattO3CommDirector for sharing this amazing AMA.