For the past couple of weeks, I have been thinking and tweeting about the importance and value of NFTs. I was 95% converged to an idea … it became 100% today after losing $150K in a project that rugged. Here is the untold truth about NFTs. Disclaimer: if you go through my tweets, you will see how I converged to what I am about to mention, it took a while. Let me start with this, NFTs as a technology is amazing, the decentralization, the ownership rights, the transparency, no matter to what extent, is great and enables amazing use-cases (which we don't have any of yet, very early). Also, they make sense if they make our lives easier, more convenient, and reduce complications. The problem is us humans, we are not decentralized, we don't trust each other, and in fact, are extremely centralized. If you notice, we humans are selfish by nature. We start businesses to "beat" competition, we trade the markets to have an "edge" on some else and take his/her money, we play sports to "win", we start NFT projects to "experiment" at the financial costs of others, we won't stop "building" AI because our competitor might beat us. There is always the factor of greed and selfishness which I see has not only been brought to the NFT & crypto space but have been amplified since money is involved which something humans are very emotional towards. Now if you add humans, money, and low entry barrier together, you have the Web3 environment. Humans have exploited all the marketing and sales techniques in this space for their own motives. Actually, this space is filled by marketers & brokers, not real businessmen. Let me tell you things I have heard directly from founders of many top and notable NFT projects (I won't mention names but I am 99% sure that you know them). This is their exact playbook. 1) Never deliver a product or any thing, because once you do, people attach the value (or floor price) of the NFT, to what you deliver and it will definitely not be an astronomical number. I heard this one from two top projects. 2) Add staking to reduce the listings and sales. That way we show diamond hands. Even though we do not know why we are staking. I have personally heard founders of very notable projects say that they still don't know why they are staking but makes holders feel good. 3) Use market makers to maintain a certain floor price. They come at a very high cost and have a lot of shady catches to it, but it is worth it if you want to maintain your floor price and become a blue chip. But beware if you do them wrong, they might just let you free fall anytime. 4) NFT are a dead end, but never show that. Cover it with "we are building IP", "we are building the next something", "we will be the face of everything", and "community". Add metaverse to it also if you will. And when you want to rug or end it, do it internally and then announce. These are 4 main points that were shocking to me once I heard it directly from the founders. From what I have seen, this space is very immature, very abused, it is filled with kids that have 0 business sense or logic. It is filled with cults which are the bigger kids with more experience. It is filled with people who are confident on having and doing nothing (like someone mentioning on a space that he doesn't agree with my tweets because he taught crypto trading in the bull while being broke). And how can I forget, the influencers and scammers scribbling on charts that make money when you get liquidated. As for real use cases, no project has a real reason to have an NFT other than being the new shiny object or being a quick cash grab or fund raise. They could definitely do it without an NFT much easier. The usual excuse is "we are only experimenting", "the market is bad", "we are waiting for favorable conditions". And don't let me start with the toxicity by leadership of the founding teams that pass it down to the community. Ever notice that a community shapes based on how the founder is? Also, the team will definitely defend the project until it dies if they are rugging in the backend, they may even sell before you (transparency of NFTs right?). Community members, very sly. They tell members something, they tell the team something, they do something. They are not definitely your friends or glad they met you in Web3. What else do you expect from kids? I think the "hide my identity behind a PFP" may be a contributing factor to this. I am writing this because I do not see anyone address this and bring them to the table. All I see are threads about why is he/she the best founders or best NFT or 10 best prompts to use in ChatGPT or DM me so I send you the link to Notion. We need to have the courage to mention these issues and face them if we want to improve the space. Until then, use the points above to navigate. On a positive note, when everyone loses faith in NFTs and crypto, the bull market begins. The future is definitely bright, but only if we address the above. I say it again: Do not build school projects, Web3 is not high school. Build real businesses, this is real life.