Steem-Engine is already showing us what the future will look like. Go to that website and look at the different tokens on there. It will make your head spin. Already it is impossible to know what all those projects are.
Think about when SMTs are finally released. Also consider all the tokens on EOS, ETH, and TRON.
How are we going to keep them all straight?
The answer is you are not. There will come a time when 99% of the tokens are unknown to you (if not already). Most that appear will never cross our radar.
Tokens are going to be like languages. You will use only what is applicable to you. The rest will have little interest. In fact, you will not even be aware of their existence.
It is akin to websites today. How many different ones does the average person visit in a day? 50 maybe? 100? Now compare that to the number of sites that exist out there. There are billions of websites that we could visit. I would guess that, other than a small sliver, they are all unknown.
Does that mean those websites do not have value? Absolutely not.
Now, we must realize value is a term that is relative. To start, value can be based upon economic comparisons such as to money. Obviously, a site that is dedicated to nuclear physicists which covers the latest research in that field is not going to have the same value as Google.com.
Nevertheless, that does not mean the site is without value. The second way to look at it is the value it provides to the users. Since there are a lot less nuclear physicists than people using a search engine, the traffic to that site is a lot less. Yet, to those people who are in that field, that site could be of great value. It might have the latest research that enables multi-million dollar breakthroughs.
To the rest of us, it is way over our heads.
Tokens are the same way. Those designed for the common person are going to have much greater value in terms of marketcap. However, there are going to be millions of tokens (just like websites) that are created to focus upon select groups. This is why the talk of "communities" is so important on here. Ultimately, that is what humans are. We are a series of tribes, interacting with each other.
The difference is, with the digital world, it is easier to bounce from tribe to tribe.
One minute I can be involved with the Steemian tribe, the next with one built around a professional sports team. My transformation can happen with the click of a button.
With tokens, it does not take long to amass many different ones. While most focus upon the financial aspect of tokenizations, which makes sense since that is one of the ways that humanity is kept under control, there is another function tokens serve. These are marketing pieces. Tokens are being given out as a way to provide incentive to people to come to a particular tribe.
This, in itself, has value.
My guess is some of the most valuable tokens will not be those we talk about on a daily basis. Ultimately, token value comes down to the community it is serving. When you have loyalty and dedication taken to the extreme, when it is unwavering, that is a powerful community. I believe this will translate into a value token depending upon the set up.
And where do we often find that passion? With sports teams. People tend to be lifelong fans of a particular team. No matter how poorly the team does, they support it. Just look at some of the blogs that cover different teams and the number of people on there each day. Tokenizing this is a no-brainer since there is already a community set up.
Tokens imply a vested interest. It is where we are focused and dedicated. We often see the term "attention economy" and this is how it plays out. Our time and focus has value. For that, we are to be rewarded. Those communities that understand this will be able to offer incentives to have people move their attention.
For example, the last few days, I started to focus my attention on the PAL platform. Since this interface came out, I use it for my posts. So far, I earned some PAL tokens in addition to my SP payouts (pending anyway). There is added incentive for me to make this switch.
To start, I believe in supporting applications other than Steemit to push more decentralization. I feel we are progressing if we have more development and interfaces on here. At the same time, I am a supporter of the vision of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty. This is something that I feel we need to focus upon and transition to as a society. We see where War, Scarcity, and Slavery got us.
These are some of the shifts that are already taking place due to tokenization. This is only going to grow. I do my best to keep up with all that is taking place on Steem and it is getting to the point where it is impossible. That is a good thing. The rate of growth is such that no one person can be on top of it all. This shows how wide our tentacles are starting to spread.
As tribes start to form around values, we are going to see a massive explosion in usage. Those tokens which have passionate groups are going to have extreme value. Again, this might not be reflected based upon the price compared to fiat, although if big enough it might. Instead, what I mean is in the ability to provide value to a grassroots movement.
This is the nature of tokenization.
How do you want to see in the world that will make it better? Think of a way to tap into those who value the same thing and tokenize it. As the community grows, more options will be available as the value of the "network" gets larger. This most like will result in the growth of the token, increasing its value monetarily.
Hence we see the funding for projects which normally would not get any.
So do not worry about the overwhelm. There will be millions of projects tokenized for different purposes. Some will have merit to the masses, most will not. That does not mean the project i.e. token is worthless. There are other forms of value than just monetary.
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