Potential impact of NFTs
While some may see it as just jpegs, NFTs present power in many ways.
Economic Empowerment: NFTs open the door to emerging markets with no gatekeepers or custodials.
Story Telling and Preservation: NFTs can be used to tell powerful stories, raise awareness for causes, and preserve important cultural history on an immutable blockchain, forever.
Perpetual Charity: NFTs enable non-profits to receive ongoing donations in perpetuity. Through secondary sales and the benefits of utility, storage, and aesthetics that NFTs bring, nonprofits can develop new passive revenue streams to support their missions.
Community Building: NFTs provide new ways to build and engage communities by enabling community ownership, rewards for community contributions, and providing members with a symbol to recognize their role in movements of change.
Identity: 1 billion people around the world lack access to identification. NFTs will provide those in underserved communities such as rural and remote regions, and refugees, with a verifiable on-chain ID.
Quoting a DGRS co-founder, Maxi:
You have to start by taking care of the world's population. Why care about whether a 14-year-old in New York will have fair odds at earning off gaming when you know a 14-year-old in Kenya can't get food to survive, let alone have a computer, and get to the opportunities?
We all know the world is unfair, and many $BTC maxis think crypto solves this problem from the ground up by solving money i.e. wealth distribution. But the biggest $BTC holders will be those who already had advantages in life! People who have large amounts of Bitcoin were either already rich or benefited from having access to education about disrupting technology and investing, while the poor can only think about what they'll eat this week. Its adoption can bring further wealth inequality.
The best we can do to build towards a better world is to educate crypto holders about charity. If every single one of us were to do just the very minimum the world could be a much better place. But, lots of people refuse to donate to charity because they're funding salaries. I completely understand them as I would also only donate directly to individuals I'm sure in. But, the Governor of @lionsclubs (and my partner) Panopticus showed me that the largest service organization in the world is unique as it donates 100% of funds directly to people. They pay for logistical costs with membership fees (>1.4M members), and they have proof of where every cent went, besides letting you plan out your own service trip with numerous volunteers in any place in the world if you're a lead donator. I went to one that Pano funded.
But, crypto still has a bad rep as the community is famous for their lack of charitable contributions. You'd think it'd be the opposite as crypto money is nothing but numbers on the screen to us - much easier to give away than when you have money in the bank. I mean it still hurts me to see bills at fine restaurants even though it's nothing compared to what I give to random people on telegram for writing messages, sending videos, being hacked... It's a weird world we degens are in.
So, how come the crypto community donates less? One reason is most things in Web3 are a scam. Many donations in crypto for good causes have already been exploited. It's hard to find something with credibility. I'd say Lions Club International working with DeGenerous solves this. Another reason is human greed. Almost everyone in crypto believes the tokens they hold will be worth 50x more if they hold it a couple of years more. Why donate $100 when you can donate $4800 in a couple of years and still have 2x more? Fundraising utility NFTs solve this.
NFTs give extra incentives to donate as they:
may actually be profitable
let you be a part of a community
give you perks
let you flex your donations forever on-chain as well as to communities in metaverses, games, social media apps, etc.
People live for the flex and they could get more badges, extra glow around avatars, etc the more they donate. Let's gamify charity for social good. Everything else is being gamified.
With service organizations, NFTs can even be used as proof of attendance - people can collect them for participating in service trips like the one we are organizing. Each DeGenerous holder will be able to vote on where they want the raised funds to go, and then attend the trip.
They can see with their own eyes where their money went, do IRL work, feel better about themselves, and feel like a part of something. This is how you start. Make charity bigger, and then eliminate technical & financial barriers to opportunities.
We have to focus on first solving hunger, shelter, eyesight, etc, then we can onboard as many people as possible to education, computers, etc. Next, we think about financial and technical barriers to accessing fair Web3 products allowing earning from anywhere in the world. At DeGenerous, we aim to make charity more attractive to crypto users. We already solved the credibility problem by working with the largest service organization in the world and being able to show where every cent is going.
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