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  • Yeah, but if your only example of NFTs being useful is that one of the worst airlines in the industry adopted them, that's not a great argument. "Shitty company uses system, so system must be useful," doesn't really track.

    • Someone has to go first. A low cost airline adopted them to avoid the hassles and inefficiencies of overbooking flights.

      There are also lots of B2B uses of NFTs, mainly around supply chain and energy tracking, but I thought a B2C example would resonate better here.

      • Well, first, I'm very skeptical of the NFTs' ability to resolve overbooking. Overbooking is a choice airlines make to maximize profits. We could force airlines to stop overbooking tomorrow if we wanted, and they could try to prevent losses by making tickets non-refundable or charging extra for refundable tickets (tactics they already use in addition to overbooking). It seems to me the main problem is that capitalism motivates airlines to maximize profits instead of transporting people to their destination. The obvious solution to me is to nationalize the airlines, not create a third-party aftermarket for airline tickets.

        Also, the article you shared actually makes no mention of overbooking. I have to assume the solution being suggested by NFT tickets is something along the lines of, "We sell only the amount of tickets on the flight, and while we won't refund your ticket, if you can't make your flight, you're free to sell your ticket to whoever you like."

        Seems like a decent enough idea, except that you need to go through the third-party NFT company to sell your ticket, you may lose value on your ticket or even not find a buyer, and you still need to make any changes to your ticket 72 hours in advance, meaning it would be useless in resolving no-shows from flight delays. You also wind up paying a transaction fee to the NFT company and the airline for any changes you make, so really it seems what's being suggested here is that, instead of being able to get a refund on your ticket, you do the job of selling your own ticket on the free-market, and both the ticket company and airline profit from your labor. And again, since this article makes no mention of overbooking, I have to assume Flybondi will continue that practice anyway.

        I also have to point out that this article was written by and unnamed, "crypto believer," and self-published in Medium by an NFT company. It's not exactly a great source.

        All that being said, I'm sure there are uses for NFTs, just like their are uses for generative AI and VR. My point isn't that they're useless, just that their uses are overstated and create a financial bubble. I can see how generative AI might be useful first-draft copywriting, but it's not capable of replacing a writers room, or even giving accurate search results. VR is great for gaming, but no matter how much money Zuckerberg threw at it, it couldn't do anything for meetings that Zoom didn't do better. I'm not sure what the B2B uses of NFTs are, but I believe you when you tell me they exist; they just couldn't create value for random JPEGs. The NFT collapse bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros, Zuckerberg's VR investment cost Facebook $60 billion, and the generative AI bubble is going to hit every single tech company and the stock market as a whole.

533 comments