1/ On Fiat Culture NFTs are the scarcest cultural objects ever made, the only cultural objects with pristine provenance. They are not BTC, but they will behave over time in ways that emotionally parallel BTC for the $100T in global intangibles.

2/ Let's start by looking at the numbers. I have read the ICOM Working Group on Collections in Storage report so you don't have to. Here are how many objects, on average, museums have

3/ Or to take well-known museums: a/ MoMA (200K objects, 2M film stills) b/ Louvre: 615K c/ Met: 1.5M d/ Hermitage: 3M e/ British Museum: 8M f/ Smithsonian: 157M

4/ How many museums are there in the world? UNESCO seems to think about 100,000. Nobody knows for sure, but that is part of the point of this thread

5/ So how many objects are there in museums? Several billion, for sure, maybe tens of billions. Nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

6/ And how many objects in private collections? Well, more than in museums. Really, truly, nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

7/ What about other categories? Stamps? Well, there are about 1.5M different stamps ever minted (editions). And 20-30 trillion individual stamps ever minted, with maybe 1T still in existence. Nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

8/ What about collectible coins? About 15 billion. There are over 700M American Eagles and over 25M ancient Roman coins floating around. Nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

9/ What about "collectible watches" About 40-50M. Rolex mints about 1.2M/yr, Patek about 70K/year and even Vacheron is minting 25K/year. Nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

10/ There are 50M people working in the creative professions and 10M artists and writers. What is their annual creative output? Nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

11/ I have done this exercise for 100+ categories and the answer is always the same. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions or tens of billions are the units of measure. Nobody knows for sure, but that is a key point of this thread.

12/ As we discussed before, there are probably 1M NFTs with some form of social consensus, but with more visible stronger consensus at 100K, 10K, 1K, 100 These are small numbers relative to BTC and tiny numbers relative to the hundreds of billions of fiat cultural objects.

13/ But the main point of this thread is not that NFTs are very rare (though they are) but that they have the same relationship with fiat culture that BTC has with fiat money. Namely that they are provably scarce, transparent and sovereign.

14/ BTC is valuable because it has a fixed supply, a credible proposition that supply is not going to change, visibility into the supply and no central party that can seize your BTC or block a transfer.

15/ With NFTs, you know: a) when they were created b) who created c) how many exist d) who owns them e) how many are destroyed f) which are fake (none)

16/ With NFTs, you can say I own one of 10,000 CryptoPunks or one of 1,000 Gazers or one of 420 Sgt Pepes and, sure, one of 5,200 CryptoDickButts and be absolutely sure that this is a true statement and that is not going to change.

17/ I have developed the same discomfort with fiat culture that I had post-2013 with fiat money. I think I am now more or less incapable of paying fiat cultural premiums now. They seem "fake" relative to the provenance of NFTs.

18/ "Cultural premiums?" - yes, the world is full of them, just like it is full of monetary premiums. "The value of something above its tangible input costs" is something like what I mean. They are everywhere when you look, our whole society runs on them.

19/ I know I sound strange to any non-crypto person and a lot of crypto people too, but I am pretty sure I am right and I am feeling something that others will feel in the future. That buying something without on-chain provenance and certainty will feel something like "fake"

20/ It is the same feeling (albeit more abstract) of "it is risky to own too much BTC" to "it is risky to own too much USD" Bit by bit, more people will come through to the other side and say "wait, it feels risky and fake to own a non-NFT cultural object"

21/ "Objections: BTC is simple and unique and NFTs can be complex and messy" - sure, this is true. NFTs are more complex and risky than BTC. BTC has the greatest crypto network effects because it is a very simple story, you can't go wrong, just "stack some sats"

22/ With NFTs, you may end up with the "wrong ones," just like with fungible coins you may end up with the "wrong ones." But right now there is $100T of unanchored fiat culture and about $10B of provenance-first culture, and those numbers are not going to stay like this.

23/ So if you are here now as an artist or collector, know that, not only are you "early" but you are a participant in creating the provably scarcest things humanity has ever made. It is the beginning of crypto culture, the beginning of the end of fiat culture. /end