I stumbled across NBA Top Shot, which is an NFT (non-fungible token). I was wondering what everyone thinks about Pokémon one day moving into this space? I feel as though sports is more optimized for it since the emphasis on collecting is more apparent in that hobby. It sounds silly at first, but as someone noted in the discord one night, what is this generation more into? Fortnite skins, DLCs, etc. I don’t think it would ever impact the value of physical goods (if anything it might escalate them). I just thought it was interesting. I’ve attached a more detailed article that explains the situation.
I could be mistaken but isn’t this in line with the digital cards our favorite amateur boxer is including with the 1st edition base set box break?
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@pokestop702, you are correct.
I think we are heading in that direction in a way already – I’ve also seen the increase in conversation about them recently.
If you think about it, anything stored at pwcc vault is basically like a NFT especially if it moves from one vault member to another. I currently just can’t comprehend the exclusivity aspect of it. I feel like anything goes in this market which is cool but very confusing to me too.
I don’t see the value in a purely digital collectible when there is a perfectly acceptable physical alternative. People who want Fortnite skins don’t have an acceptable physical alternative. It’s an inherently digital asset. I honestly don’t see why anyone would prefer a purely digital Pokemon card to a physical Pokemon card.
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@zorloth, that’s my initial reaction too - I want something I can hold in my hand. Pokemon is speculative enough as is, digitalizing it would make it even moreso. Still interesting to see where this will go!
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I saw an article pop up where L0gan Paul had sold something like 2,000 out of 3,000 cards for 1 ETH ($2,000 each) in a couple days time. Seems likely it’ll sell out. Millions of dollars. Wild. He can never make the same NFT again but could literally just pump out a new one each week and who the hell knows maybe itd make the first one more valuable.
I don’t dig it personally but with all the insanity this past year and a half or so had been across just about all markets I can almost guarantee a Pokemon official 1/100 limited NFT of charizard for $10,000 would sell out.
Think about it. Rare, scarce. Limited and known distribution. All of them are digital and perfect in every way.
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NFT values just seem so arbitrary. I mean, couldn’t anyone just create one? It makes it so that any person with a large following can basically just print money at will…
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For items with a physical alternative I don’t really like it. But I have seen some stuff in sports where they sell highlights of certain games and I could see some value in that if it is truly exclusive.
I think my reaction is the same as a lot of people here, which is to say that I don’t see the value in a digital asset. It doesn’t compute for me. But I suppose that’s the point. I read through the article fully and the author makes some great points about trying to find the “next big thing” and being okay with things not working out: finding that next big thing means taking a big risk. I’d certainly agree that NFTs have some promise in a “future collecting world” but there is a very high level of risk.
One major issue I see with NFTs is that alternative investment “markets” often emerge organically. A large group of people having a sincere attachment to specific items leads to both a desire to pay higher prices and removing items from the market into collections. When people try to create or promote alternative investments from the get-go, they fail. I’m absolutely certain Pokemon wouldn’t be where it is today if there weren’t long periods with limited interest and considering it a long-term investment strategy was a joke. The hobby was entirely driven then by organic demand. There is a massive amount of organic collecting demand in Pokemon and in sports–and yes I’m aware that organic demand is an arbitrary construct, but we all get the point.
The jump into NFTs is being marketed as the next big investment strategy. It’s not being marketed on the merits of the actual items. In fact, the entire thing seems to be created with the goal of manufacturing digital assets which mirror desirable characteristics in the physical world. As a rough rule of thumb, I think the more people view something as an investment opportunity, the more caution you should exercise.
Forgive me as I jump into some constructionism here on the benefits of NFTs. It literally doesn’t matter whether there’s a physical item or whether an NFT conforms to past ideas of what a collectible is. What matters is how people assign value to these items. If you have enough people who agree that these items have value, and they also agree that such items are collectible, desirable, and will rise in value, you’re in luck. It’s the same as any collectibles market, there’s nothing inherent that makes one card more valuable than another, it’s all just subjective value-assignments. This ranges from the idea that Charizard is better than Weedle all the way down to the idea that fewer copies of a card means it’s more valuable. So in order to bet on NFTs, you just have to bet that there will be enough people who value them in the right way to sustain a market. But we could also apply this analysis to dryer lint.
With regards to Pokemon, I don’t see this happening at any time in the future. As I mentioned earlier, the rise of NFTs does seem to be somewhat artificial and largely based on marketing an alternative investment strategy. I suppose something like this already exists with PTCGO digital cards which certainly have NFT-like characteristics. Maybe Pokemon would do something like an online-exclusive set, but the idea of a LP-esque “initial offering” where you have to pay to buy an NFT really seems unlikely with the current business model of Pokemon.
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One of the things I think NFT could work well with physical collectibles is via fractional ownership. Say an Illustrator is broken down into 10,000 NFTs (shares) and is then traded in the open market. Of course you would need a third party to store the asset and there has already been a few in the market. This could be applied to fine art as well.
This way, you can transfer ownership of your shares of an asset in the form of an NFT anytime without being limited to only buyouts or open trading.
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This is how NBA Top Shot has come into play. Instead of offering still pictures, their collectibles consists of videos.
The next argument that comes after that is that the collectors in Top Shot don’t own the rights to the videos but rather just a piece of code that makes reference to the video and that you can watch the same video on YouTube. They’re trying to tackle that argument by introducing NBA Top Shot Hardcourt, a game where you can utilize the collectibles you have in Top Shot [ref].
The NFT marketplace offers quick transactions, instant transfers from buyer to sellers and the ability to add metadata to collectibles allowing for common filtering capability like being able to search for all collectibles featuring a certain player. Right now, the site is still very primitive and you can only filter on a couple properties but additional features have been planned, announced, and feature requests are coming in a plenty. Re-envisioning the market from scratch would give the opportunity for the market to resolve issues seen in other collectibles like how people on Ebay now lists raw cards with “PSA 10?” in the title.
If a Pokemon NFT offers the exact same thing that the TCG offers now, I definitely would agree with your point and it would be moot. However, I think NFT provides the idea and the framework for the next generation of collectibles. The limit is your imagination.
Disclaimer: I have collectibles (termed “moments”) in NBA Top Shot, starting 2-3 days ago 
Genuinely curious: what difference does it make that the NFT consists of a video, especially one that’s available to the public on YouTube? You mention that people have made this argument, but you don’t explain why you disagree with it.
To me, it seems that buying an NFT is akin to buying a bottle full of air. It’s just some nebulous object that you can buy and sell. Which I guess makes it basically just Bitcoin. Which is fine, but at that point I don’t see why we’re calling it a ‘collectible.’
I suggest everyone go down the rabbit hole of researching NFTs it’s…fascinating. Digital art, digital land in games (worth hundreds of millions of actual dollars) I mean…it’s wild.
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I didn’t disagree with it because they are right, it is a fundamental issue, especially because the motto of TS (“Top Shot”) is literally “own the moment” which is not entirely correct depending on what your definition of the word ‘own’ means.
If it means owning an NFT, yes, you can own an NFT. If it means owning the video referenced by that NFT, no you do not have legal rights to that video. To put it into an example, if you own a Pokemon card, that physical card is yours, but not the art on it. The art on it still belongs to TPCI.
Similar to how they created the Pokemon TCG game, NBA TS is planning on creating another application named NBA TS Hardcourt which will provide value for the underlying NFT. Otherwise, it would be the difference between carddass and the Pokemon TCG, one has an extra layer of value.
With my (physical/digital) (card/NFT), I can use it to play (the TCG / Hardcourt).
I called it a collectible as a general terminology as calling it “moments” out of the blue would confuse people who are not familiar with NBA TS. The definition of what is and isn’t a collectible is something that I cannot necessarily put into words at the moment.
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Despite being extremely early in almost everything crypto related for the past ~8 years I thought topshop was super dumb and missed out on millions to tens of millions of dollars by ignoring it. The thing I think people are missing is it’s apparent that people just genuinely like collecting. Make it rare and cool and interesting, now that won’t last forever when more quality outlets come around, they will collect the quality. This could be usage (tied to games, have practical value, are from established brand, are provably scarce, whatever) vs right now every stupid non fungible pepe that gets made is sold for tens of thousands. Think about how much of a pain it’s been to sell skins or items even back to D2 days. Now the operator can offload all of that and all of that risk if needed, can profit on the minting and creation or drive it through game but secondary market may not force them to same legal risks they had before.
I’m friends with the CEO of a major music studio and they are thinking super deeply (not money grabby) about how to do this in a way that that really makes sense. For artists, for fans, for all of it. it’s not significantly different than fans buying an autographed band shirt vs buying a limited 1/10 clip of the music from the aritst themselves.
Again, hated it early, still not a ton of exposure to it but it’s tough to ignore markets. Dapper Labs just raised @ $2B valuation, all brands looking here, I think we’re def. going to see a lot lot more about this moving forward and the use cases will get much better than they are now
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This comes down to a really simple, black and white thing for me - can you tangibly, physically, be able to hold that asset. If not, then…I’m very, very suspicious.
Dicslaimer: I know this doesn’t apply to assets such as stocks or bonds (unless you request the actual cert~~), but still, I think you guys know what I’m getting at.~~
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I understand the appeal of digital assets… I own a $6000 spaceship in Eve Online.
I don’t think I’d buy an NFT that didn’t come direct from the Pokemon company though.
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That’s all very interesting and just led me into a YouTube rabbit hole of NFT haha 
It takes me back to the memories of having several discontinued items on RuneScape (party hats) which apparently fetch today for over a couple of thousand dollars; I know they are not protected from duplication \ bugs by not being implemented via a smart contract but it is still intriguing, especially due to the fact they came out around the same time as EN pokemon cards.
In the context of Pokemon TCG collections \ investing I actually paid more attention in the article to the “Fractional Investing”; Wouldn’t it be cool to own as a group, with each part as liquid as it wants; cards that are out of our reach (most of us) and maintaining some kind of a Pokemon E4 Museum? I’m not that knowledgeable if this came up already
not commenting on the ability to make money or it as an investment, but I just think buying a digital collectible is really stupid. I hope those who like it both enjoy, and get rich off it. just ridiculous to me
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This comes down to a really simple, black and white thing for me - can you tangibly, physically, be able to hold that asset. If not, then…I’m very, very suspicious.
Dicslaimer: I know this doesn’t apply to assets such as stocks or bonds (unless you request the actual cert~~), but still, I think you guys know what I’m getting at.~~[/quote]
Tell that to the hundreds of Blu-rays I bought in the 2000s lol 
^^ messed up quoting you properly can’t figure out how to fix it from phone