Profile Picture NFTs Will Be Crypto's Most Valuable Digital Real Estate

Like the wild punks and club-swinging apes they are profile-picture NFTs are going to bully Bitcoin off the digital real estate thrown.

If this makes you roll your eyes, I understand. I was you about five minutes ago. I assumed that, like meme coins before them and the fads before those, the profile-picture (pfp) NFT market would lose the spotlight and turn into a wasteland of worthless NFTs with only a select few holding any value.

Then it hit me: These are not profile-picture NFTs. These are avatar NFTs! These colorful creatures aren't going to stay locked in the cage of any picture, they are going to be living cartoons roaming around metaverses leaving waves of FOMO in their wake.

The image above feature the avatars that come with the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT's. Below is the 3D avatar that comes with the pfp NFT VOIDs kicking it in the Somnium Space metaverse.

VOIDs have even been used to play GTA V! "My digital real estate robbed a bank today, what did yours do?"

In case you haven't caught on yet, there are going to be some amazing meta earning opportunities for investors here. I'm not just talking about resale value either. Like antiquated non-digital real estate, avatar NFTs will lead to paths of passive income!

To understand how we're going to get to this magical utopia where we live off cartoon pictures, you have to first wrap your brain around....

The Metaverse Takeover

Every futuristic movie ever can't be wrong: We are going to be living increasingly in metaverses. Don't believe science-fiction writers? Fine, be nitpicky. Let's check in with Beth Kindig to get the CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang's thoughts on the subject:

"I feel fairly certain the metaverse is going to be a new economy that is larger than our current economy."

That projects the metaverse economy to be bigger than the current U.S. GDP of over $87 trillion! We don't have the capabilities yet to have one, all-encompassing, no-boundary metaverse that would become where the economy happens, but we do have a bunch of metaverse-lite platforms and principles already functioning.

Check out the recently launched Facebook VR workspace in the above picture. Just a bunch of avatars casually chilling getting work done in an efficient, personal and teleport-able environment.

Facebook is just getting started too. Evil genius, I mean pale alien, Mark Zuckerberg has said people will start to think of Facebook as a metaverse company more than a social company.

Some of you thorough types may need more examples than dudes typing stories from basements, colorful pictures, or quotes from CEOs selling metaverses about metaverses. Fine. Be that way.

Let's look at the behavior of children. Games like World of Warcraft, Minecraft and Fortnite have normalized the idea of meeting entertainment and social needs through a metaverse environment for well over a decade.

Avatar chillin' in Roblox

Watch kids on Roblox today, and you'll find groups of people meeting social needs as their avatars while jumping to different games. Living in metaverses is already the norm for an entire generation.

If you are still curious about the potential of the metaverse to dominate the future economic landscape, I've added many more letters on it here.

For our purposes, we just need to accept the fact that people will be increasingly living in metaverses. And they will do this while hopping around platforms as different avatar NFTs to play games, look at art or go shopping for digital or physical items.

Alright, so now that we've established we will become avatars, let's look at the kind of value they'll create.

Avatars' Value as Collectible Art

You don't have to be a gymnast to stretch into this idea. People are putting art on NFTs and they are collecting them. This is already the main principle driving NFTs price action and they have stormed the art and collectible markets like Chris Farley entering the Letterman stage.

While you may think the art on some or all on NFTs isn't particularly great, I would counter with Jackson Pollock and say the price of art has never been measured by the quality of the art. It has been measured by scarcity and demand.

Apparently people have plenty of demand for the scarcity of art. Look at the billions being poured into the art market annually (chart c/o statista).

Even fine art pfp NFTs can be animated into a 3D avatars. allowing owners to impress friends with the unique depth of their art taste, or pocketbook, probably pocketbook mostly. The same can be said for any collectible, and now we're talking about access to more pools of fiat.

Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing researched and concluded that 72.9 million collectors reside in America alone, and of those collectors, 70% of them have purchased at least one collectible in the last year.

These are huge, consistent markets avatar NFTs are going to tap into, and in a hurry. We aren't stopping this fiat sucking train at art and collectibles either.

Avatars' Pull on the Fashion Industry

This one takes a little more gymnastics to stretch into, but let's check back in with Zuckerberg. He knows, somehow he always knows:

“Creating avatars and digital objects are going to be central to how we express ourselves.”

If we are "wearing" avatars and they are central to how we express ourselves, this sounds an awful lot like the fashion industry. And what a deliciously, pumped-up, money transferring industry that is!

The world's fashion industry recently had an annual check in at $3 trillion. This was good for 2% of the world's GDP!

People fork over fistfuls of fiat for fashion because it's a status symbol and/or it helps them feel beautiful and special. Probably other reasons too. I don't know, I wear clothes so I don't get arrested, and I'm typing this from my decade-old robe. The point is, avatars will meet this same need, especially as metaverses make us increasingly forget about the outside place, and we are meeting and socializing with others increasingly via our avatars.

Hey baby, may I buy you a pudgy penguin?

Instead of dudes rolling up to clubs in Lambos and a Rolex to pick up women, they will be rolling up to the meta-art gallery as a Crypto Punk.

Just like a women walking past other women with a new Gucci bag, avatars are going to be bright, colorful, walking billboards creating tangible FOMO that will expand and boom the market.

People literally get murdered over Michael Jordan sneakers that have been holding stinky feet in this world! Think of what a 1-of-500, permanently pristine Michael Jordan avatar NFT would go for?

Speaking of Michael Jordan, we need to talk about games!

Avatars' Chunk of Gaming Revenue

This is my favorite piece of the utility puzzle. The gaming industry is rabid, growing, and like we shared earlier with Roblox, it is merging with social media. This will align the center of our new, wonderful metaverse.

Look at some of the existing numbers:

— The gaming industry raked in $90 billion in 2020

— Global market research firm Mordor Intelligence projects $225 billion annually by 2025

As eye-popping as that massive growth is, it's conservative when considering these numbers:

— Over 80% of Gen Z are playing games and 65% have bought something inside a game

— Americans spent approximately $54 billion on in-game content in 2020

People are becoming increasingly used to paying money, not for games, but things to play the game with. As we've been discussing, the metaverse is going to bring exponentially new ways for people to spend money on in-game content.

Avatars, however, will be the single biggest recipient of this spending. Their potential starts to get mind boggling here. Think about this graph. It is Minecraft's amount of active users per million.

Let's take the project Rumble Kongs as an example. The gorilla pictured above with the Kong jersey is a Rumble Kong. They are launching a 3-on-3 basketball game. Each Kong comes with different abilities. These Kongs will be able to travel to different metaverses and other NFTs will be able to play basketball against Kongs. You better believe, however, Kongs will rule the court! These games won't just be played for fun either, but in the growing competitive and play-to-earn gaming sectors.

Now, think if Rumble Kongs gains just 1/100th of Minecraft's user base. There are only 10,000 Kongs in existence. Scarcity meet demand!

Remember, too, game avatars won't just be fulfilling to own while playing the game, they will be a status symbol to use travelling the metaverse for any reason!.

In fact, this kind of model means big payouts not just by reselling your NFTs, but by adding beautiful streams of passive income.

The Path to Passive Income

Things start getting really exciting now. We've established all this value avatars will create. So what are ways to utilize it?

Principles of DeFi are starting to bubble up in avatar NFTs. Projects are launching staking and farming programs. The yield being things like tokens that can be sold or used to purchase better abilities for your avatar, or airdrops of companion NFTs.

Owners will also be able to decide if they want to fractionalize their NFT and open it up for public buy in. "Fractionalized digital real estate you say? I think my grandpa told me about a coin that did that once."

My favorite is the thought of renting out your avatars. Like kids used to drop quarters into arcade machines, they will be dropping crypto into wallets to play as bad-ass characters in the games they like.

Maybe someone wants to make an animation with one of your NFTs. You could make your NFT a star actor and reap the royalties!

Where Do I Put My Money?

You research where to put it. That's where. If you were excited about the prospects you read here, research pfp NFTs and track their price. This landscape will be evolving quickly. Opportunities will abound every day. I'll be searching for them on this blog and passing along alpha to add to your decision making process!