Fiction Gets Tokenized? The World's First Hardboiled Short Story Offered as an NFT

 

I've been following the crypto space for a while now. Or more precisely, since 2017. I've been dollar cost averaging Bitcoin and other currencies since that time. On occasion I would attempt to make a trade but I would almost always lose money doing it (just ask my accountant if you don't believe me). Like writing, some people just have the gift for trading and others should stick to their day jobs. 

More recently, I'd heard about NFTs or what's also known as Non-Fungible Tokens. I have no idea where this name comes from and what it means to "funge" something, but it sounds vaguely dirty to me. But anyway, I digress. According to Investorplace.com, the new crypto-like investments have taken the world by storm, turning digital works of art and other collectibles like photos of NBA players dunking a basketball, into tradable items available only on the digital blockchain. 

And get this, some of these pieces of digital art are going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some have sold in the millions. Why? Like Bitcoin's attractive nature, there's only so much of the digital asset to go around. In the case of NFTs, what you get is a one-of-a-kind piece of art. Think of it as purchasing brand new Picasso online as a digital property. That is, he were still alive. 

But NFTs, it turns out, aren't just limited to digital art and photos. Just a couple of weeks ago, the rock band Kings of Leon, offered up their latest album as an NFT. Now that's what got me to thinking, if you can sell digital art as an NFT, and if you can sell a basketball player crushing a dunk as an NFT, and you can sell an album of rock music as an NFT, why then can't I sell a piece of one-of-a-kind short, hardboiled fiction as an NFT? 

So that's exactly what I've done. I've set up an account with the NFT trading portal OpenSea, and offered my flash-fiction short, Suicide by Cop, as an NFT. This is a move that is entirely counter-intuitive to the fiction publishing business in which a writer sets out to sell as many copies (or units), of his or her book to the reading public as he or she can, and therefore rake in a lot of money. Or, that's the theory behind publishing anyway. But my NFT is being offered to the highest bidder who will not only receive the story in digital, pixelated form, they will also receive a hard-copy manuscript with my signature which can then be framed for posterity. 

Do I think my short story is going to sell for millions of dollars or the equivalent in Etherium (Bitcoin's main competitor on the blockchain)? God only knows, but it's a start. Like I said, as far as I know, I'm the only author doing this right now, so like Indian Jones, I'm just making this up as I go. But in the back and fore of my mind, I can't help but see other writers joining the cause. Creating short or even long fiction that's meant to be bought and sold to just one individual who wishes to own a one-of-a-kind piece of literature. 

Kind of tickles the imagination, doesn't it? 

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Buy Bitcoin Now or Kick Your Own Butt Later On

chart courtesy of bircoin.top

I’ve been waxing poetically lately about the merits of investing in Bitcoin, not because I’m a financial analyst (which I most definitely am not, nor do I play one on my pathetic 55 member YouTube channel), but because I’m a full-time crime author who loves to bitch and moan about the peaks and valleys associated with my monthly and semi-annual royalties. So why the waxing? Bitcoin for me, has proven a store of value that has not only doubled in worth over the course of the past year when I first bought in at $3K or so, but because of its volatility, it makes for easy in-and-out trading. It has become a fairly steady income stream.  

Like I’ve written in the past, I keep two separate Bitcoin accounts. One for holding, or holdling as the crypto geeks like to say, and one for shorting. That is, selling and/or taking small profits. On average, I can make anywhere between $50-$100 per day on Bitcoin when it’s particularly volatile (right now it’s trading sideways which makes me nada). But there are expert traders out there…and yes, there are bots programmed to trade too…that can reap thousands per day even when the up and down action is slow. I don’t pretend to think I can beat the market, plus I’m terrible at math, so I keep things simple by taking whatever my daily profit might be, whether it’s $20 or $200. Like annual book sales, it’s all about averages in the end.

But why should you invest in Bitcoin now?

In just 165 days or so, the supply of Bitcoin will be halved. Unlike our dollar, or any other fiat currency for that matter, there is a limited supply of Bitcoin. In other words, Bitcoin cannot be devalued. However, it can lose it’s worth if there is a massive sell-off, such as the one that occurred last December/January when the price plummeted by more than 50%. But, and this is a big but, the price rallied not only because Bitcoin bulls were able to recognize a primo buying opportunity when they saw it, the long term thinkers had the 2020 halving in mind.

I’ll be honest, I had no idea what a halving was when I first bought in. I had no idea what a hodl was much less a short or a long. As for the Blockchain, I’m still not sure what it is. It took me forever to realize Bitcoin is a decentralized store of value, as opposed to a government run currency like USD (I know the Fed Reserve is said to be a privately run enterprise, but it’s not). Like I said, I’m not a Bitcoin expert (so take what I say with a pinch of salt and do your own research). I’m just an enthusiast and an investor who believes that the new crypto digital asset will act much like the Internet protocol of the past, and therefore one day establish itself as one of the dominant ways in which we create wealth and/or pay for goods and services. How’s that for a prediction from a mid-list hard-boiled mystery author?  

No one, not even the experts, know for certain that the halving will inflate Bitcoin’s price dramatically come April/May of 2020, but theoretically it looks really, really good. And like they say, if it smells like an orange, behaves like an orange, tastes like an orange, it’s probably an orange. But even if Bitcoin doesn’t rise in price dramatically, I will still continue to dollar cost average on a weekly basis in my first account, while shorting my profits in my second account. In the meantime, the digital asset will only continue to slowly but surely increase in value. It’s simply case of supply and demand (see the chart above).  

As a prolific novelist, I can’t think of a better time to be a writer. This was made possible by the Internet. As an investor, there’s no better time to be building individual wealth. This was made possible by the birth of digital currency. When will both come to definitive end? When somebody turns the power off. For good. 

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