Comment by vmception

> A thought exercise you should undertake if you're thinking about / talking about crypto/NFT/web3-related projects: If the financial instrument that underlies the project were to stop going up in value XX% per month, would you still be interested in the project?

There are hundreds of ways for that answer to be yes, and this is what is attracting so many builders to the space and why it builds so fast.

Many crypto enthusiasts and the skeptics that surround them are looking at linear bets. Put in X capital, receive X+Y% of capital back, or lose X-Y%. Although very popular approach, it is basically the tip of the iceberg of what's going on.

You can start with no capital and earn the crypto. You can earn lots of it. The price of what you earn can stay flat. The price of what you earn can decrease and you still come out ahead, because you are earning a lot. Not different than earning shares at a FAANG (or NAAAM these days?), except in crypto the earning is is waaaay faster than FAANG vesting periods, and every project has waaaay more upside without wasting decades of your life praying for exit liquidity at a private startup.

So the basis of your question is really project dependent. If I found a way to earn Axie SLP, NFTs, or Axie tokens fast, I wouldn't care about the exchange rate of any of those (unless the dilution outpaced the point of earning) and I think you - and many others - are missing that.

A lot of people stand up smart contract products that accept existing assets as deposit, and take a few basis points of the assets upon deposit or withdrawal, and thats the whole business model. They all do different things thats usually solving an interest or need for the people with the other assets. Completely passive income. I've even seen code that will accept an asset, take the cut, and immediately exchange the cut for a stablevalue asset, all initiated and paid for by the user that made the deposit.

There are many non-linear earning opportunities in this space. Many rival what the largest tech companies offer, even if the exchange rates of the things earned stayed flat. So the calculus is pretty clear: smugly exploit yourself for an ad conglomerate, or directly earn and build in this other even faster moving economy.