Horizons Newsletter – week 12 // 2021

Horizons is a bi-monthly Dasym Research initiative to show you how the Dasym themes have been in the news. We publish the Horizons on our website and as an email newsletter. If you wish to receive the email, please contact Investor Relations.
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Non-fungible tokens are all the rage

Do you remember CryptoKitties, the virtual cats that collectors spent thousands of dollars to buy on the blockchain? They seem to have been just the forerunners of the current craze for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In essence, any digital asset that a creator wants to make unique can be turned into an NFT (digital works of art, music, sports moments, even tweets) and monetized. The NFT acts as a non-duplicable digital certificate of ownership; it will be stored on the blockchain and can be bought and sold like any piece of property. While the digital asset itself will still exist on the Internet, only the buyer of the NFT can call himself the owner of the ‘original’ asset. As such, NFTs can be a financial investment, a sentimental purchase, or a collector’s item. NFTs can even contain smart contracts that for instance give the creator a cut of any future sale of the token. Although opinions on NFTs vary, once the hype around the space settles down, the idea of tradable digital assets will be here to stay.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Broaden your horizon? 

In this section we share content that may be of interest to you:

• Metaverses — persistent, shared virtual worlds — are stepping in to fulfill the social and entertainment functions of malls. From shopping to gaming, these shared virtual spaces will redefine how we interact with people and businesses.
• During lockdowns, board games have increasingly offered households relief from boredom. Beyond COVID, the appeal of board games – being socially engaging, cerebral, easy to learn, and difficult to master – will remain and pull us back from the digital world.
• The line between jewelry and electronics is getting thinner. Just as AirPods became a fashion item at some point, now jewelry such as earrings, rings and brooches are being designed with life-enhancing electronics.

The dawn of a post-corona era

Disaster psychology states that the phases a society experiences in a crisis are predictable. First, we enter the honeymoon phase: the scope of the crisis nor its implications are clear and people are willing to work together. Then, a period of distrust and depression dawns, in which the gap between community needs and available resources widens. Next, things may get grim in the disillusionment phase (where we appear to be now), but then we enter the phase of reintegration, where we adapt to the new reality. Although the pandemic will eventually become endemic, circulating the global population for years to come, there are strong indicators (e.g. new variants outsmarting vaccines) that several more years of social distancing measures might be required before we reach that stage. Therefore, the call for politicians is growing louder to stop referring to the current situation as temporary and instead consider it permanent. This would allow the phase of reintegration to begin, in which new light can be shed on the costs and benefits of mitigating the impact of the coronavirus.