Politics is a pretty expensive game to play. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent campaigning in an attempt to achieve a popular vote for a seat in various positions of leadership. In an effort to connect with a younger audience, and drive much needed funding into their campaigns, congressional hopefuls are now breaking into the Web3 world.
Congressional Candidates Are Using NFTs to Raise Funding
While it’s not commonplace in politics yet, NFTs and Web3 are starting to find uses as fundraising tools in the world of politics. In fact, the action is taking place on both sides of the aisle with varying degrees of success when it comes to fundraising for midterm elections.
The first two such campaigns were launched by Democrat Shrina Kurani, an engineer that’s running for a House seat in California, and Republican Blake Masters, a candidate for Senate in Arizona.
The first such offering came from Kurani, the first politician to distribute NFTs to campaign donors on SolSea, a digital marketplace and NFT minting platform that allows for embedded copyright licenses in NFTs.
Kurani said that the goal of the project was to drive support from a younger generation, much like Donald Trump was able to do with MAGA hats, hats that ultimately led to millions of dollars being raised from supporters.
Unfortunately, Kurani’s NFTs weren’t nearly as successful as MAGA hats. In fact, less than a dozen were ever sold and only about $6,610 were raised in the process.
Masters had a much better run with the non-fungible token community. In December, he promised to give donors tokens with cover art for a book about startup companies that he co-authored with Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire and top Trump ally. That project proved to be overwhelmingly successful, resulting in the campaign’s ability to raise an additional $575,000.
Do NFTs Belong In Politics?
While Masters has had some significant success selling NFTs, some argue that the technology has no place in politics. NFTs live on the blockchain, much like cryptocurrency, giving the owners of such collectibles complete anonymity. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing in most real-world uses of the technology, in politics, it’s not a good thing either.
Opponents of the use of crypto-related assets in politics say that these assets give politicians a way to skirt the rules of political fundraising due to the anonymous nature of the collectibles. Whether or not that’s the case remains to be seen, but it is a question to consider in the future.
Nonetheless, considering the fact that the NFT community is one that’s centered around finding solutions to technological and financial qualms of the metaverse, if it does prove to be a problem, I’d imagine that problem will be solved relatively soon as more politicians are likely to look to Web3 as a fundraising opportunity.
NFTs Will Continue to Change the World Around You
Anything that gives political campaigns the funds they need for an upper hand has world-changing potential. However, politics aren’t the only way NFTs are changing the world.
Several projects have been launched with philanthropic concepts. Some have been centered around feeding the hungry, some have been centered around creating social equality, and some have been centered around the protection of endangered species. The fact is, no matter what cause you support, there’s likely an NFT you can buy that will result in a percentage of, or all of, the money you spent being donated to a cause you care about.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line here is that from politics to philanthropy, NFTs are changing the world as we know it. As the community continues to grow larger, and these digital tokens grow more and more in demand, this trend is only likely to continue.
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