An NFT That Saves Lives

I agree with novel marketing, but I'm rather less convinced by the long run implications of what this purports to actually do

The purpose of an NFT, after all, is to create some sort of symbolic representation of something you've paid for, and allow other parties to buy that representation from you without involving any third parties. It doesn't really have any other appeal except as signalling; in this case it supposedly signals your generosity.

Or more specifically, it enables someone to signal that they have donated a lot of money to Noora Health and then try to recover that cash by selling it to someone else who wants to signal that they have donated to Noora Health without the inconvenience of actually donating to Noora Health.

The actual recipient of donations doesn't sound like the sort of entity which needs to be disintermediated from donation signalling, and I'm not sure long run philanthropic expenditure is going to be increased by the notion that you get that money back from some other guy who wants to look like a philanthropist donating to you instead of the cause...

They absolutely didn't miss bitcoin. Thiel gave Vitalik a scholorship to drop out of university and work on ethereum. a16z have been massive supporters of cryptocurrency startups, as have YC (isnt coinbase their best investment?). Naval, Balajis, Alexis Ohanian. The common thread is crypto.

It seems like it is just the HN commenters that don't seem to understand why and still talk about Tulips. Meanwhile reddit is working on community tokens, ebay working on nft listings...

«This is peak absurdism»

Pros of making this whole thing an NFT:

• Capitalizes on a craze to save lives. Consequently, this will almost assuredly be more successful at raising money than if this had been organized as a traditional campaign with donations through credit cards or PayPal.

• Very low friction. Any of the many lucky crypto millionaires can bid in seconds. No need to convert crypto to fiat and all associated hassles.

• The highest bidder will own cryptographic proof of his donation to Noora Health. Other bidders will have proof of their intent.

• This may motivate other non-profit to seek donations through NFTs.

Downsides:

• Contributes to increasing the NFT craze ?

• ???

There are many things you can criticize about cryptocurrency, but this Noora Health NFT probably ain't one of them.

Perhaps he wrote the essay so that other people will find out about it and out bid him for the NFT.

You get press for being the good guy and don’t have to spend a dime. What a great thing to be able to achieve.

> non-profit is inherently a centralized entity.

I would have actually said the opposite, if there is one inherently decentralized type of entity that is officially recognized by central authorities it is a non-profit.

Yes, non-profits exist because of centralized authorities, if they have exempt status for purposes of taxes that determination comes from a centralized tax authority, but a non-profit itself has no owners and is generally governed by the members. The members generally elect a board of directors but that is just representative of the collective decentralized members and should serve at their collective discretion through vote, the board as the official representatives appoints the Officers that manage the day to day business of the entity. There are arguments to be made, and not all non-profits are structured identically, but inherent in all of them is no ownership, so should a non-profit be dissolved and have assets, those assets are not distributed to any ownership class but must be distributed to other non-profits. Based on the lack of profits and ownership, non-profits are more decentralized in nature than many organizations claiming to be DAOs most of which are organized around the concept of an ownership class and profits.