I'd suggest there are no right or wrong sacrifices when it comes to these kinds of matters. You have to decide what you want most and go for that, and find a way to not dwell on the path you didn't take.
In terms of a biological clock, nothing prevents you from meeting someone, falling in love, and starting a family if you live overseas. Lots of expats meet partners and in many places, you'll find that a lot of expats with residency are married to locals.
> Well, again, in principle, NFTs can be used to represent ownership of anything.
Possession of a token itself doesn't create legal ownership of a separate asset unless there is a legally-binding instrument that conveys ownership of that asset through possession of the token. To turn tokens into legally-binding instruments of ownership, you're back into the real world of laws, lawyers, financial regulations, etc.
> However, theoretically, you could tokenize other assets, like real estate, or intellectual property, and then trade them in a more liquid, global manner than is currently possible.
This simply isn't true though. Tons of real estate assets are securitized and traded in liquid, global markets. Even average investors can access these markets through REITs.
More esoteric assets, such as music royalty rights, have exchanges like Royalty Exchange[1].
You could of course use the blockchain for these types of things, but just using tokens doesn't absolve you from having to comply with securities regulations. Unfortunately, from what I see, a lot of the people trying to create crypto-based solutions seem to believe that the use of tokens is a "get out of regulation jail free" card.
> If you want an example of tokenized value, just look at stablecoins. Stablecoins are literally tokenized dollars. They allow you to self-custody large amounts of, what is effectively digital cash. That is something you couldn't do before. If you didn't trust banks, you either had to store physical dollars in your home, which is extremely dangerous for a number of reasons, or you had to suck it up and trust them anyway.
Stablecoins claim to allow self-custody of large amounts of basically digital cash. But there are a lot of red flags with stablecoins and I'd humbly suggest that anyone who doesn't trust banks but is willing to trust stablecoins is missing the plot.
Either way, your cash, in whatever form it takes, is at greatest risk because of central bank policy, not how and where your cash is stored. If the USD loses its reserve status, you're going to feel the effects whether you're holding physical dollars or Tether.
I would suggest that your argument doesn't pay enough attention to the second word in "scarce asset" -- asset.
These unique tokens almost always point to digital files that are accessible to everyone and anyone, and that can be viewed, downloaded and reproduced by everyone and anyone.
To the extent that a person might consider these files are "assets" at all, the bigger issue is that ownership of a non-fungible token is still just ownership of a non-fungible token. It doesn't on its own convey any ownership of or economic interest in the "asset" it points to. If you want the token to convey ownership or economic rights, you're back to the traditional legal and financial worlds Web3 is supposed to be supplanting.
To the extent that a person might consider the NFT itself to be an "asset", the question is where the value is derived if the NFT is merely a pointer to a digital file that you don't have ownership of or an economic interest in.
> This isn't specific to web3 but more crypto but the idea of having an integrated method of collecting royalties on resale of an item indefinitely is pretty exciting.
Exciting for who though?
The only party who benefits from resale royalties is the creator of the NFT and/or the beneficiaries they designate. But what value do they offer the buyer and seller to earn this? In almost all cases, the creators of the NFTs aren't conveying any rights beyond ownership of the token itself. They're not even selling ownership of or rights to the digital assets (GIF, etc.) their tokens point to.
When you buy and sell an asset, you might very well pay a fee to a party who facilitates the transaction, like a broker. The fee is to compensate the broker for the value they provided in facilitating a deal. These middlemen are often maligned for the fees they charge even when the facilitation they provide seems minimal but that doesn't mean that giving creators of an asset a perpetual royalty every time the asset is resold is any better.
To me NFT resale royalties are actually one of those things that look worse than traditional finance. Imagine if a company sold stock to the public and as part of the deal, stipulated that each time a share was sold, it would receive a royalty of 10% of the new share price. Would buyers and sellers see that as a benefit or predation? And at least in the case of company stock, your share would give you actual ownership of a piece of the company and rights that come along with ownership.
With NFTs, you just get a token with a pointer to a digital asset that isn't yours. And for that, you might get to pay the NFT creator a "royalty". I haven't seen any articulation of why this is a good thing.
> Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing
But what really are the "scarce assets" that Web3 is enabling self-custody for? A token on a blockchain that has metadata pointing to a digital file that anyone can view and reproduce? By definition, every NFT is scarce in that each one is non-fungible. But this scarcity doesn't mean there's any meaningful value. An NFT alone doesn't inherently give you ownership of or rights to anything except the token itself.
The minute you want to attach some meaningful rights to an NFT, like legal ownership of the digital or physical asset the NFT points to, or the rights to an income stream produced by such, you have to enter the world of our traditional legal and financial systems.
> For those who are vaccinated and willing to take the minor risk of Omicron and a quarantine, CES may be worth it. I’m sorry, did this man just refer to COVID-19 (you know, the one that’s killed more than 2 million people) as a “minor risk”?
The vast majority of those 2 million people were unvaccinated, and they weren't infected with omicron. Not sure if going to CES would be at the top of my list right now but statistically speaking, the guy is not wrong.
Please don't sell yourself short. Yes, your window of opportunity is closing at 31. But don't miss the forest for the trees: you still have a huge window.
I always had an interest in traveling and was able to do some travel in my 20s and 30s, but nowhere near the amount that I had dreamed of. A trip at age 38 made me realize just how important seeing the world was to me and I left the US the same year. I have been living abroad ever since.
I've met expats who have been living abroad since their 20s and 30s, and others who didn't leave until their 40s, 50s and 60s. And I know plenty of people who have spent even 1-3 years abroad and are now back home and they are different people (in a good way I think) because of those years.
31 is a perfect age to do many things, including live abroad. If you're "making tons", you have more options to do this than many people. The only thing stopping you is yourself. If you want to do something, "just do it". There will never be a perfect moment, and you'll never be 100% comfortable before you take the plunge.
In terms of a biological clock, nothing prevents you from meeting someone, falling in love, and starting a family if you live overseas. Lots of expats meet partners and in many places, you'll find that a lot of expats with residency are married to locals.