Crypto Stamp - A Postage Stamp Revolution

This is as if the USPS issued on purpose a new priority express stamp in 5 different colors with only 1500 stamps in one of the colors and only a few thousand in the other 4 colors. It creates instant rarities. They actually did something similar by issuing 100 sheets of uninverted $2 Jennys.

Maybe I misunderstand the entire premise here, but.. it would seem to me that in order for any issue of stamps to become desirable and a good investment, then there has to be widespread interest in the world collector community. Thus far I am not seeing that, other than in the few statements of enthusiasm being made by people already owning them.

This whole thing reminds me of the 'Face on Mars' stamps and sheets that a so called investment guru had produced by some tinpot country and then tried to hype up. As usual, the people who bought them early on and then sold them were the winners. A lot of people who got in early lost a ton of money. I'm not even sure if those stamps are currently to be found in the Scott catalog.

Has Farley returned?

Yes they are, Sierra Leone Scott 1167-1172. I purchased the whole set for less than $25 a few years ago. A far cry from the $5,000+ people were asking in 1990.

Robert

Then Thousand dollars to mail a letter... Who do they think they are? The Post Office?

At first I thought it would be a Superman stamp!
Then, what with Holograph I thought you could slap it on the envelope and a very pretty lady would pop up saying, "Help me Obe one Kenobe
you are my only hope." I am so disappointed.

This are the official austrian post stamps, not some wild issue and should be in all philatelistic catalogues. The idea is great and crypto is the future. One of the best things happened to philately in general are crypto stamps issued by austrian post.

As a technologist, I agree that crypto currency is the future but I do not agreed that crypto stamps are the future. Postal mail is well along evolving to email which is instant and virtually free of cost. I do not see any innovation in applying 'crypto' to something that is clearly in decline.

But putting that aside, I still do not see the point. Cryptocurrency has a number of well documented advantages over traditional currencies. World-wide universal acceptance, lower cost (lower transaction and bank exchange fees), better security features, a 'digital ledger' transaction history, and decentralization (currency is managed by a network and not a single entity). These advantages are a type of globalization, removing the dependency of a currency upon a single issuing country. So for a crypto stamp to be the same thing it would be a global stamp that would be good for use in any country in the world. Every country would lose the its income in producing their own stamps. Who becomes the issuing entity of a worldwide crypto stamp (certainly not a single country). Unlike commerce, where sellers are typically free to accept any type currency they want, postal systems are tightly controlled by governments. So why would a country want to give up profitable stamps for a universal stamp?

I am not seeing any benefit in a country simply replacing a traditional stamp with a crypto stamp. If someone can list the benefits or innovation in crypto stamps please list them for the rest of us to understand.

And as far as being 'good' for philately, I also am failing to see how this could be true. In what ways?

The truth is that our hobby is rooted in nationalism. Folks who are globalists support things like a universal cryptocurrency but the stamps and postal history we collect reflects nationalism in almost every way. If all country currencies went away and everyone in the world used Bitcoin or Libras, would the coin collecting hobby benefit or suffer?

Don

As a longtime stamp collector of Inverted center stamps I have also been collecting physical crypto items.

With the crypto stamps becoming more mainstream,I have built a website dedicated to these beauties here at


***Bad Start for a new member - Drive-by links Nor Allowed***

I still do not get this crypto stamp.

We now have it here as well. PostNL developed it with the help of the Austrian Post Office. PostNL mentions the crypto stamp costs the same as a 'registered' stamp. In fact, it is the price of a registered item up to 2 KG of certain maximum dimensions sent to an inland address. The website, actually, does not state whether or not its postal value is that.

Apart from the vague postal value and many questionable claims about crypto, what is it?

https://www.postnl.nl/over-postnl/p...re-sale.html



Essentially, you pay € 9.05 for an item that is a physical stamp and a non-fungible token. So, I can use the stamp on a letter but add the NFT to my collection. Then the receiver has the physical stamp and I hold the NFT that I could sell to yet another person. Alternatively, I can stick the stamp in my album and sell the NFT to someone.

Isn't that cross-selling a traditional stamp and an NFT that is not a stamp?