Neal Stephenson believes that creators are the key to creating “priceless” objects that people will want to collect.

Snow Crash, one of the most influential texts on Web3, made a lot of predictions, but it didn’t describe the speculative atmosphere brought about by NFTs today. None of the characters in Neal Stephenson’s novel flips avatars for profit like NFT traders on OpenSea or Blur markets.

However, Stephenson isn't necessarily wrong.

Stephenson told reporters that he sees an eventual shift away from the pure financialization of digital assets as a fundamental change that is key to building a thriving version of the metaverse, where people assign value to digital assets beyond what they can be sold for.

“I hope we can get away from this single-minded effort to financialize everything and start trying to develop a more diversified economy that is more stable,” he said.

Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel coined the term “metaverse,” describing it as a 3D virtual realm in which countless people participate and own objects. In the novel, the virtual world is also a popular social scene filled with status symbols of consumer life, with young people frequenting “the computer game section at the local Walmart” to buy ordinary, entry-level avatars, such as affordable sneakers.

While no one is buying NFTs at Walmart yet, multiple elements of the novelty mirror aspects of today’s digital asset ecosystem in terms of ownership and identity. Similar to the way some NFTs are designed as profile pictures and used to convey aspects of a person’s digital presence online, in Stephenson’s description of the metaverse, avatars can be rented, owned, or coded from scratch.

But the lack of sentimental meaning creates conditions where entire NFT collections can be sold in the blink of an eye. That, he said, contributes to volatility in digital asset prices. He compared digital assets to “tulip mania,” a historic speculative bubble that occurred in the Netherlands in the 17th century.

“People are willing to sell anything they’ve got into the market at the slightest sign that the market might go down,” he said. “There’s no sentimental value that would make you hesitate to sell them if you think they’re going to lose value.”

He said digital asset owners should play a role in shaping the digital assets they own to create sentimental value and discourage speculation, arguing that human relationships would balance people’s motivation to make a profit.

“The way we get a stable economy in the metaverse is by creating opportunities for people to build unique UGC,” Stephenson said, referring to user-generated content. “They might go out and sell it one day, but probably not.”

As an example, Stephenson mentioned the base he built in collaboration with friends in the survival game Valheim. Even if the structure could be sold, he said the experience of creating and living in it might keep him and his friends from doing so.

“What happens when we explore virtual worlds and build things is we’re creating that scarcity,” he said.

Essentially, pathways that allow people to develop deeper connections to their digital assets will make them less like pure investments and more like personal items. Stephenson said this is the same value that can be attributed to essentially worthless items, such as a 30-year-old paperback book that shows signs of wear and tear.

“It has all these intangible connections that are worth more to me than its cash value,” he said. “I remember buying it; I remember reading it; I dog-eared the pages; I lent it to my friend and he gave it back to me.”

It’s these personal experiences that make the book feel truly unique, Stephenson said, even if it’s exactly the same as another copy at the time of purchase.

“On one level, it’s not scarce at all because there are so many like it,” he said. “But on another level, it’s priceless and extremely rare because it’s mine and it’s the only one of its kind.”