Is Yat the next great digital investment? 🚀
Yat is the newest universal digital identity — and it is even tradable! Is this your opportunity to get in early and buy up all the good identities and make a huge profit when everyone needs their own Yat! Let’s take a look.
What is Yat? 🥳
A Yat consist of 1 to 5 emojis of your choice and “ is a universal digital identity as unique as your fingerprint!”
You could be known as ✏️💻👑👏! Well, not exactly that combination of emojis — because that is my Yat, so you can only obtain it by buying it from me! 💰🤑
Yats are tradable and their (initial) price depends on their Rhythm Score which is based on their length, the popularity of the emojis you use, and the pattern (e.g. repeated emojis are apparently worth more).
A sweet Yat like ✏️💻👑👏 has a Rhythm score of 21 which means you can grab it for only 6$ while more rare Yats like 👻👏🙌 (with a score of 76) has a price of 250$. Super rare Yats (one or two emojis) can only be purchased through special actions! The 🔑-yat went for 300.000$. That might sound expensive, but who can really put a price on such a unique opportunity?
What is Yat, really? 🧐
Well. Essentially just a fancy URL shortener. Your unique Yat can currently be used for two things. You can redirect to another URL or you can use it for your personal Yat page. The real link to a Yat looks like this:
https://y.at/✏️💻👑👏
So the super unique digital identity I just purchased is actually just a unique path at the y.at domain. Which is still okay! Because I own ✏️💻👑👏 forever and everyone will eventually want their own Yat!
Except, there is really no guarantee that I own it forever…
Yat is just a company. They could forget to renew y.at, get hacked or even just straight up close. Heck, they could even decide that I break their terms and conditions and just take my Yat. I only own my unique digital identity as long as Yat feels like I own it. I could potentially lose my Yat for writing this!
How useful is Yat, really? 🤨
Let’s say that Yat is trustworthy and they do let me keep my Yat forever. What would it even matter? Someone could decide that href.at was the new thing! The new place to buy your emoji identity!
Literally, anyone with an internet connection could pick up a domain and start offering a similar service. Yat claims they are trying to patent this unique technology but the likelihood of patenting emoji-paths on the internet is very slim.
… and is it even such a good idea?
I get it, it looks super cute on your Instagram profile — but have you tried entering an emoji URL directly in the browser? You have to copy-paste the emoji part from somewhere else as the URL field in your browser (on both mobile and desktop) does not accept emojis per default. Granted, this is something that could easily be fixed with a little software update once emoji-URLs takes off 🚀 but it’s a real big UX issue right now and worth considered before using emojis in your URLs.
Is Yat a scam? 🤬
Not technically. The service of Yat is very real. You pay to have a Yat (or URL) and can redirect it to whatever you like. It’s actually a quite neat service.
The pricing is out of proportion though. Paying $100+ to shorten one link is insane — and, just to make it clear, it’s a 💩-investment.
I would normally not lash out against a company like this — even when their pricing is bogus. Their marketing however triggered me. They try to make their product sound like a great investment and give it a crypto-currency feel. Their product is neither though. Remember what you just read as you see this commercial for Yat;
You need an invite from a friend or to sign up to their waitlist (which auto admits you within a few hours). The whole purchasing experience also hypes up the product as a great investment with ‘Rhythm Score’ telling you just how unique the opportunity to get the Yat is.
If you think the service is fun, go ahead — purchase a Yat, but keep in mind that you are unlikely to ever sell it on to someone else. You buy the hype.
Originally published at https://adequatesource.com on April 11, 2021.
