Why Your ID Will Soon Be a Crypto Token

Soulbound Tokens—The New Cryptos That Everyone Will Have to Use

If archaeologists and theologians and whoever else are to be believed, the concept of a “soul” is about 3,000 years old.

The concept of an e-soul, however… well, that’s brand-new, and it’s very much our future.

A couple of weeks ago, California’s notorious Department of Motor Vehicles announced that it’s partnering with a blockchain firm called Tezos to put car titles on the blockchain, the secure digital ledger technology on which cryptocurrencies operate. (Think of a blockchain as a train track, and the cryptocurrencies themselves serving as “trains” that deliver services and such.)

The state’s plan ultimately is to roll out digital wallets that would allow Cali motorists to hold and transfer car titles not as pieces of paper, but as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

If you’ve been reading my dispatches for a while, you’ll know that NFTs are a picture-based form of cryptocurrency that denotes ownership of something. That “something” could be nothing more than digital art, or it could be a piece of a new crypto business, not unlike a share of stock.

Or… it could be the digital title to a physical car.

That would make vehicle transfers exceedingly fast and efficient since sellers would be moving a digital asset across the blockchain, a process that takes mere minutes if not seconds. The DMV would simply act as the middleman in this process to make sure everything is on the up and up and no one is screwing someone else.

Thing is, this move to put car titles on the blockchain hints at a much bigger trend that will—guaranteed—define our path forward as a society.

And that is “soulbound tokens,” or SBTs.

Not to be too confusing, but SBTs are the new NFTs.

Technically, they are NFTs, just in a different configuration. Soon enough, all of us are going to have soulbound tokens in our lives.

Basically, SBTs are NFTs that are non-transferrable. Once they’re in your possession—in your digital wallet—they cannot be transferred out. They are there permanently… forever.

Which means they can never be sold.

As such, there are not NFTs that you would buy with the hopes of turning a profit or earning a bit of passive income. Or even an NFT as a car title that you could transfer to someone else.

Instead, they’re entirely about your identity.

I’ve mentioned this several times over the last year, but only now are the early examples of this beginning to emerge. I have an SBT in my wallet right now, for example, that defines my credit-worthiness on the Solana blockchain. I tried to send it out of one wallet into another, and as an experiment I tried to “burn” it (permanently destroy it), and neither was possible.

In the very near future—likely before the end of this decade—your driver’s license and passport will be an SBT held in a digital wallet you access by way of your phone. Same with your voter ID card, Social Security card, and health insurance card.

It only makes sense.

Through blockchain technology, these documents are entirely secure and instantly verifiable, meaning all the sturm-und-drang in America about fraudulent voting vanishes.

Only those who can produce an SBT of their identity would be allowed to vote… and there would be no possible way to obtain a voter ID card without a verifiable SBT identity document like a U.S. driver’s license or passport.

There would be no way for ne’er-do-wells to steal Social Security identity anymore.

Pretty much, your entire identity is locked down on the blockchain, and the documents proving you are you—the soulbound tokens—are forever cemented into your digital wallet. Anytime you need one, you just pop open your wallet and the SBT is right there for you to access immediately.

No one could gain access to them without your permission.

The term “brave new world” is tossed around loosely, but when it comes to soulbound tokens, there’s not a more apt descriptor.

This really is going to be a brave new world of “souls” as it emerges.