I feel like I'm saying "the emperor has no clothes", but doesn't anyone else think this NFT art thing is bullshit? Everything about it screams "scam": they're asking you to spend your real, hard-earned money on some digital "asset", pumped by celebrity influencers and hype entrepreneurs. Everyone is drawn to the big multi-million dollar figures of these high profile artists, figures that you will never see for your "assets", and do nothing but serve as a siren's call to everyone around. These high profile sales are marketing, nothing more. They are serving their purpose to kick start the mainstream adoption of this scam, because everyone thinks they can make a quick buck buying some digital signature.
What's more is the pseudo-intellectual justifications for it all. As soon as you bring up value, proponents put on their philosophy hat and ponder "what is value? money is just paper, maaaaan, we just believe it has value." Or we hear that owning a digital "asset" is actually the same thing as a physical "asset" because they're both unique things that can't be copied. It's all smoke and mirrors, and you know that when you have to hide behind vague philosophical assertions about "well nothing really has any value", then you have no actual argument supporting the value of the thing you're defending. It's a new illusion, pumped by hype, and they're trying to justify its existence by pointing to other illusions.
It's bullshit (in the sense "absurd and meaningless") but I wouldn't call it a scam.
Something I wrote yesterday[0] that I think is relevant here:
> I'm not sure I understand the hate for NFTs. Don't get me wrong, the concept of NFT as currently used is completely absurd and definitely overhyped. But what is bad about it? People who spend their money on NFTs mostly do it because they got rich in the past few years gambling on BTC or ETH, and now use that money to basically tip the artists they like. Or they plan to resell the token at some point, which is pure speculation, but nobody other than themselves risk to get burn. Minting and selling NFTs is almost zero work and effort for artists, all the risks are on the buyers side, and only if they buy them as speculative assets.
> It still make no sense to me, but if rich people want to gamble their money and by doing so support some artists, that doesn't sound too bad IMHO.
> I would be more cautious if retail investors would start to gamble in this market, but that's not what I've seen so far.
IMHO, it's just the same game as with the gallery art scheme, except on top of cryptocurrencies.
As a broke artist, if I can get some rich assholes to start convincing each other that my art has ludicrous amounts of money, then I will happily let them pay me for it, and let the gallery owner who was instrumental in convincing them of this value have a healthy cut. If the gallery owner wants to arrange a money-laundering kickback to the rich assholes that's their own business, personally I feel like I'd rather avoid it but who knows how I'll feel when I'm being offered a price with enough zeros at the end of its number?
1. There are some people who struck it megarich with crypto and now have so much "f-u money" that they are willing to spend it on conspicuous consumption. It is the same sort of thing that comes from "look at how much money I lit on fire" posts being given social credit in places like WSB.
2. There are other people who already had a gazillion dollars and are also interested in conspicuous consumption.
3. NFTs are trendy and trends in the crypto space attract people seeking to make money on a trend. A bunch of people are surely buying these things hoping to leave somebody else holding the bag.
4. It is crypto, so some degree of fraud and crime is involved.
1) It could be a scam of sorts, but one that the parties are in on. For example tax fraud or an attempt evade capital controls.
2) Leave aside digital anything, art has gotten really weird lately. The self destructing Banksy thing, the banana duct tape thing—-I could see being knowingly, publicly scammed as some kind of bizarre performance art. I guess the super rich are really bored.
3) The most reasonable spin on it I could think of is what if there was a limited edition print where the print itself wasn’t limited edition. There were as many prints as anyone wanted to buy for the cost of production, but the artist sold a small number of certificates of authenticity. It still seems kind of pointless and scammy to me but it’s at least closer to understandable.
I'm surprised blockchains are still being hyped even though they have practically no useful applications for business. Of all buzzwords, blockchain must surely have the worst hype-to-usefulness ratio of all-time. Having said that, even though paying for a digital signature on a blockchain is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion, if people know what they're buying then I don't really care what they choose to waste their money on.
Buying art with an NFT is just a way to give artists and/or art auctioneers money for their art. That's it.
Oh and it can be used for other things like event ticketing, software license keys, etc.
An NFT is just a way to record (in an immutable distributed ledger) that a specific, uniquely-identifiable token was transferred from A to B.
People have always paid stupid amounts of money for art, and in the last 100 years increasingly art that doesn't require years of training/practice and advanced craftsmanship. Why is this any different?
It sounds like you just don't want to be involved in the art market, which nobody in their right mind wants to be involved in anyway.
Complaining about NFTs is like complaining about "blockchain" or "the internet" or whatever.
I talked to a guy a few weeks ago. He needed help with his art related NFT project. Basically he was looking for a CTO because he had no idea whether his developers were doing a good job (and, I'd also add, what he built wasn't necessarily what he needed to build).
I have a pretty good understanding of block chain technologies but didn't hear about NFTs before, so like you, I started to challenge his ideas. Partly to understand what he was building. Because at first I tried to find real and practical applications for the platform that somehow connect to physical things, works of art.
But what he said was pretty interesting. The guy had a background in art management and, I think, trade. He said that art collection has always been about being able to say that you have the original piece. And that it's not rational anyway, not even for physical works of art, like paintings. It's not that you like the actual picture on the actual canvas so much that you want to buy it for say $1M and if you just had a copy you'd notice the difference and that wouldn't give you as much pleasure. It's simply about having the original. And also collecting related originals.
Now it's easy to trace it back to real, actual scarcity, where indeed there weren't many e.g. paintings (or books, etc.) and there was a big difference between the paintings of different artists (both in style and quality) and you had no way of looking at these other than having the originals probably.
I guess the big question here is whether this phenomenon is strong enough on its own to transfer to purely digital assets or whether this is really rooted and tied to that original scarcity that we kept changing the story around. (I.e. while it's not about being able to enjoy and look at the piece anymore, now it's tied to the knowledge that that specific piece of canvas was painted on by that specific very talented guy X hundred years ago, and he was standing in front, etc.)
One hint might be those 'limited edition' sport cards that some people seem to collect, as well as 'limited edition' e.g. CD or vinyl albums from the past millenium. (I never understood those, but I had a friend who did get a very obvious joy out of being able to buy those. For me, these were always just delivery mediums and I only cared about the music.)
Honestly, I have no idea, but that call was definitely interesting.
I don’t part take. But I think you’re a bit too quick to dismiss the “social” part of economics, remember it’s a social science after all. Once you include that, your rational valuation frameworks start to erode as it becomes subjective (even worse, collectively subjective). Then the rest of the conversation is shouting over each other. Both sides are right, it is insane, but it’s insane because it wants to be insane. History will look at it positively if it crosses some threshold/tipping point of social acceptance. And negatively if it doesn’t. That’s all there is to it really.
The lines between economies and schemes are blurry and hero’s and villains are only declared once the dust settles. We’re not there yet.
I'm going to disagree with you. Pseudo-intellectual gives the "justifications" far too much credit.
What I also find hilarious, folks who love this NFT "can't be copied" are great are the same people who hate DRM. While I'm not a fan of intrusive DRM, I'm going to side with paying what folks deserve for putting time into coding/art/planning for a game/movie/whatever. I get something from their effort, they deserve something in return.
That and I'd rather buy a $20 poster of art from my real life wall than over glorified digital wallpaper.
it's the same kind of financial intermediation to extract wealth without providing value that underlies ponzi schemes and the derivatives that got us the 2008 crisis. it's a lot of wealth accumulation for its own sake detached from its real basis as a claim on (someone else's) productivity.
in short, it's bullshit, but for the tech crowd rather than wall streeters.
> I feel like I'm saying "the emperor has no clothes", but doesn't anyone else think this NFT art thing is bullshit?
I don't think the implementation is interesting. I don't think the technology is interesting. I think the concept is extremely interesting, though not in the context of the NFT linking a user to a digital artwork.
If people believe a product has value, then the product has value. If consumers are willing to pay money for it, then the product has value.
People are willing to exert considerable effort to submitting the first comment on a popular youtuber's latest video. People are willing to spend considerable money in order to "own" unique items on roblox. None of these items have any marginal cost to the creator, the hard work has been done, but they are an interesting auxiliary product to the creator's product.
I think an interesting intersection lies between the thinking that lead to NFT, the idea of community and the implementation of smart contracts. Being part of a community, with bragging rights and smart contracts and agreements and sanctions and a culture and so on, becomes much more interesting if people are willing to take the leap to believe that the investment is worth the value they get in return. I think NFT is the proof of this, and the implications of this worry me deeply.
People are using NFTs as stores of value. Despite spending, the owners are not illiquid and are much more liquid than fine art collectors, as borrowing at decently high Loan to Value ratios against the NFT can happen in the subsequent block.
Given your existing predilection, knowing that probably also just moves the goal post for why you think there is something wrong with it "omg, now there's leverage!?". But its just an efficiency on the existing art world which has all the same stuff just much slower due to poor data and information, and nothing to do with the pseudo-intellection abstraction of value.
In a single protocol (standardized class with a set of standardized functions), art provenance has been disrupted, art appraisal has been disrupted, art insurance has been disrupted, art lending has been disrupted, and art royalties have been disrupted.
You will just be seeing more participants in the collectors market because of it, and a market that moves faster and can attract more capital globally, instantly, during a period of massive currency creation.
Its not anybody's problem that new galleries/marketplaces have fees for the artists. Its not anybody's problem that there will still be a ton of starving artists that will never get bids on these platforms. Its not anybody's problem that a buyer ends up with an asset that might not be valued the same or higher or ever get a bid again. Its not anybody's problem that a lender winds up with an illiquid asset. Buy art you like and from creators you like to support, maybe some times you won't get outbid.
I think the first NFT asset might have had a value, much like Maurizio Cattelan's banana[0], where the actual bit of art is the certificate of owning the work, and not the perishable banana.
It is a sort of performance art.
Beyond that, I literally see no reason to buy these things, but they don't seem that different from physical collectibles, and most art pieces in general, where the concept of "original" is just as "irrelevant" in a world where we can duplicate things relatively easily.
> we hear that owning a digital "asset" is actually the same thing as a physical "asset" because
What's the difference between paying 100x for a purse, etc, and a digital status symbol? It's not bought as a good, it's bought as a symbol. Yeah, it does seem wasteful, and I generally think "spending Dad's money" when I see it, but it doesn't offend me.
> but doesn't anyone else think this NFT art thing is bullshit?
Yeah. Because it's not clear that it's just a prestige way to sponsor someone. Non-techies may not understand that the NFT offers no control over the art, the way that owning an original allows you to lock it in a vault or burn it.
Yeah, digital-only NFTs will likely be a fad. I'll be interested again when the trend moves toward deeds. A title for a physical work could have staying power. Even potentially an iou from an artist for a one of a kind (physical) piece.
Personally I'm buying only stuff that resonates with me. I do not plan to flip it for a quick profit. In fact, my.taste is sometimes so eccentric that I doubt anyone else will want to buy them from me. However, I must say that owning a NFT to an artwork, gives you a stronger connection to it, even if it is digital. The artist also appreciate that you support their work.
That's the way you should go about this too. If you see anything promoted by celebrities, run, run away. Also avoid corporations caching in on it like the NBA. Only buy from Artists directly, and if you must, then trade only peer-to-peer.
Imagine if instead of a piece of art, it were your orange juice pint that came with a token. You could check it to see where that batch of oranges came from, if there are any FDA recalls on it, or whether your religious certification was reversed due to a hilarious but tragic cheese danish accident.
Other people can also see this information, but it isn't as useful to them.
It's pretty obvious any why I look at it. The resemblances with MLM are staggering and the late-stage capitalism arguments for NFTs are baffling. It makes me see bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies as not so fun anymore and just a big capitalist scam.
Most people on HN are (rightly so) calling bullshit on the technology. I think it's worth noting though that there does seem to be a legit market for it, so it's probably worth considering what it would take to make the technology not bullshit.
Of all the hilariously stupid things coming out of the scammy world of crypto, NFTs take the biscuit. I've been hearing A16Z and other VC podcast breathlessly talk about the brave new world they enable. Now you can have digital assets in games, people can buy them with real money! Finally, because that's of course not possible without The Blockchain (tm).
And people can use them to prove ownership of physical things, TRUSTLESSLY. Because it's so much safer to have decentralised system of digital bearer shares, than a central registry run by the government or a bank, right?
Oh but it's for third world countries where the state is not to be trusted. Of course that also means you can't trust them to enforce your digital bearer shares either, but that shouldn't be a big problem. We'll just get all the farmers and villagers to agree on using one particular blockchain bases system to keep track of who owns what land. What could be simpler.
And if you thought that was stupid, enter NFTs for digital art. Yes let's use advanced technology to create digital tokens that can't be copied, and use them to track the ownership of digital art that can be copied indefinitely. Brilliant.
> What’s interesting is that Beeple, the creator of the artwork, is actually a business partner of MetaKovan’s. He owns 2% of all the B20 tokens. I’m sure there is no conflict of interest here.
And they're basically selling it off to 'investors.' So it was really just an elaborate marketing ploy for some shady crypto currency? I'm surprised an institution like Christie's was willing to lend their reputation to such an endeavor. Or were they conned too? Or did they actually net that $9m 'fee' which is enough to buy Christie's reputation?
BTC is at like $60k right now, and there are something like 18.4 billion BTC in circulation, which translates to over a trillion dollars in "value".
Yet if any of these bitcoin (or ETH or whatever) billionaires tried to cash out their massive reserves, the bubble would burst. So stunts like this NFT thing, where a "humble artist" becomes a millionaire overnight, serves to just further inflate the bubble, and help those bitcoin billionaires become real billionaires without crashing the market.
I wonder how many of these bitcoin billionaires are doing this (possibly colluding), or are actually so deluded that they believe $60k is the real intrinsic value of their BTC. Or maybe it's neither, and this bubble is still nowhere near the bursting point yet.
> What’s interesting is that Beeple, the creator of the artwork, is actually a business partner of MetaKovan’s. He owns 2% of all the B20 tokens. I’m sure there is no conflict of interest here
I can't believe people are getting excited over collectable barcodes.
Of course this is a scam.
I can create NFTs for Beeple's art too.
I can create NFTs for Jack Dorsey's first tweet. I'll sell you a hundred of them if you want.
This is exactly like buying a spot on million dollar homepage, except anyone can make a million dollar homepage and nobody will honor your purchase because they don't have incentive to care.
Also weird that at around 1:55 in this video the user seems to be trying to place a bid for 70 million and can't for some reason. Is this a bug in their auction UI costing someone 10 million dollars?
For people placing $70M bids those money are probably less important than $70 for somebody who buys a used phone.
Wrt. the people trying to question what value NFT has - well what value a piece of a paper with a black square has? I'd guess close to $0 or less - a ruined piece of paper. Until of course it is said to be done by Kandinsky. The value of the most of the art is in that information, not in the material artifact. NFT is just a distillation of that idea.
Reminds a recent Russian meme - a photo of Kandinsky with a bubble "Everybody can paint the same. Not everybody can sell the same way."
I have seen pyramid schemes that are sounder than NFTs. It is sad that a lot of people are spending their hard earned money on NFTs thinking they are going to be professional artists. They don't recognize that they are only becoming crypto-coin investors.
I have spent hours sifting through the crypto-art space and amazed at the "so called" artworks people have been spending money. As a person who has been a professional artist and somewhat knowledgeable about the art scene, I feel that it is a duty to warn people.
I don't mind people spending their money on newbie photoshop tricks if they know what they are doing, but I don't like people to feel like they are artists because they can apply photoshop filters to an image and mint them as NFTs. I am keeping the publicity stunts out of this conversation. The article does a great job talking about those.
Another important thing to note is that an artwork's value derives from its cultural effect. So far NFTs' cultural effect is feeding people's belief in get-rich-quick schemes. Our society has stopped valuing hard work and started valuing wealth. We don't care how you attained your wealth anymore. When an item creates wealth without providing value, it is almost always a confidence trick.
If you are going to invest in crypto currencies, at least go on the relatively safest route and invest in Bitcoin and hope that its volatility works for your favor. But know that you are gambling and don't put your life savings on the line.
I've got some dumb questions about this whole NFT thing...
Is the artwork actually stored in the token or does it contain a URL that isn't guaranteed to always exist? I'm guessing there is no mechanism to change the link if the host should go down or stop hosting the content.
Are NFT's used to recognise a transfer of ownership of the intelectual property?
I find it hard to believe that all this hype and these huge dollar figures of these NFTs and art being at the center that none of this is being fueled my money laundering. Jack’s first tweet? What value is there in that? The Beeple “art”, same question. All of this seems like a scam.
I don't get NFTs, but then I've never really gotten Bitcoin either. If I'd bought a Bitcoin every time I told someone Bitcoin was overvalued I would have made quite a lot of money.
But I'm much more skeptical of NFTs than I am of cryptocurrencies in general. The most persuasive argument to me has been that it's no different than other collectible items. Art is one example, but I think stamps, coins, and baseball cards are better examples.
I think it's kind of objectively stupid to ascribe a lot of value to some random stamp or coin that is rare because of a printing or manufacturing error. But if that's your thing I'm not going to stop you. And if I were very wealthy and you came to me and made an incredibly compelling case that you'd figured out how to predict the future market values of rare stamps and/or coins well enough to build a profitable trading strategy I would consider investing.
The main gimmick of NFTs seems to be that they make it possible for a digital object to be rare. So I suppose some sort of NFT market could just be another type of collectibles, no better or worse than stamps or coins.
That's the most generous argument I've been able to make to myself. Personally I still can't get over the feeling that they're really stupid.
NFTs is the unwritten chapter of Infinite Jest that eventually led to DFW committing suicide. Start with something decentralized, layer a bunch of centralized entities on top of it and, Voila, you have, you have no idea what you have.
We had Duchamp with his pissoir in 1920. I remember someone exhibiting a goldfish in a blender. And now this ...
They would say that art is what happens between the artwork and the observer. But of course it is much broader than that. There is also the artist, the story, the room, the broader society and ... the market.
But notice how virtually zero of this discussion is about the content of the work. Just its sale mechanism. Even the banana on the wall had people discussing its nature as art.
Yeah, NFTs are utter BS, but not much more than people who collect actual original art pieces when you could simply hang a replica of the original for a millionth of the price.
So NFTs are valuable because they’re unique- but this guy has created a fractional ownership screen so an unlimited number of people can own 1 NFT. Oh and he’s lying about his identity and business relationships.
Just a small correction: they are "valuable" because they are unique AND because people want them. Otherwise they have no value. Scarcity in itself isn't enough to have value, you still have to create hype around the token somehow.
("valuable" in quotes, because it's really not that clear there is any actual value in an NFT that isn't legally binding...)
This sounds like a great way to facilitate money laundering . I put up a smileyface NFT for $10 million and then someone, that person being myself, 'buys' it for $10 millions, funds change wallets, with receipt of payment on blockchain.
I don't understand how Metakovan has $69mm, like the accounting doesnt match up.
Metakovan buys to lets the B20 digital fund own art assets. The B20 fund only collected like $3mm dollars and the rest is just a floated marketcap of B20 tokens.
So is Metakovan just going to pay for the art piece personally and just arbitrarily transfer the piece to the B20 address? Like basically B20 itself cannot pay for it, and the auction house isn't accepting B20 tokens.
Its cool Metakovan has so much money. There have been plenty of opportunity over the last few months to turn $3mm into $100mm, let alone over the last decade in crypto. So it isnt outside the realm of possibility that he has that much.
But if he doesnt pay, does Justin Sun get to complete the purchase and get it?
I don't know much about Metakovan's allegations of wrongdoing; but even without looking at these, it's fair to say that there are several individuals who, by just being early in crypto, have amassed the equivalent of tens, or hundreds of millions of US dollars.
It wouldn't surprise me too much if Metakovan has a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars, and therefore can afford to spend $70M in buying this NFT.
MetaKovan/Sundaresan I think transfers of the B20 token should somehow also result in royalties to all the artists in the B20 porfolio.
Without some form of transfer tax, this breaks the royalties advantage of NFTs because the NFTs aren't being transferred yet.
I think you will accrue a lot of value and attractiveness if artists and token holders are aiming to be appealing to you and the other competing funds that pop up, if you had a way to make the residual go to the assets in your fund.
You can easily add a transfer tax to the transfer() and transferFrom() methods of the erc20 token, which gets pooled and distributed prorata to all the NFT's royalty addresses. You can even keep that as an array in the erc20 token.
[+] [-] daenz|5 years ago|reply
What's more is the pseudo-intellectual justifications for it all. As soon as you bring up value, proponents put on their philosophy hat and ponder "what is value? money is just paper, maaaaan, we just believe it has value." Or we hear that owning a digital "asset" is actually the same thing as a physical "asset" because they're both unique things that can't be copied. It's all smoke and mirrors, and you know that when you have to hide behind vague philosophical assertions about "well nothing really has any value", then you have no actual argument supporting the value of the thing you're defending. It's a new illusion, pumped by hype, and they're trying to justify its existence by pointing to other illusions.
Thanks but count me out.
[+] [-] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
Something I wrote yesterday[0] that I think is relevant here:
> I'm not sure I understand the hate for NFTs. Don't get me wrong, the concept of NFT as currently used is completely absurd and definitely overhyped. But what is bad about it? People who spend their money on NFTs mostly do it because they got rich in the past few years gambling on BTC or ETH, and now use that money to basically tip the artists they like. Or they plan to resell the token at some point, which is pure speculation, but nobody other than themselves risk to get burn. Minting and selling NFTs is almost zero work and effort for artists, all the risks are on the buyers side, and only if they buy them as speculative assets.
> It still make no sense to me, but if rich people want to gamble their money and by doing so support some artists, that doesn't sound too bad IMHO.
> I would be more cautious if retail investors would start to gamble in this market, but that's not what I've seen so far.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26448481
[+] [-] egypturnash|5 years ago|reply
As a broke artist, if I can get some rich assholes to start convincing each other that my art has ludicrous amounts of money, then I will happily let them pay me for it, and let the gallery owner who was instrumental in convincing them of this value have a healthy cut. If the gallery owner wants to arrange a money-laundering kickback to the rich assholes that's their own business, personally I feel like I'd rather avoid it but who knows how I'll feel when I'm being offered a price with enough zeros at the end of its number?
[+] [-] UncleMeat|5 years ago|reply
1. There are some people who struck it megarich with crypto and now have so much "f-u money" that they are willing to spend it on conspicuous consumption. It is the same sort of thing that comes from "look at how much money I lit on fire" posts being given social credit in places like WSB.
2. There are other people who already had a gazillion dollars and are also interested in conspicuous consumption.
3. NFTs are trendy and trends in the crypto space attract people seeking to make money on a trend. A bunch of people are surely buying these things hoping to leave somebody else holding the bag.
4. It is crypto, so some degree of fraud and crime is involved.
[+] [-] bradleyjg|5 years ago|reply
1) It could be a scam of sorts, but one that the parties are in on. For example tax fraud or an attempt evade capital controls.
2) Leave aside digital anything, art has gotten really weird lately. The self destructing Banksy thing, the banana duct tape thing—-I could see being knowingly, publicly scammed as some kind of bizarre performance art. I guess the super rich are really bored.
3) The most reasonable spin on it I could think of is what if there was a limited edition print where the print itself wasn’t limited edition. There were as many prints as anyone wanted to buy for the cost of production, but the artist sold a small number of certificates of authenticity. It still seems kind of pointless and scammy to me but it’s at least closer to understandable.
[+] [-] Moodles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|5 years ago|reply
Buying art with an NFT is just a way to give artists and/or art auctioneers money for their art. That's it.
Oh and it can be used for other things like event ticketing, software license keys, etc.
An NFT is just a way to record (in an immutable distributed ledger) that a specific, uniquely-identifiable token was transferred from A to B.
People have always paid stupid amounts of money for art, and in the last 100 years increasingly art that doesn't require years of training/practice and advanced craftsmanship. Why is this any different?
It sounds like you just don't want to be involved in the art market, which nobody in their right mind wants to be involved in anyway.
Complaining about NFTs is like complaining about "blockchain" or "the internet" or whatever.
[+] [-] atleta|5 years ago|reply
I have a pretty good understanding of block chain technologies but didn't hear about NFTs before, so like you, I started to challenge his ideas. Partly to understand what he was building. Because at first I tried to find real and practical applications for the platform that somehow connect to physical things, works of art.
But what he said was pretty interesting. The guy had a background in art management and, I think, trade. He said that art collection has always been about being able to say that you have the original piece. And that it's not rational anyway, not even for physical works of art, like paintings. It's not that you like the actual picture on the actual canvas so much that you want to buy it for say $1M and if you just had a copy you'd notice the difference and that wouldn't give you as much pleasure. It's simply about having the original. And also collecting related originals.
Now it's easy to trace it back to real, actual scarcity, where indeed there weren't many e.g. paintings (or books, etc.) and there was a big difference between the paintings of different artists (both in style and quality) and you had no way of looking at these other than having the originals probably.
I guess the big question here is whether this phenomenon is strong enough on its own to transfer to purely digital assets or whether this is really rooted and tied to that original scarcity that we kept changing the story around. (I.e. while it's not about being able to enjoy and look at the piece anymore, now it's tied to the knowledge that that specific piece of canvas was painted on by that specific very talented guy X hundred years ago, and he was standing in front, etc.)
One hint might be those 'limited edition' sport cards that some people seem to collect, as well as 'limited edition' e.g. CD or vinyl albums from the past millenium. (I never understood those, but I had a friend who did get a very obvious joy out of being able to buy those. For me, these were always just delivery mediums and I only cared about the music.)
Honestly, I have no idea, but that call was definitely interesting.
[+] [-] parhamn|5 years ago|reply
The lines between economies and schemes are blurry and hero’s and villains are only declared once the dust settles. We’re not there yet.
[+] [-] NoOneNew|5 years ago|reply
What I also find hilarious, folks who love this NFT "can't be copied" are great are the same people who hate DRM. While I'm not a fan of intrusive DRM, I'm going to side with paying what folks deserve for putting time into coding/art/planning for a game/movie/whatever. I get something from their effort, they deserve something in return.
That and I'd rather buy a $20 poster of art from my real life wall than over glorified digital wallpaper.
[+] [-] clairity|5 years ago|reply
in short, it's bullshit, but for the tech crowd rather than wall streeters.
[+] [-] monkeydreams|5 years ago|reply
I don't think the implementation is interesting. I don't think the technology is interesting. I think the concept is extremely interesting, though not in the context of the NFT linking a user to a digital artwork.
If people believe a product has value, then the product has value. If consumers are willing to pay money for it, then the product has value.
People are willing to exert considerable effort to submitting the first comment on a popular youtuber's latest video. People are willing to spend considerable money in order to "own" unique items on roblox. None of these items have any marginal cost to the creator, the hard work has been done, but they are an interesting auxiliary product to the creator's product.
I think an interesting intersection lies between the thinking that lead to NFT, the idea of community and the implementation of smart contracts. Being part of a community, with bragging rights and smart contracts and agreements and sanctions and a culture and so on, becomes much more interesting if people are willing to take the leap to believe that the investment is worth the value they get in return. I think NFT is the proof of this, and the implications of this worry me deeply.
[+] [-] swayvil|5 years ago|reply
We can create reality out of nothing but talk now. If enough people assert a story as real then it is indeed real. Social media is wonderful for this.
Yes, it's basically 1984 with some extra steps.
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
People are using NFTs as stores of value. Despite spending, the owners are not illiquid and are much more liquid than fine art collectors, as borrowing at decently high Loan to Value ratios against the NFT can happen in the subsequent block.
Given your existing predilection, knowing that probably also just moves the goal post for why you think there is something wrong with it "omg, now there's leverage!?". But its just an efficiency on the existing art world which has all the same stuff just much slower due to poor data and information, and nothing to do with the pseudo-intellection abstraction of value.
In a single protocol (standardized class with a set of standardized functions), art provenance has been disrupted, art appraisal has been disrupted, art insurance has been disrupted, art lending has been disrupted, and art royalties have been disrupted.
You will just be seeing more participants in the collectors market because of it, and a market that moves faster and can attract more capital globally, instantly, during a period of massive currency creation.
Its not anybody's problem that new galleries/marketplaces have fees for the artists. Its not anybody's problem that there will still be a ton of starving artists that will never get bids on these platforms. Its not anybody's problem that a buyer ends up with an asset that might not be valued the same or higher or ever get a bid again. Its not anybody's problem that a lender winds up with an illiquid asset. Buy art you like and from creators you like to support, maybe some times you won't get outbid.
[+] [-] riffraff|5 years ago|reply
It is a sort of performance art.
Beyond that, I literally see no reason to buy these things, but they don't seem that different from physical collectibles, and most art pieces in general, where the concept of "original" is just as "irrelevant" in a world where we can duplicate things relatively easily.
[0] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/2019/12/09/banana-priced-...
[+] [-] Rule35|5 years ago|reply
What's the difference between paying 100x for a purse, etc, and a digital status symbol? It's not bought as a good, it's bought as a symbol. Yeah, it does seem wasteful, and I generally think "spending Dad's money" when I see it, but it doesn't offend me.
> but doesn't anyone else think this NFT art thing is bullshit?
Yeah. Because it's not clear that it's just a prestige way to sponsor someone. Non-techies may not understand that the NFT offers no control over the art, the way that owning an original allows you to lock it in a vault or burn it.
[+] [-] carver|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bouncycastle|5 years ago|reply
Personally I'm buying only stuff that resonates with me. I do not plan to flip it for a quick profit. In fact, my.taste is sometimes so eccentric that I doubt anyone else will want to buy them from me. However, I must say that owning a NFT to an artwork, gives you a stronger connection to it, even if it is digital. The artist also appreciate that you support their work.
That's the way you should go about this too. If you see anything promoted by celebrities, run, run away. Also avoid corporations caching in on it like the NBA. Only buy from Artists directly, and if you must, then trade only peer-to-peer.
[+] [-] timnetworks|5 years ago|reply
Other people can also see this information, but it isn't as useful to them.
[+] [-] Angostura|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stelonix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hshshs2|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Grustaf|5 years ago|reply
And people can use them to prove ownership of physical things, TRUSTLESSLY. Because it's so much safer to have decentralised system of digital bearer shares, than a central registry run by the government or a bank, right?
Oh but it's for third world countries where the state is not to be trusted. Of course that also means you can't trust them to enforce your digital bearer shares either, but that shouldn't be a big problem. We'll just get all the farmers and villagers to agree on using one particular blockchain bases system to keep track of who owns what land. What could be simpler.
And if you thought that was stupid, enter NFTs for digital art. Yes let's use advanced technology to create digital tokens that can't be copied, and use them to track the ownership of digital art that can be copied indefinitely. Brilliant.
[+] [-] patentatt|5 years ago|reply
And they're basically selling it off to 'investors.' So it was really just an elaborate marketing ploy for some shady crypto currency? I'm surprised an institution like Christie's was willing to lend their reputation to such an endeavor. Or were they conned too? Or did they actually net that $9m 'fee' which is enough to buy Christie's reputation?
[+] [-] bogwog|5 years ago|reply
BTC is at like $60k right now, and there are something like 18.4 billion BTC in circulation, which translates to over a trillion dollars in "value".
Yet if any of these bitcoin (or ETH or whatever) billionaires tried to cash out their massive reserves, the bubble would burst. So stunts like this NFT thing, where a "humble artist" becomes a millionaire overnight, serves to just further inflate the bubble, and help those bitcoin billionaires become real billionaires without crashing the market.
I wonder how many of these bitcoin billionaires are doing this (possibly colluding), or are actually so deluded that they believe $60k is the real intrinsic value of their BTC. Or maybe it's neither, and this bubble is still nowhere near the bursting point yet.
Either way, it's all fucked and I hate it.
[+] [-] iamacyborg|5 years ago|reply
> What’s interesting is that Beeple, the creator of the artwork, is actually a business partner of MetaKovan’s. He owns 2% of all the B20 tokens. I’m sure there is no conflict of interest here
[+] [-] echelon|5 years ago|reply
Of course this is a scam.
I can create NFTs for Beeple's art too.
I can create NFTs for Jack Dorsey's first tweet. I'll sell you a hundred of them if you want.
This is exactly like buying a spot on million dollar homepage, except anyone can make a million dollar homepage and nobody will honor your purchase because they don't have incentive to care.
[+] [-] stevesimmons|5 years ago|reply
And who knows whether Christie's keeps all that, or part/most finds it way back to Beeple/MetaKovan/Sundaresan in other ways.
[+] [-] stevesimmons|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonas21|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1370227566125096961
[+] [-] ALittleLight|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1370227566125096961
[+] [-] trhway|5 years ago|reply
Wrt. the people trying to question what value NFT has - well what value a piece of a paper with a black square has? I'd guess close to $0 or less - a ruined piece of paper. Until of course it is said to be done by Kandinsky. The value of the most of the art is in that information, not in the material artifact. NFT is just a distillation of that idea.
Reminds a recent Russian meme - a photo of Kandinsky with a bubble "Everybody can paint the same. Not everybody can sell the same way."
[+] [-] yigitcakar|5 years ago|reply
I have spent hours sifting through the crypto-art space and amazed at the "so called" artworks people have been spending money. As a person who has been a professional artist and somewhat knowledgeable about the art scene, I feel that it is a duty to warn people.
I don't mind people spending their money on newbie photoshop tricks if they know what they are doing, but I don't like people to feel like they are artists because they can apply photoshop filters to an image and mint them as NFTs. I am keeping the publicity stunts out of this conversation. The article does a great job talking about those.
Another important thing to note is that an artwork's value derives from its cultural effect. So far NFTs' cultural effect is feeding people's belief in get-rich-quick schemes. Our society has stopped valuing hard work and started valuing wealth. We don't care how you attained your wealth anymore. When an item creates wealth without providing value, it is almost always a confidence trick.
If you are going to invest in crypto currencies, at least go on the relatively safest route and invest in Bitcoin and hope that its volatility works for your favor. But know that you are gambling and don't put your life savings on the line.
[+] [-] dcl|5 years ago|reply
Is the artwork actually stored in the token or does it contain a URL that isn't guaranteed to always exist? I'm guessing there is no mechanism to change the link if the host should go down or stop hosting the content.
Are NFT's used to recognise a transfer of ownership of the intelectual property?
[+] [-] gigatexal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sterlinm|5 years ago|reply
But I'm much more skeptical of NFTs than I am of cryptocurrencies in general. The most persuasive argument to me has been that it's no different than other collectible items. Art is one example, but I think stamps, coins, and baseball cards are better examples.
I think it's kind of objectively stupid to ascribe a lot of value to some random stamp or coin that is rare because of a printing or manufacturing error. But if that's your thing I'm not going to stop you. And if I were very wealthy and you came to me and made an incredibly compelling case that you'd figured out how to predict the future market values of rare stamps and/or coins well enough to build a profitable trading strategy I would consider investing.
The main gimmick of NFTs seems to be that they make it possible for a digital object to be rare. So I suppose some sort of NFT market could just be another type of collectibles, no better or worse than stamps or coins.
That's the most generous argument I've been able to make to myself. Personally I still can't get over the feeling that they're really stupid.
[+] [-] achimlittlepage|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|5 years ago|reply
We had Duchamp with his pissoir in 1920. I remember someone exhibiting a goldfish in a blender. And now this ...
They would say that art is what happens between the artwork and the observer. But of course it is much broader than that. There is also the artist, the story, the room, the broader society and ... the market.
[+] [-] UncleMeat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ur-whale|5 years ago|reply
People are weird is all.
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
Just a small correction: they are "valuable" because they are unique AND because people want them. Otherwise they have no value. Scarcity in itself isn't enough to have value, you still have to create hype around the token somehow.
("valuable" in quotes, because it's really not that clear there is any actual value in an NFT that isn't legally binding...)
[+] [-] paulpauper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
Metakovan buys to lets the B20 digital fund own art assets. The B20 fund only collected like $3mm dollars and the rest is just a floated marketcap of B20 tokens.
So is Metakovan just going to pay for the art piece personally and just arbitrarily transfer the piece to the B20 address? Like basically B20 itself cannot pay for it, and the auction house isn't accepting B20 tokens.
Its cool Metakovan has so much money. There have been plenty of opportunity over the last few months to turn $3mm into $100mm, let alone over the last decade in crypto. So it isnt outside the realm of possibility that he has that much.
But if he doesnt pay, does Justin Sun get to complete the purchase and get it?
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|5 years ago|reply
I don't know much about Metakovan's allegations of wrongdoing; but even without looking at these, it's fair to say that there are several individuals who, by just being early in crypto, have amassed the equivalent of tens, or hundreds of millions of US dollars.
It wouldn't surprise me too much if Metakovan has a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars, and therefore can afford to spend $70M in buying this NFT.
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffggvv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
Without some form of transfer tax, this breaks the royalties advantage of NFTs because the NFTs aren't being transferred yet.
I think you will accrue a lot of value and attractiveness if artists and token holders are aiming to be appealing to you and the other competing funds that pop up, if you had a way to make the residual go to the assets in your fund.
You can easily add a transfer tax to the transfer() and transferFrom() methods of the erc20 token, which gets pooled and distributed prorata to all the NFT's royalty addresses. You can even keep that as an array in the erc20 token.
Email me
[+] [-] kotaKat|5 years ago|reply