I just think it’s a way for people to show off their wealth. An NFT is pretty much a joke, “here’s the original” doesn’t really mean shit when I can quite literally have an exact and indistinguishable copy of the work. It honestly feels like insanity to me. Like, I can right now go set my avatar to the exact same Ape picture Curry purchased. It’s not even a replica, or recreation, it is literally the same exact image.
The only real world analogy we kind of have is if we could freely “duplicate” physical goods with the press of a button. Would the Mona Lisa be valuable if DaVinci could have made 1000s of EXACT copies? I’m gonna say no, but that’s exactly where we are. It’s cute someone says they own something like an NFT, or that it’s the original, but it’s nothing more than an illusion of uniqueness.
Selling nearly exact copy of same art multiple times already happens, think of prints and etchings and so on. Though I don't think they will ever reach value of single art pieces, but there just being multiple copies does not make them not valuable.
Overall this might even be preferable to unique art works. Lowers the barrier of access for one.
If you need multiple art experts to decide which of two painting is real and which is the forgery, is there really a difference in the value other than the bragging rights of owning the original?
Would the Mona Lisa be valuable if DaVinci made one but we could make exact molecular replicas now? I would still say it would be valuable. You can make nearly indistinguishable copies off the Mona Lisa now, but they aren’t worth anything. The pictorial content of the Mona Lisa is only a small part of its value.
> Would the Mona Lisa be valuable if DaVinci could have made 1000s of EXACT copies? I’m gonna say no, but that’s exactly where we are. It’s cute someone says they own something like an NFT, or that it’s the original, but it’s nothing more than an illusion of uniqueness.
Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans were produced by a screen printing process and he made 32 canvases.
There is nothing that physically could have stopped Warhol from printing thousands of Campbell's Soup Cans instead of the 32.
And in the same way, a digital artist can choose to mint any number of NFTs for a work of art or variations of a work of art. If a digital artist chooses to mint a limited number of NFTs on the blockchain and this run of NFTs gains traction then it's a similar situation to the Campbell's Soup Cans in my opinion. In both cases, the artist could choose to print more physical Campbell's Soup Cans after the fact or mint more NFTs after the fact, but the initial run will forever be the "original" run, and they will remain special because of this. Simply because we assign special meaning to that.
You can print an image of Peppa Pig on your own shirt for free but that doesn’t mean the rights holder wont make an obscene amount of money this year anyway. But, is there an NFT bubble? Dear god, YES!
> the real story is about how to capitalize on 40k Twitter followers.
As is pretty much every tech blog post on “I’ve made <significant amount of money> in <short amount of time>”. Most fail to mention step zero of having an established audience.
I wonder what percentage is disingenuous (trick you into thinking anyone can do it, to hook new followers) versus delusional (honestly don’t realise the prior audience is what made the difference). Maybe the perception flips after a given number of followers.
Author here. I don't think many of my followers ended up being purchasers directly. The vast majority of sales I can attribute to the collection finding its way to various private discords and Telegram groups for folks interested in NFTs.
1000 true fans is a great article that is well worth reading. It really does go to show that building a community can be a worthwhile task, even if it does take time the long term benefits can be huge.
A lot of dunking happening here - titles like this article's can definitely turn people away, as people have learned that money means something (undesirably) different in "crypto." That said, the article does provide a pretty good job documenting the creative process, the path to minting, and the launch of a campaign. I encourage anyone interested in the space to get past the triggering headline and give it a read.
edit: looks like the submission got flagged/removed from the feed on HN. sigh
As sold now, nearly all NFTs will end up being a poor investment. A write-off. Some people hope to get rich quick and will punt on pretty much anything.
Longer term, and several rebrands later there's potential here.
The digital economy as it curently stands is a shit-show. Just attention grabbing for money. A race to the bottom. But it needn't be so.
A digital economy based on assets rather than attention could eventually emerge.
Asset licencing may be sub-1 cent per copy. That'd be fine, when the necessary payment infrastructure is in place. High volume, high efficiency, low cost.
Put your money on the infrastructure. Get rich slow.
I read this article with some interest because I'm thinking of getting a new kitchen, and while I understand the technologies involved (both generative art and Ethereum), the part I'm struggling with is... why on earth anyone would pay money for these things. Can someone explain it to me?
My only guess is that the people buying these things already have large amounts of theoretical money in Ethereum anyway and thus spending a small fraction of it on some sort of very poor glowing Mondrian-esque art is little more than an amusing distraction that seems cool?
Why do people keep acting like this phenomenon is confusing?
Like gee maybe people are really into mini Jpegs now. Or wow I guess if people really like spending buy-a-house money on a Twitter avatar this will be a thriving sector of the economy.
I mean people really like gambling.
Actually they fucking love it. Like they’ll build an entire city in the middle of an uninhabitable desert just to do it. They’ll give up their kids future for it. People making $7.25 an hour will spend hundreds of dollars a week on scratch off lottery tickets in order to participate in it.
An endless demand for new ways to gamble is the least fucking confusing cultural development to ever happen.
Put people in a prison and they’ll do it with cigarettes. Give a bunch of construction workers a lunch break and they’ll bet on which pigeon is gonna to take off first. Hand a group of people a round ball or a deck of cards and they’ll figure out how to do it.
Beanie babies, little ceramic figures, baseball cards, coins. The desire for people to speculate on synthetically created scarcity is boundless, spanning generations.
Speculation is common to every culture in every era of human history.
NFT’s are a gambling fad, an extension of the more general crypto gambling fad. People will do it until it’s banned, matures, or gets replaced by the next gambling craze.
Specifically, the discussion of the "pogs" craze in elementary schools in the US in the 90s.
"Basically, a nice little gambling ring was growing amongst us starry-eyed 2nd graders."
The OP would certainly read differently if he wrote, "How I won $50K in 3 days with NFTs", rather than saying how he "made" $50K.
Also the Gordon Gekko quote from "Wall Street":
"Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred –- from one perception to another. ... I create nothing. I own."[1]
> NFT’s are a gambling fad, an extension of the more general crypto gambling fad.
I agree with you to the fullest, very well summarized.
The issue around crypto at the moment is that because it is poorly understood by both the masses and the evngelists (the tech, the economics, and often both) you have a lot of people who don't want to be left out of the "next big thing" and so they've pivoted their careers to convincing people that crypto and related assets are part of a healthy portfolio. This may or may not be true in the long run, but nobody walks around thinking scratchoffs are part of a good portfolio allocation. The same is not true for these other assets, and we've seen in each cycle when people get hosed and lose it all, they are genuinely shocked because they don't view it as gambling.
Although you may be right, OpenSea (the NFT Marketplace used in the article) does lazy minting. Of course, one can still not make any money if no one buys the NFT.
The author writes about it here:
> There's a bit of nuance to how OpenSea does things. They do so-called lazy minting. While you may need to pay an initial gas fee to list a new collection, each NFT listing does not require any fees. This works because the NFT is not actually minted yet. It gets officially minted once the buyer pays the gas fees to mint the artwork on the blockchain.
Art is in the eye of the beholder.
Just like value.
So, in a sense, art is the perfect expression of the subjective theory of value.
And by the way, it resembles religion in that, one must believe in it.
But as every good artist, salesman and priest knows, it is of greater importance that as many others as possible be convinced of how valuable it is.
Nothing new here.
It doesn't matter wether there is the possibility of a 'perfect' copy.
You just have to convince your connoisseurs, buyers, believers that art is a process and a story/history not a product.
Et voilà que.
There is your uniqueness!
And/or you license it and go mass market, see Dafen in China.
sometimes i like to blow my own mind by considering the fact that nfts and cryptocurrency are really just open source and decentralized drm in its purest form.
Is it really that wrong? Buyers know exactly what they get for their money. I'm not a fan of NFT stuff and think it's a giant pile of bullshit, but people know in advance they they are spending money for something that is pretty meaningless.
Why do you need an expert to vet something when you buy it from the artist that made it? And in turn, when the artist put a piece on a blockchain you can trace it back to the artist. That's the point of NFTs kind of. But if you mean you'd rather have a physical original of an artwork than a digital representation of the thing, I see what you mean I guess.
I am calling it now: that blockchain royalty system on NFTs? It is only a matter of time before Hollywood makes NFTs interact with DRM. Your movie purchase will be an NFT with hardware-backed chain verification.
They could, but why would they? Right now, they can lock content behind a subscription, remove listed content, edit and re-release content, and pretty much do whatever they want. You don't buy a movie, you buy the limited right to watch what goes as the current iteration of a video file for a certain amount of time. You can't resell your purchase, so everyone has to pay full price to the sellers.
Using NFTs or other cryptographic DRM would be hugely beneficial to consumers, but what's the point of helping the consumers? It'll only cut into costs because NFTs require some kind of cryptocoin network to do a bunch of calculations, which is expensive to run and wastes enormous amounts of electricity.
A simple RSA signature could be used to license a file to your computer and some DRM comes pretty close to that. If the industry wanted to give you ownership, they already could've done it before the NFT speculators set up the current hype.
It would also allow the recreation of something like the original Netflix DVD service but purely digital.
No more having to manage a half dozen plus streaming subscriptions. One company could go out and start building a comprehensive library of NFTs for every film and series.
When you want to watch something you check out the NFT from the library. When you’re done you return it. For very hot items, there may be a waiting list, but you’ll get it eventually. No more being stuck in a content ghetto like with modern streaming services.
Mila Kunis has an NFT project where only token holders can view the associated episodes of a cartoon and upon NFT resale, a percent of the proceeds gets remitted back to the project creators [1].
That would make way too much sense... I predict online streaming on poor services that will shut down in few years with no option for backup. With both monthly subscription and individual purchases, and user losing purchases if ending subscription...
That is pretty smart. How is this not already implemented for film distribution and avoid leakages and pirating? Honest question, i've been on all forms of streaming since 2000, back to torrenting lately to avoid cartelization
Slightly off topic, but I built a web service to create NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain without the need to set up a wallet and buy Ether beforehand. You pay the gas fee on in USD, the service takes care of everything: https://nuftu.com
[+] [-] rubyn00bie|4 years ago|reply
The only real world analogy we kind of have is if we could freely “duplicate” physical goods with the press of a button. Would the Mona Lisa be valuable if DaVinci could have made 1000s of EXACT copies? I’m gonna say no, but that’s exactly where we are. It’s cute someone says they own something like an NFT, or that it’s the original, but it’s nothing more than an illusion of uniqueness.
Edited: slight wording tweak for clarity.
[+] [-] Ekaros|4 years ago|reply
Overall this might even be preferable to unique art works. Lowers the barrier of access for one.
[+] [-] midasuni|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hk-im-ad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LMYahooTFY|4 years ago|reply
So is the Mona Lisa. So is a manuscript of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
The notion of NFTs is embedded in the idea of immutability. If unique strings of bits hold no value for you, that's your preference and nothing more.
If you can only be sentimental about oil and canvas, or handwritten ink on leather bound paper, that's your preference and nothing more.
I can destroy the wallet key somehow. I can destroy the book. I can destroy the painting.
It's not an illusion of uniqueness at all, you just seem to be unwilling or unable to comprehend patronage.
[+] [-] codetrotter|4 years ago|reply
Munch made four versions of The Scream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream#Versions
Paul Cézanne made several variations of many of the same motifs, for example with his drawings and paintings of the skulls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Skulls
https://www.kesslerramirez.com/blog/art-history-101-pyramid-...
And then there is Andy Warhol with his Campbell's Soup Cans and other works of art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans
Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans were produced by a screen printing process and he made 32 canvases.
There is nothing that physically could have stopped Warhol from printing thousands of Campbell's Soup Cans instead of the 32.
And in the same way, a digital artist can choose to mint any number of NFTs for a work of art or variations of a work of art. If a digital artist chooses to mint a limited number of NFTs on the blockchain and this run of NFTs gains traction then it's a similar situation to the Campbell's Soup Cans in my opinion. In both cases, the artist could choose to print more physical Campbell's Soup Cans after the fact or mint more NFTs after the fact, but the initial run will forever be the "original" run, and they will remain special because of this. Simply because we assign special meaning to that.
[+] [-] John_Luck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiborsaas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latexr|4 years ago|reply
As is pretty much every tech blog post on “I’ve made <significant amount of money> in <short amount of time>”. Most fail to mention step zero of having an established audience.
I wonder what percentage is disingenuous (trick you into thinking anyone can do it, to hook new followers) versus delusional (honestly don’t realise the prior audience is what made the difference). Maybe the perception flips after a given number of followers.
[+] [-] finexplained|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airpoint|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PStamatiou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melomal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chejazi|4 years ago|reply
edit: looks like the submission got flagged/removed from the feed on HN. sigh
[+] [-] lovemenot|4 years ago|reply
As sold now, nearly all NFTs will end up being a poor investment. A write-off. Some people hope to get rich quick and will punt on pretty much anything.
Longer term, and several rebrands later there's potential here.
The digital economy as it curently stands is a shit-show. Just attention grabbing for money. A race to the bottom. But it needn't be so.
A digital economy based on assets rather than attention could eventually emerge.
Asset licencing may be sub-1 cent per copy. That'd be fine, when the necessary payment infrastructure is in place. High volume, high efficiency, low cost.
Put your money on the infrastructure. Get rich slow.
[+] [-] bshimmin|4 years ago|reply
My only guess is that the people buying these things already have large amounts of theoretical money in Ethereum anyway and thus spending a small fraction of it on some sort of very poor glowing Mondrian-esque art is little more than an amusing distraction that seems cool?
[+] [-] bradleyjg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|4 years ago|reply
Like gee maybe people are really into mini Jpegs now. Or wow I guess if people really like spending buy-a-house money on a Twitter avatar this will be a thriving sector of the economy.
I mean people really like gambling.
Actually they fucking love it. Like they’ll build an entire city in the middle of an uninhabitable desert just to do it. They’ll give up their kids future for it. People making $7.25 an hour will spend hundreds of dollars a week on scratch off lottery tickets in order to participate in it.
An endless demand for new ways to gamble is the least fucking confusing cultural development to ever happen.
Put people in a prison and they’ll do it with cigarettes. Give a bunch of construction workers a lunch break and they’ll bet on which pigeon is gonna to take off first. Hand a group of people a round ball or a deck of cards and they’ll figure out how to do it.
Beanie babies, little ceramic figures, baseball cards, coins. The desire for people to speculate on synthetically created scarcity is boundless, spanning generations.
Speculation is common to every culture in every era of human history.
NFT’s are a gambling fad, an extension of the more general crypto gambling fad. People will do it until it’s banned, matures, or gets replaced by the next gambling craze.
[+] [-] pixelmonkey|4 years ago|reply
https://moretothat.com/how-money-forever-changed-us/
Specifically, the discussion of the "pogs" craze in elementary schools in the US in the 90s. "Basically, a nice little gambling ring was growing amongst us starry-eyed 2nd graders."
The OP would certainly read differently if he wrote, "How I won $50K in 3 days with NFTs", rather than saying how he "made" $50K.
Also the Gordon Gekko quote from "Wall Street":
"Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred –- from one perception to another. ... I create nothing. I own."[1]
[1]: https://amontalenti.com/2011/12/16/wall-street-the-movie-25-...
[+] [-] qeternity|4 years ago|reply
I agree with you to the fullest, very well summarized.
The issue around crypto at the moment is that because it is poorly understood by both the masses and the evngelists (the tech, the economics, and often both) you have a lot of people who don't want to be left out of the "next big thing" and so they've pivoted their careers to convincing people that crypto and related assets are part of a healthy portfolio. This may or may not be true in the long run, but nobody walks around thinking scratchoffs are part of a good portfolio allocation. The same is not true for these other assets, and we've seen in each cycle when people get hosed and lose it all, they are genuinely shocked because they don't view it as gambling.
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teruakohatu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blue_rog|4 years ago|reply
The author writes about it here:
> There's a bit of nuance to how OpenSea does things. They do so-called lazy minting. While you may need to pay an initial gas fee to list a new collection, each NFT listing does not require any fees. This works because the NFT is not actually minted yet. It gets officially minted once the buyer pays the gas fees to mint the artwork on the blockchain.
[+] [-] Borrible|4 years ago|reply
It doesn't matter wether there is the possibility of a 'perfect' copy. You just have to convince your connoisseurs, buyers, believers that art is a process and a story/history not a product.
Et voilà que.
There is your uniqueness! And/or you license it and go mass market, see Dafen in China.
https://www.dafenvillageonline.com/
Okay, they copy it without license, but hey, they're Chinese so that comes naturally.
By the way,the art game is rigged since decades. The moment the Saatchis of this planet decided NFT's were a thing, they were a thing.
Of course it's an illusion, but some sell it and a lot buy it. They agreed on it. That's its value.
[+] [-] al2o3cr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a-dub|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddevault|4 years ago|reply
This is morally wrong.
[+] [-] dgellow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kzrdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|4 years ago|reply
Everyone else will be celebrated, and can pat themselves on the back, for having the foresight to time the market.
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codetrotter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeroenhd|4 years ago|reply
Using NFTs or other cryptographic DRM would be hugely beneficial to consumers, but what's the point of helping the consumers? It'll only cut into costs because NFTs require some kind of cryptocoin network to do a bunch of calculations, which is expensive to run and wastes enormous amounts of electricity.
A simple RSA signature could be used to license a file to your computer and some DRM comes pretty close to that. If the industry wanted to give you ownership, they already could've done it before the NFT speculators set up the current hype.
[+] [-] HPsquared|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcolkitt|4 years ago|reply
No more having to manage a half dozen plus streaming subscriptions. One company could go out and start building a comprehensive library of NFTs for every film and series.
When you want to watch something you check out the NFT from the library. When you’re done you return it. For very hot items, there may be a waiting list, but you’ll get it eventually. No more being stuck in a content ghetto like with modern streaming services.
[+] [-] Dwolb|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78kay/mila-kunis-stoner-cat...
[+] [-] Ekaros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucasverra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bouncycastle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RupertWiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] folli|4 years ago|reply