><i>NFTs are blockchain-based records that uniquely represent pieces of media.</i><p>There is a jpg of an artwork on the internet that anyone can view and copy. There's also a non-fungible token that's linked to this jpg. I just don't see how NFT proponents want to make the actual connection between the one and the other in a way that's both decentralized and unique.<p>- You can have some authority that says "THIS artwork belongs to THIS token". Then, you don't need blockchain, because you have a central authority.<p>- You can encode the relation on-chain by e.g. taking an md5 of the jpg. How do you know which token claiming to be "the unique token for that jpg" is the real unique one? Even if there is a class of token that preserves uniqueness, it can only do that internally within the class, we're back to the previous point of needing some centralized allocation to say which class of tokens is the real one.<p>Edit: for the last point, you can take the one with the earliest timestamp of course, as per another comment.<p>Anything I missed? Has anyone even thought about this in-depth? Are a16z's crypto dabblings just empty hype chasing?
Most ppl in this thread is still trapped by concept of ownership of something tangible.<p>Why not break out of that and think digitally.<p>Digital ownership is like putting your name on a building, like a museum. Completely meaningless to most but a few. And that is worth it enough for some folks to send millions to do it.<p>NFT ownership is exactly the same thing. The article says that creators just need a few thousand of devote followers to make a living. A NFT doesn't have to mean or worth anything to millions of people, just to a few thousand will do. It's enough to create a vibrant marketplace centered around some creator.
I work in this space as a Product Owner for a blockchain team at Ultra.io. I think that I can speak to some of the questions and concerns in this thread with some authority.<p>NFTs as they are being used today, as proof of ownership over a copy able, digital asset, is frankly the lowest hanging fruit. It isn't a very robust or interesting use of the technology.<p>What we are building is a game distribution platform, like Steam, that makes games and their items NFTs. This opens up many interesting business opportunities that are defined by the built in scarcity that NFTs are built for. Because it is all on chain, it also means that ownership rights move back to end users, meaning that once you are done playing a game, it is then possible to sell or trade it on the open market.<p>A prime example of NFT use as a business case is the ability for a game developer or publisher to create limited edition games with unique content.<p>Basically, I see NFT art as just a proof of concept and not really where the future of this tech is going.
I think the value of NFTs purely based on "ownership" will not last very long. Yes it's cool, but most of these are already on the way to becoming almost purely speculative instruments.<p>Some - like punks and hashmasks among others - seem to be taking advantage of the medium, to do things with art that only NFTs can do. Art that embraces the medium and does something unique that only it can IMO will eventually win[1]. In the case of NFTS, having each piece be self-contained bits of code sitting inside an execution engine open up a lot of possibilities, from self-mutation to generation.<p>1 - longer summary of my thoughts: <a href="https://hrishioa.github.io/the-two-innovations-of-hashmasks/" rel="nofollow">https://hrishioa.github.io/the-two-innovations-of-hashmasks/</a>
It's only speculative, right? I'm happy artists get paid but I still don't get why you would pay to be the "owner" of a digital art piece. Anyone can see and download the art. Who cares who is registered as the owner it if it's free to have an exact copy?
Pretending there’s real value in NFTs is 100% delusion, rationalization, and/or bandwagoning. Normally I would have no problem with a good old delusion, but this one just costs carbon emissions with play pretend upside.
It continues to blow my mind how much cognitive energy VC's expend trying to figure out a way (no matter how implausible) for something to have the value they hope it has.<p>e.g. Marc Andressen on what we all were missing about the Yo app.<p><a href="https://slate.com/business/2014/06/marc-andreessen-explains-why-mobile-app-yo-is-a-big-deal-one-bit-signaling-takes-up-70-percent-of-bangladesh-cell-phone-traffic-at-any-moment.html" rel="nofollow">https://slate.com/business/2014/06/marc-andreessen-explains-...</a>
I think I am experiencing FOMO with this NFT thing but no matter how much I look at it I have no interest what so ever in any of these. Very odd feeling...
How can someone calling themselves "The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance" not have any understanding of how the thing they are commenting on actually works? I hope they aren't actually associated with the University. This is just plain wrong:<p>> The vast effort it requires also makes Bitcoin inherently difficult to scale, he argues. "If Bitcoin were to be adopted as a global reserve currency," he speculates, "the Bitcoin price will probably be in the millions, and those miners will have more money than the entire [US] Federal budget to spend on electricity."<p>Bitcoin's energy usage and transaction rate are unconnected. Even the long time casual observer would know when Bitcoin hit is maximum transaction rate for the first time, it's energy usage was literally orders of magnitude less than it is now. Whatever is driving it's energy usage isn't transaction rate. What's more, it's looking unlikely the max transaction rate will ever increase. And as for miners having to mine more coins ... Christ how confused is it possible to be about one topic? Apparently he doesn't know mining of new coins is halving every 4 years, and will end completely on May 7th, 2140.<p>It's like reading an Emu claiming the desert doesn't bloom because the fish in the rivers drink all the water. The Emu isn't wrong about the fish drinking the water of course, but with that level of ineptitude on display taking anything else the Emu has to say about the climate seriously ain't going to happen.
Majority of NFT's are garbage (Sturgeon's Law) and not worth any price. However the nature of an NFT is that it allows an asset to be wrapped in a smart contract and have ownership and terms of use encoded. There's something to be said about having digitized assets that can be trustlessly verified and have capability of issuing dividends.<p>The Veblen effect also comes to mind. The more something costs, the more [rich] people want it, no matter how ridiculous, typically used as status symbols.<p>- [0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law</a><p>- [1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good</a>
I’ve been trying to figure out NFTs and I can’t understand why they’re better than just using smart contracts.<p>I threw together a contract in Solidity that would do all this and cut out the middleman / middlewinkelvii. It wasn’t hard.<p>What am I missing? Why is the contract not the token?
> But the internet took a detour. Centralized social platforms became the dominant way for creators and fans to connect. The platforms used this power to become the new intermediaries — inserting ads and algorithmic recommendations between creators and users while keeping most of the revenue for themselves.<p>I don't think that's an issue, plenty of people now making a living thanks to the internet, even though discovery is a hard problem (and thus ads are a flourishing business).<p>Cryptocurrencies (not NFTs) remove intermediaries, but they don't fix or improve the discovery problem, which is the real problem. There's still a million related problem, and cryptocurrency solves one of them.
Cryptocurrency, art, technology.... there is nothing surprising, time passes, we develop.Remember the times 20 years ago, not everyone had a TV, and if there was, there was almost nothing to watch. And today... everyone has a smartphone and the ability to watch thousands of movies or TV shows... One Showbox app is worth it <a href="https://pipsli.net/en/android-apps/multimedia/125-showbox.html" rel="nofollow">https://pipsli.net/en/android-apps/multimedia/125-showbox.ht...</a>. I can't even imagine what will happen in ten years...
I think we are missing the main point: NFTs are all about speculation. You buy an NFT not because you want to own it (and hang it in your virtual residence in the meta verse), you buy it because you hope you can sell it later at a higher price. Marketplaces are taking a fee for every sell and saying who owns what (ridiculous because you can check that yourself... but not everyone knows how blockchain works).<p>It’s like art in the real world. The ones who own a Picasso, sure enjoy it by showing it to guests... but the real pleasure comes when they are able to sell it for double the price they have paid for it.
Lets say I buy an NFT. Now what do I do with it? I can't hang it up, or print it (if its a gif for example). The only thing I've heard is that people store them on IPFS [1] but I don't really know what that is or how it works.<p>Every art collector I know displays it somewhere, or has it in storage such that it will be displayed somewhere eventually.<p>This feels like a way for people to support digital artists directly, which is great. Not sure there's much more here than that though.<p>[1]<a href="https://ipfs.io/" rel="nofollow">https://ipfs.io/</a>
This has nothing to do with art. NFTs are the best money laundering method in the cryptocurrency world. Just like how druglords use fine art auctions to pay for cocaine shipments.<p>Think about it, anyone could be the customer or the creator of the NFT 'art', the platform can charge a percentage. Meanwhile if the platform offers financial services the need for KYC/AML locks them from doing business with themselves and anything else doesn't have enough volume.<p>I think AML/KYC is an extremely draconian regulation so I sympathise to some extent but NFTs have no value as art. They have various interesting use cases though but those things require more effort (you know, cause they are actual products) but no one has done anything like that yet because blockchains have not had a big enough market or fast enough transaction speed to attract talent to build on them (yet!).<p>Hopefully we can leave this era behind soon and abandon nation states and taxes for insured crowdfunding and internet-as-means-to-solving-climate-change, i.e. fair allocation of the earths resources.
I have a hard time processing why people would spend their money this way. Here’s an insane auction going on right now: <a href="https://nft.3lau.com/#/auction" rel="nofollow">https://nft.3lau.com/#/auction</a><p>It has reached over $8MM... why
>NFTs are blockchain-based records that uniquely represent pieces of media<p>Or pieces of land, see Fabrica [0]<p>(disclosure: I am still affiliated with the company, and I used to be a co-founder there)<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.fabrica.land/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fabrica.land/</a>
I have mixed feelings from my perspective of being into art.<p>One of my favorite artists just came out with an NFT. They also do limited edition 'drops' which I would much prefer an actual print, but I've missed them on Instagram or haven't hit refresh fast enough.<p>Check out the app NTWK i think a more interesting way to bring art online. They have live stream videos of launches, more like actually visiting a show. And they also have more fair raffles instead of whoever hits refresh first.<p>For now these releases are more accessible (but still not totally), and the artist doesn't have to give 50% to a gallery (yet?).<p>But it's still a reseller scalper market.<p><br>
Long context / my thoughts if interested:<p>Art is incredibly exclusive. For small collectors it's almost impossible to get in on rising stars; sucks if you have supported them from before they started getting big and now it's way out of your price range and even if not you don't have the connections to buy.<p>Check out @jerrygogosian they always have a good take lol.<p>Galleries will say there is a waitlist. The waitlist is a lie.<p>Can't see art in person at fairs anymore. But you can still get a PDF to zoom in on though!<p>no prices. And all pieces are pre-sold lol.<p>Nina Chanel Abney - who recently made it 'big' - posted on her stories the other day the typical large gallery email response to a buy inquiry:<p>'i can put your name on the waitlist. But what is your collection like, what artists do you own.'<p>She replied she has the largest collection of Nina Chanel lol. I guess the intern didn't recognize her name. Unless you buy other artists that the gallery is trying to prop up you can't get the actual artist you want.<p>Also the book 'Dark Side of the Boom' does a really good job laying out the start of contemporary art and how a few gallerists ended up controlling - often colluding - to corner the market, increase prices, and make art inaccessible.<p>At the high end contemporary art is a levered asset (you can get loans against it) so there is incentive to artificially prop up the price at auction to get bigger loans and higher returns.<p>BUT there is still a huge amount of accessible art, only 1% or less of artists make a sizable living. So if you are in it for the art there's a ton out there and it feels good to support a struggling artist (almost all are) even if a gallery gets 50%.<p>Maybe you even get lucky and pick an artist that others connect to and then you can't afford it anymore haha. Has happened to me 2 coming up on 3 times so far.<p>Check out Yale graduates and a few other non-profits or galleries that do like sponsored residencies.<p>But bet your ass senior directors at Gagosian look there too - you know while they aren't busy sexually harassing & abusing their wealthy white pretty staff.<p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CLsua3Klz0LIJMR_t0RiRsii_2AclS4gsLOP0g0/" rel="nofollow">https://www.instagram.com/p/CLsua3Klz0LIJMR_t0RiRsii_2AclS4g...</a>
<a href="https://instagram.fapa1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t50.2886-16/88710050_947517819324877_4850393155004681007_n.mp4" rel="nofollow">https://instagram.fapa1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t50.2886-16/887100...</a>?
NFTs are kind of an oxymoron in my opinion.<p>For a digital object to be scarce it needs a central authority.<p>If a digital object is decentralized, it has no scarcity and is worthless.<p>E.g. a limited edition skin in a game needs the central authority to make it usable in the game. So why do they need blockchain?<p>E.g. a blockchain piece of data is accessible to all, so why pay for it?