Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#21

Post by imhoguy » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #10

Mania for now but long term it will bring scarcity to the digital realm something that's important to fully develop the digital economy. Right now digital has been very profitable for a relatively few since it takes lots of money to develop a product but scarcity will let many more people make a living. A simple example are artists. Artists have been mostly locked out of making a good living with their digital works…

> Artists have been mostly locked out of making a good living with their digital works but NFTs will fix that.

What? "NFTs will fix" the competiton and marketing? Sounds like snake oil.

Artists/authors have unpredecented ability to scale their art sale to entire World with simple means like own webpage PoS, right.

But surely that is not enough for one to live a decent life from art, because what is crucial is to reach the right audience and compete in a popularity contest. That is what intermediary services, like Spotify, Youtube, Deezer, iTunes, Gumroad, Amazon, Shutterstock etc, do with their hefty commissions.

How are NFTs going to bring customers with their money directly to the artists?

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#22

Post by viraptor » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

bootyfarm wrote: post #9

Regardless of the premise, anything that so needlessly worsens the climate emergency by wantonly wasting energy isn’t future proof.

For NFT, I think the energy issue is close to irrelevant. The tokens live on ETH blockchain which exists anyway and is massively larger than these tokens. There are also plans to migrate ETH off of PoW soonish, so it may become irrelevant.

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#23

Post by megameter » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 11:39 PM UTC

All depends on the specific incentive models. If an NFT holder aims to increase speculative value, they turn into vocal champions of the work. That drives a great deal of the cryptocurrency space to date - there's no particular reason why it will fail for art.

And this was previously done in a very exclusive way, in elite venues, but now it's possible to throw open the doors and make it like eBay - without even needing the seller ratings.

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#24

Post by bioinformatics » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 11:40 PM UTC

So, you are not interested in learning new methods to launder money? How quaint.

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#25

Post by atweiden » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #3

I’m personally at the stage where it seems like such obvious silliness that I feel like I must be missing something, and so I avoid expressing this opinion anywhere that I might be held accountable for it at some point in the future. But I still suspect that I’m right, naturally. Definitely interested to hear arguments to the contrary though.

Kind of off-topic, but there's an excellent documentary called The Spider’s Web [1] that explores how society reached this point of valuing increasingly ridiculous displays of paper wealth and the financialization of everything through the lens of British offshore wealth secrecy schemes.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#26

Post by kderbyma » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

it is mania, but so are a lot of collectinf hobbies. NFTs are attractive to those who value physical minimalism but still value a sense of ownership of something.

identity is tied with ownership because it allows one to say they either created it (authorship) or they have the possession of it (ability to transfer / sell/ destroy) - NFTs are an extension of the human desire for identity.

they suffer from the false scarcity effect, that even with their distributed nature, rely on a central authority (the same as those certificates included in collectors items) - it's a matter of valuing the platform AND the NFT itself. that is a flaw imo.

I think we will see something of a hybrid. NFTs that have real world utility and physical practicality. even for games. we need to have FUN. not just scarcity.

these are not going to be great but they will last. most will be worth nothing and will make money for the platforms and some prolific or already existing artists.....

not the game changer yet.

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#27

Post by Tiktaalik » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 12:22 AM UTC

Most of the uses I've seen so far seem like nonsense to me, though I could imagine a known and popular fine artist creating some digital art along side physical works as a way to create a more affordable entry point to their fans, much in the way that prints are already a more affordable entry point than paintings.

I think in such a fine art case there needs to be some good ways to display such NFTs though.

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#28

Post by disposekinetics » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 12:35 AM UTC

It is a scam, as a rule if it is "X but on a blockchain" it's a pump and dump scam. "Art ownership but on the blockchain" will make a handful of people very rich, at the cost of everyone else who follows the pump and dump.

Here is a thought experiment. There's a neutral party in Switzerland that will mark you as the owner of a digital item in their ledgers kept in a Swiss vault. you can buy and sell ownership as long as you call up the Swiss 'Meme ownership broker', but that's it. Does that seem silly? Doing it on the blockchain doesn't make it less silly, if anything it makes it sillier since there is a lot of pollution in order to have everyone run the Swiss Register.

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#29

Post by weare138 » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #14

They're both legit and mania. Yes, you can cryptographically own a token that represents the first tweet. Is it worth $2.5M? Not really. Some rich kid is just showing off and wants to make news. You could say that the value comes from the stupidity of it. Art is not very easy to understand or value objectively. NFTs may have real applications in enabling markets for intellectual property like copyrights, patents, and…

But would a NFT hold up in court as proof of ownership? For example if I get ahold of your NFT for some digital good do I 'own' that good now? I'm guessing if we went to court over it and you have all the accompanying documentation proving you purchased it and all I have is the NFT, the court would rule in your favor. And if that's the case what benefit is a NFT over a standard purchase agreement?

Re: Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?

#30

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #3

I’m personally at the stage where it seems like such obvious silliness that I feel like I must be missing something, and so I avoid expressing this opinion anywhere that I might be held accountable for it at some point in the future. But I still suspect that I’m right, naturally. Definitely interested to hear arguments to the contrary though.

Relieved to see others saying it seems like an inside joke that they just don't get. What I don't understand is how content is verified. If I sell you a digital clip and the rights to it, who's verifying I had the permission to transfer those rights: that I owned the image/video/etc at all?