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NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

seths.blog

251–260 of 786 posts

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#251
Independent film/animation/interactive studio here-

NFT's are a cool new space we are very excited about experimenting in. I usually like Seth Godin's stuff but that blog post feels like an old rich man yelling at a cloud that exists in a dimension he doesn't understand.

Doesn't he know all the NFT stuff is going on in Ethereum which is transitioning to POS which mitigates the whole "crypto mining is the death star stealing all the earths electricity and killing baby animals" narrative?

If you want to yell at the electricity cloud then yell at Bitcoin, though we are using that to pay a composer in Venezuela for our new film and produce a novelist in Brazil so Bitcoin is cool too :0

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#252
Regarding the energy use: Since the 1st of March Cardano has native tokens (you can create your own token without the need for a smart contract) and multi-assets (wallets and transactions can contain more than one asset). The blockchain is using Proof-of-Stake and a full node runs on a raspberry pi 4. So it is completely possible to have NFTs without the massive energy consumption of Ethereum and without the very high gas fees problem. You can transfer for example 10 different tokens in one single transaction for just 0.16ADA (around 16cents at current price).

I still don’t understand why someone would buy a tweet or the ownership of an image, but you can do it in a more sustainable way if that’s something important for you…

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#253
I disagree with the arguments there.

- Creators... become promoters of digital tokens more than they are creators": Is this a purist approach that artists needs to do only art for 24/7? Anything else is a violation of their artist oath or something?

- "BUYERS of NFTs may be blind to the fact that there’s no limit on the supply": there's the same limit on supply you got on regular art. Attaching a token to an art piece does not change its supply.

- "THE REST OF US are going to pay for NFTs for a very long time. They use an astonishing amount of electricity to create and trade": No they don't. NFTs are not a separate blockchain. They add nothing to the electricity already being spent.

The post has so many more inaccuracies, making it difficult to take its conclusion seriously. Here's another example:

- "Unlike alternative digital currencies which are relatively complicated to invent and sell": what? no. There are ERC20 tokens generators exactly like there are NFT generators.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#254
post #104

It is odd, I've been involved in the cryptocurrency scene from the beginning, and I've seen the whole "Bitcoin kills Mother Gaia" talking point pop up every couple of years - but I've never seen such prolonged parroting as this last cycle. It is a silly complaint, because it never considers the wastefulness of the status quo. But it is an interesting method of attack, trying to conceal the fact that it is a call for…

I've never seen such prolonged parroting as this last cycle. The scale of the thing is getting out of hand. Cryptocurrency mining is eating up power on the scale of a small country, a sizable fraction of GPU manufacturing capacity, and a noticeable fraction of wafer fab capacity. This has some parallels in how Spain went broke mining gold in the Americas in the 1500s. Expeditions went to the New World and gold came b…

I've never seen an estimate that withstood any kind of scrutiny. I've seen estimates based on both fundamental misunderstanding of the function of mining, and wild assumptions regarding miner behavior and out of date asic specs. Have you bothered fact checking any of those claims you just made? I mean actually reading the papers they cite, and learning the methodology they used. Because while you're thinking about conquistas, I'm thinking about the field of cybernetics in the 70's, and how it killed itself dead with ridiculously flawed methodology for modeling population growth - as the Davos types all nodded in agreement.

"Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say 'on the one hand...', then 'but on the other..."

-- Harry Truman

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#255
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the content nor the ownership is protected by the NFT. The NFT has literally no connection to the content at all, except that someone said, "Hey, buy this and you own the 'original'!" Except in all things digital, "original" means absolutely nothing. There's a guy who has been selling property on the moon[1]. This is exactly the same thing. 1. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/25/meet-the-man...

People are attempting to create a new world so scary and different to what you know, that it seems insane and completely off base. But we know what we're doing. We know this is leading to the future of a world where artists and fans can take back and redefine ownership. It doesn't matter what you think ownership is. We're redefining it. :) See you on the other side.

Cramming the concept of ownership into another post-scarcity environment is hardly redefining it.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what an NFT does. It doesn't even give you ownership on anything other than a blockchain print. To me, the logical conclusion of this is copyright protection, where, say, an eventual platform only plays content where the player can only be verified as the owner.

> It doesn't even give you ownership on anything other than a blockchain print. I’m pretty sure my domain name NFTs give some ownership rights you are overlooking.

What if someone in a similar position to you sold a domain name they 'owned' to someone else off-blockchain? Where would the rights sit then?

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#257
post #91

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy: Earth - a small planet in the outer reaches of spiral galaxy M7529, so far the only planet on record that the semi-intelligent biped inhabitants managed to overheat so badly that they became extinct. Overheating has happened before, of course, however the method of overheating is unique - the inhabitants invented a method of identifying uniqueness by making large calculations and atta…

This was hilarious and well-written. I've become extremely alarmed at the number of completely non-technical people who don't know anything about how cryptocurrency works getting extremely into it via YouTube click holes. It's obvious that these NFTs are capitalizing on it. A guy I ran into at the hardware store today was talking to me and he didn't understand the concept of a cryptocurrency that has a stable value s…

Every single male friend of mine is talking about crypto. I am so tired of this topic.

That and Tesla.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#259
post #175

Why can't NFTs be done without a blockchain? Please explain. Just add multiple hash, public/private-key cryptography, downsample discrete cosine transform, etc. You can just create a file format and a protocol. Why do you need to dump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere just for this purpose?

In your example, the money flowing into the market would need to come from regular people rather than crypto speculators, which would be much less lucrative.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is its potential? What can someone do with NFTs that they couldn't do before? The novelty comes from the underlying protocols that back the NFT. These protocols create marketplaces that are widely available and accessible and are reliably secure and robust. Take copyright for example. Copyright laws vary across regions and marketplace. The encoding and repudiation of these copyright laws is based on analog pro…

The point you’re making is valid, but you’re side stepping the key concern being raised. The tokens you acquire are worth nothing. Nothing about owning a token grants you any rights to anything other than what some other person is willing to pay/exchange it for. So if a game developer chooses to accept tokens, you can use them; but that developer can at any time choose to stop accepting tokens or a subset of tokens m…

> Now... for a regulated system of tokens (eg currency) a developer can’t do that: they are legally bound to accept fiat currency even though it is not redeemable for any “real” equivalent (eg gold).

This isn't true in general. Legal tender status is very loosely an obligation to accept for existing debts, but it is not an obligation to accept it as, say, a means of accepting a offer. So unless they are giving you goods first, and the looking for payment (which certainly is not the norm for digital goods), they are under no obligation to accept currency.

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