This represents a reasonable-sounding surface view but is mostly off the mark. There are valid
concerns but insufficient logic to justify a
dangerous trap.
O/P TLDR:
1. Art is silly too but it's ok for Real Art because we've done it that way for a long time
2. It'll become a soulless money-grab
3. Buyers don't understand scarcity
4. It's killing the environment
re #1 (Art):
> You either own this thing or you don’t.
This logic just doesn't make sense and seems backwardly purist. Status conveyed by owning original editions of physical art doesn't just come from having it sitting on your wall where you can show it to 3 people a week, it's from making sure people know you own an original edition (art as flex, art as humble brag). In the digital world there is tons of status to claim using mediums beyond that narrow view and that's fine.
And the point:
> Owning a Honus Wagner card doesn’t mean you own Honus Wagner. Or a royalty stream or anything else but the card itself.
Why should you limit your thinking on what art can be and why it's valuable to people based on an old model? The "other stuff" which can be layered in increases its value substantially to some segments of buyers and there's no reason the artist shouldn't benefit from this.
re #2 (Paying creators):
> CREATORS may rush to start minting NFTs as a way to get paid for what they’ve created.
Why shouldn't creators get paid!? This is a very top-down, privileged argument. The biggest impediment for most creatives to creating their creations is usually worrying about monetization! Why shouldn't we try to get them paid as much as possible with as little work as possible so they can go back to making the things we love?
Chris Dixon had a good post [https://a16z.com/2021/02/27/nfts-and-a-thousand-true-fans/] about how NFTs allow more fine-tuned segmentation among different fan groups, allowing artists to gain more from their work while simultaneously satisfying the market. Seth is a marketer who understands segmentation intimately, so I have to imagine this is an oversight.
The embedded fear here is that we'll corrupt the purity of art by finally allowing creators to have a business model, and to be fair it's one that will probably see some crazy bubble dynamics and abuses. But that's well worth it if the world becomes a more creative place by introducing better tools to monetize creation and community.
re #3 (buyers don't get scarcity):
> BUYERS of NFTs may be blind to the fact that there’s no limit on the supply.
And buyers of stock may be blind to the fully diluted EPS of the shares they're buying... what's the point? Again, there's a reasonable embedded fear that we'll get over our skiis and convince people or imply things that aren't true, resulting in consternation, but this isn't sufficient to call NFTs a "Dangerous Trap"
re #4 (Environment):
> They use an astonishing amount of electricity to create and trade.
This is a fully Ethereum-centric view of the world but today Ethereum isn't the only chain. Ethereum is only used for NFT minting right now because it had years to build up tooling but it is unsuitable for creators because transaction fees run in the $50 range just to transfer tokens and >$100 to mint, so obviously creators are desperately looking for alternatives. And they're out there -- I work on the NEAR project (near.org) which is Proof of Stake, has purchased offsets to become fully carbon neutral, and is cheap enough to test in prod. Look where the ball is going, not where it is today!
Sorry for the rant. We need the biggest voices to present a more nuanced case for this technology.