NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

Can we stop with the environmental impact complaints of ethereum. ETH2 (Proof of Stake) is running and will be merged very very soon.

things_that_have_been_said_since_2017_but_have_not_happened.txt

I wrote my first Fortran program in 1969. I have been active in the field of computing since then, both as an academic and as a programmer in industry. During this time, there have been several times when I first heard about something new, something potentially game changing. I remember some of them very clearly:

1. Around 1971: a Wang desktop computer. Imagine: a computer that fit on a desk!

2. Visicalc (spreadsheet). Wow! I remember thinking finally, a breakthrough for non-programmers.

3. Relational databases.

4. UUCP - a way to talk to remote computers.

5. HTML/HTTP - we knew from the start that this was big

And then there were many that were hyped but which I rejected as hype. Even when I was wrong, I still felt that there was something intrinsically wrong about this category of things.

These things either vanished, limped along (and still do), or which I rejected out of hand, but actually succeeded. Like Virtual Reality (back in about 1984), Fuzzy Logic, Proving programs correct, and, of course Bitcoin.

The latest in this category are NFTs which my intuition tells me is rubbish on so many levels. However, I think they will have some success, although I will never have anything to do with them (or Bitcoin for that matter).

NFTs are paying for a signature in a blockchain that links to a random URL. If you're lucky, it's IPFS and it'll go down when people stop hosting it. If you're slightly less lucky, it's whatever platform you went through that's operating an IPFS tunnel because cryptobros can't figure it out, and it will go down whenever your flavor or the month NFT site goes out of business, which is any time between six months and 5 years. IF you're even less unlucky, it's just a random link to a website, and I can't wait for people's art to be replaced with penises because that's what happens to hotlinkers.

The only situation I see NFTs making sense is if there’s a virtual reality social network bigger than Facebook.

In that scenario perhaps. Then again even in that scenario blockchains are unnecessary.