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NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

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Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#81

Post by skyzadev »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #53
delaaxe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs are not meant for physical items, they’re digital certificates. People literally burnt a Banksy painting before auctioning its NFT.

So now we have no Banksy painting but someone has a crypto token that says “This represents a Banksy painting” in the code? Since there’s nothing to own or even point to, what’s stopping a second party from claiming they actually have the original Banksy NFT and selling their own? Just the time stamps on the blockchain? What a miserable destruction of real art to profit on a trading frenzy.

Private keys are what's stopping other people from selling unauthentic NFTs for the same thing.

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#82

Post by XorNot »

yrgulation wrote: post #36

Suppose I was someone with money to launder. I'd draw a cat's arse, and buy it with my anonymous BTC wallet "money". No one would ever know where the money come from, especially if I anonymise transactions with one of the many services (e.g.: from what i read, some buy mining services, pay with the dirty money and viola, "clean" coin, while other services just make thousands of transactions to distribute payments and…

I mean art has long been a money laundering favourite. NFTs are a useful optimisation.

Hell, buying "worthless" NFTs right now is probably moving some big crime bucks: pay someone a grand for a thing, the wait a week and claim "mania" coz it's now suddenly bring bought for 20 grand.

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#83

Post by NoOneNew »

twic wrote: post #58
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the correct version from your perspective? It doesn’t clarify anything if you just declare someone else incorrect but won’t say why.

What capableweb said is correct. NFTs do not confer any ownership of, rights over, or special access to anything else, real-world out digital. When you buy an NFT of an artwork, you aren't buying the artwork, you are only buying the NFT. As far as I know, the inventors of NFTs do not claim that they do. But it seems like a lot of people talking about and perhaps buying NFTs don't understand that.

In your description, what's the difference between an NFT and a gag USD million bill with Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden's face on it? This makes it even harder to understand why anyone should care. Hell, it starts to make the people who thought Beanie Babies were a long term investment seem smart.

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#84

Post by sillysaurusx »

capableweb wrote: post #80
sillysaurusx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal or not, it seems to be happening: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26530373

What seems to be happening is that people (including you) are guessing that it is happening. Where is the evidence at? Rest assure, the arm of the law is long and slow working, but eventually people breaking the law (especially in blockchain-land) will feel the effects of it, sooner or later. As I said before, blockchains makes it easier for law enforcement, not harder, unless you're using cryptocurrencies like zcash…

Of course we're guessing what's happening. What's wrong with that? That's pretty much the definition of empiricism.

The evidence is the fact that these pixelated faces are being "sold" for a nice car's worth of money every hour.

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#85

Post by XorNot »

santiagobasulto wrote: post #26

Let people do whatever the F they wanna do with their money. If they lose it, shrug , it’s their money. I hate this idea of people telling other people what to do or what’s good for them.

> I hate this idea of people telling other people what to do or what’s good for them.

What if that's what I want to do?

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#87

Post by tachyonbeam »

NoOneNew wrote: post #64
capableweb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're thinking that the purpose of NFTs is to link real world items to tokens, you have a very weird view and would do you better to continue reading up on NFTs. In its most basic form, a NFT is simply a cryptocurrency token with the total supply of 1. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyone claiming anything else clearly don't know what they are talking about. The source of truth is the token, as it's only about the…

That's a fair explanation. A crypto token with a supply of 1. But here's the problem. And? This takes the idea that anything has value only due to scarcity to such an extreme, it's laughable. So much so, people thus had to try redefining the idea of ownership to justify its existence. These NFTs aren't "free" in existence. While this is true of anything is digital and on the internet, the cost of an Etherum NFT is fa…

I would argue that NFTs have very little scarcity, because you can create an infinite supply of them. It's kind of like posts on reddit. Yes, they are all more or less unique, but there's a never-ending supply of them. At some point, the novelty wears off and you stop scrolling.

Also, data is infinitely replicable. By trying to claim ownership over data, you're trying to swim upstream. You're paying for a certificate that says you own a piece of data that anyone can replicate and have a look at.

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#88

Post by ses1984 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #74
Alex3917 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain doesn’t need to make it impossible to counterfeit real-world items to be useful, it just needs to reduce counterfeiting levels by reducing the profitability. It’s more than capable of doing that. If you can only sell at most one counterfeit item per authentic item, that’s already a multi-trillion dollar innovation.

I still can't see how a blockchain here would do something that a database wouldn't. A DB of authentic serial numbers with a way to mark them as claimed is all you need. If your new widget's serial is already marked as claimed on the manufacturer's website then you most likely have a counterfeit, no blockchain necessary.

What if you want to sell your thing?

Who is hosting this db?

Re: NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

#90

Post by maxerickson »

delaaxe wrote: post #37
niahmiah wrote: post #3

It's stupid at face value. No pyramid required. You cannot intrinsically link real world items to tokens. The source of truth is the real world, not the token. Add an unlimited supply of unique things, and how could anyone expect to make money from this?

NFTs are not meant for physical items, they’re digital certificates. People literally burnt a Banksy painting before auctioning its NFT.

Certificate is a pretty fancy word for a blob of json with an ephemeral url.
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