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NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

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181–190 of 268 posts

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

#181
Many many many years ago an artist did a linoleum tile etching of Heisenberg ( yes from Breaking Bad) in blank & white, sold a limited number for Bitcoin, and then destroyed the original linoleum tile (supposedly)

It’s one of my favorite pieces because the niche and how I acquired it, directly from the artist.

This NFT stuff... whooooosh

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

#182
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?

Real world item (person): Honus Wagner Link item: 1909 T206 baseball card Value: $2 million Why don't you start printing these baseball cards and sell them? Ha, but you say the baseball card is a real physical item, and a NFT is not. Well, an NFT is as real as the movie I watch on YouTube, the song I listen to on Spotify, and the numbers my bank shows. But now you say the baseball card was part of a game, and so it's…

Downvotes without any discussion.

Unfortunately getting used to that for crypto topics on HN.

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

#183
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You cannot intrinsically link real world items to tokens. Patents & trademarks?

With NFTs it's just like getting rid of the "shackles" of a government-controlled fiat currency: you no longer can rely on the guns and legal system of that country to enforce any sort of exclusivity.

The extent that you can or cannot trust the guns and legal system of your country is utterly unchanged. They, for any value of “they”, can still roll up to your door, point a gun at you, and order you to do stuff with your tokens. If “they” have legal powers, sucks to be you; if “they” are criminals, you have the same opportunities as before to use the law to recover your assets.

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

#184
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well for starters, the gag bill is real.

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

#185
I was on board with this article: a genuine criticism of the entire NFT/cryptoart scene without making use of the environmental impact retort... up until, of course, it was brought up. The impact is not insignificant but it's grossly overstated [0], and it's been used as a tool for harassment which I have to staunchly reject.

[0] https://twitter.com/memotv/status/1369594107488829441?s=19

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

#186
post #91

Jacob Collier was going to sell an nft that granted lifetime access to any of his concerts. That seemed like a not terrible use case for an nft. He changed his mind when people pointed out the environmental impact of cryptocurrency.

Did anyone point out the environmental impact of concerts?

If each concert ticket generated the carbon footprint of a household for an entire month[0] then people may start asking questions if concerts are even worth it.

[0] https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the point is that people believe NFTs are something other than that, so they buy them. Imagine there was a news story every morning about somebody different buying a gag bill for millions of dollars whose only important quality was that it would be very difficult to forge another. Literally the same situation. But also literally the art market, so there's that.

Physical art at last has the property that you can look at it and enjoy it, and that only the person who possesses it can decide who gets to do that.

How much of art's value stems from that enjoyment? You're right, probably a negligible amount. For investors, the only important property of physical art is that it's extremely hard to forge.

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

#188
post #91

Jacob Collier was going to sell an nft that granted lifetime access to any of his concerts. That seemed like a not terrible use case for an nft. He changed his mind when people pointed out the environmental impact of cryptocurrency.

Did anyone point out the environmental impact of concerts?

The actual impact might be surprising

Heard about the 1970's gas crisis, that there was a move to ban auto racing, because of the "obvious waste" of racing cars circling tracka at Some studies were done. It turns out that auto racing didn't even make the charts in terms of fuel usage. What had the greatest environmental/fuel impact?

Bowling. Yup, bowling. Competition leagues meeting daily in every micro-town and neighborhood, all the driving to & from the lanes... A couple dozen cars driving several hundred miles at 5mpg, once in the nation each week for the top series, even with 10K cars, doesn't make a dent.

I'd expect concert tours, with a few big concerts per week, compared to constant heat generation of ETH miners is similarly gnat-on-an-elephant scale.

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

#190
post #125

The problem with NFTs is that they're not linked to any real legal contract. You basically buy a pointer to a file, not the file. Not even usage rights. For NFTs to become more than a Ponzi, they have to be bound to legal contracts.

>You basically buy a pointer to a file, not the file.

AFAIK, you buy a pointer to an URL, not to a file. I imagine a lot of these NFTs are going to be pointing to a bunch of 404s in the upcoming years.

https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1372334547455512577

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