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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

#241

Post by TomSwirly »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #48
arcturus17 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are (a) very heavily regulated by definition and (b) means to an end, which is to create societal good, ie, foster innovation (I don’t want to argue whether that’s actually the case - I’m just taking the statu quo position) Could one say the same about tokens?

Yes. a) is very heavily regulated by the chain/protocol used to make the tokens work and b) would be to introduce scarcity to digital items, which possibly creates good and fosters innovation (I similarly don't want to argue whether that will actually be the case) in fields which benefit from scarcity.

> is very heavily regulated by the chain/protocol

That's not what "regulated" means. There is no enforcement, so you can simply copy the work and the "chain/protocol" does nothing.

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

#242

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

koonsolo wrote: post #182
koonsolo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Millennials just don't understand ... world is becoming digital very fast.

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

#243

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

delaaxe wrote: post #224
stickfigure wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin works because the supply is constrained. Scarcity is its primary attribute. There are no constraints on the supply of NFTs.

What I find mind boggling is that some creators sell 100 copies of the same jpeg

Yes, but it is known to everyone exactly how many they will sell.

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

#244

Post by therealdrag0 »

volkk wrote: post #101
Zealotux wrote: post #24

An acquaintance of mine made 15k euros in 6 days with auto-generated artworks, he even made it to the local newspaper. I don't even know why I bother learning new frameworks and languages anymore.

i feel like everyday at this point (at least from the time i've noticed which started with the GME craze) there's some get rich quick scheme happening and i keep missing out. i'm still happy in life but there's a not so small part of me that is very FOMO-ey and disappointed/jealous with the concept of doing almost nothing and making a lot of money on what essentially just boils down to hype. the other part of me is a…

My favorite case in pointus the genius who made the I Am Rich app and sold it for 1000 per install. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

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

#245

Post by scotty79 »

fock wrote: post #157
scotty79 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Databse dies with company that set it up. And companies die all the time.

opensource the database (just as dying companies should opensource repair manuals and signing keys - have fun with your blockchain-authenticated John Deere). and regularly archive the state hash in a public archive.

I wonder why e-gold didn't just opensource their database.

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

#246

Post by bradleyjg »

koonsolo wrote: post #167
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?

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…

> 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.

It’s not an issue of realness. Of course an NFT is real, it’s a long number and is just as real as 3 or PI or any other number.[1] The issue is instead ownership. When I own a baseball card I have a physical card no one can take from my house/vault/whatever without the police getting involved. When I own the copyright to a movie I can choose to let other people watch it or not.

When I own an NFT it means there’s a blockchain somewhere that says I own a particular number. As long as the blockchain is still in existence I can prove that the blockchain says I own the number and I can transfer that number to you.

That’s not exactly nothing but it’s pretty darn close. It smells like a scam. You do raise a good point that it smells like a scam in the same way that a lot of consciously created collectibles do. Once comic books, baseball cards, or stamp producing nations started pushing their products as something people should buy because they’d appreciate in value they started to feel a lot scummier (and not conincidently the items in question rarely increased in value the way organic collectibles had.)

So, sure if you can get someone to pay you a lot of money for the “ownership” of some 256 digit number in some blockchain somewhere by claiming it represents the star Vega, as long as you don’t lie I suppose it shouldn’t be a crime. But you can’t expect the rest of us to respect the way you’ve chosen to make a living. You are going to get downvotes because you are promoting a disreputable activity.

[1] Hope you appreciate the effort it took not to make a math joke here.

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

#247

Post by graeme »

arthur_sav wrote: post #95
herodotus wrote: post #6

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…

As with any technology we only see its impact with the pass of time. Bitcoin is holding pretty strong after 12ish years, you can't deny facts. You can question the practical applications but technology is often used in other ways than it was originally intended. In the case of Bitcoin it may prove to be useful only as a cross border digital store of value instead of an every day currency. Same with NFTs, you can dism…

Being a store of value is a tautology, not a use case.

Name one other store of value with zero use in its class. Even art and magic cards have them. You can look at art, and people play with their non collector’s magic cards.

Bitcoin is a pure faith enterprise. It’s only value is that people believe in it, despite the lack of use case and despite the ever rising waste of energy to power the network which rises inexorably with the market price.

It is a tautological network where people enjoy seeing it run in a distributed way even though it does nothing else. How long can that last as something storing value? As mining costs increase you need an ever increasing supply of new entrants at high prices who are similarly enamoured with the idea of the network.

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

#248

Post by acdha »

arthur_sav wrote: post #95
herodotus wrote: post #6

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…

As with any technology we only see its impact with the pass of time. Bitcoin is holding pretty strong after 12ish years, you can't deny facts. You can question the practical applications but technology is often used in other ways than it was originally intended. In the case of Bitcoin it may prove to be useful only as a cross border digital store of value instead of an every day currency. Same with NFTs, you can dism…

> Bitcoin is holding pretty strong after 12ish years, you can't deny facts.

Speculators have kept money in, but that’s in part because there is no value other than that social consensus, and all of that energy has stayed inside the speculative community. Within far less time the web was transforming unrelated industries (news, investing, shopping, dating, travel, etc.) but if Bitcoin stopped operating tomorrow almost no business outside of the blockchain world would notice because they don’t use it for anything which matters.

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

#249

Post by acdha »

delaaxe wrote: post #226
XorNot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What legal force does an NFT bring to what it claims to authenticate? Even a certificate of authenticity for a painting is still notionally a legal contract between the authenticator and buyers: after all, there will be consequences if they cannot show they could reasonably support the identity they establish for something. What does an NFT do? Nothing. There are no consequences in the real world. You can make anothe…

NFTs are not meant to be tied to something in the physical world. They’re certificates on digital creations

You misunderstood the point: it’s not physical versus digital but rather that they have no added benefits. Legal rights aren’t something only physical objects can have and ownership of a pure digital creation can be quite valuable but most NFTs don’t have that and you don’t need the expense and risk of using a blockchain to transfer them. If your goal is to show that you supported an artist, simple PKI or even a Tweet works better and is orders of magnitude less expensive because all of the value comes from a statement by the creator/rights-holder.

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

#250

Post by koffiezet »

rory wrote: post #138
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?

It does seem really stupid, but I don't see how it's substantively different than (also stupid-seeming) physical collectibles like baseball cards or Bearbricks. The supply of the "special" versions of those two collectibles is also constrained in a totally artificial manner.

One of the problems is that by definition, digital assets can be replicated at a virtual zero-cost. There is no "original" copy to be owned, since a digital asset that is uploaded is already a copy of a copy of a copy of some bits. If it happens to be an image or movie, and you open it in your browser, you're already looking at a copy. A baseball card that was produced in the 60's cannot be reproduced atom-for-atom. And there is an original mona lisa. Sure you can have a copy or picture of the mona lisa on your wall, but that will remain just that: a copy. But in the digital world, EVERYTHING is a copy. So what exactly is it that you own with an NFT?

Ownership is based on the ability to have something tangible of a limited supply, but as I established before, digital assets can be freely copied. What are you trying to do? Artificially limiting this? Trying to push through a completely new idea of 'ownership'?

The only thing owning an NFT gives you is bragging rights of a perceived ownership. But if I say "I don't recognize this NFT proving anything", copy your asset, reproduce it and sell it somehow, you can't stop me. You claim to own some bits and claim to be able to prove that, but I can just ignore that completely, since there is zero legal grounds for this.

This is why it is absolutely moronic in my mind to have an 'ownership' idea on digital assets. It's already bad enough in online games to have in-game assets, which is in a walled-garden, under control of the company making the game, so yeah, there they can do this, it adds some perceived value. But to actively introduce this concept in an open digital world sounds absolutely crazy, counter-productive and conceptually against everything my ideal version of the internet would be: open and free as in beer.

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