Live data from Hacker News

John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

twitter.com

281–290 of 404 posts

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#282
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, but this is a common objection which is worth addressing. Specifically I disagree that NFTs are grounded in that particular conceptual framework. NFTs aren't attempting to be bearer instruments which convey ownership of some physical good, or even of a piece of intellectual property. Those require a corresponding Ricardian contract. This remains a good idea, but, to put it mildly, there are unsolved probl…

> A NFT is just a baseball card It's more like a pointer to a JPEG of a baseball card.

That's the rub for me.

If I buy the baseball card, I get whatever (limited) utility it offers. I can put it in an album, frame it and hang it on the wall, stick it in the spokes of a bicycle wheel, use it as a very small shim or insulator.

If I buy the rights to the card, I get the utility that offers. I can contract out and offer reprints of the 1990 Topps Juan Agosto card for the millions of people who want one.

If I buy a NFT corresponding to the photo on the card, what utility have I bought? What new capabilities or rights do I possess? As best I can tell, nothing.

NFTs are the MMO version of the "I am Rich" app with factions and customizable skins. You can demonstrate your economic might by exchanging large quantities of money for something with negligible if any actual utility. But you at least get to pick which particular piece of uselessness you're associating yourself with, so you can use it as a more precise social signaling thing.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shit's on fire, yo. Let them eat cake. Can anyone else hear the guillotines being sharpened? Seriously though this obscene inequality can only lead one place, and we were lucky that they were morons on January 6th and not organized properly. Ironically the revolution will be stoked by those first up against the wall in the name of engagement . It won’t be televised but it will be on Instagram.

Real change can only happen if the poor (people earning less than $1M per year) unite against the rich. Instead, the poor are hopelessly divided and fight pointless culture battles, like the main/master debate.

I don't think anyone making less than the median US income has even heard of the main/master debate :)

But sure, I agree with the larger point. Culture wars are great for keeping the weak divided. The $GME fiasco - albeit a bit silly - was the first glimmer of hope I saw in a long time towards that unification. Hopefully there's more to come.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Leaving aside the carbon emissions - let's assume everyone finally switches to Proof of Stake) I don't know how you get to defend something when you're sidestepping the biggest problem with NFTs. I'm fine with stupid and pointless things as long as your stupid and pointless things don't wreck the environment. If someone decides to poison the local water supply because it's an "art project" they still poisoned the…

> I don't know how you get to defend something when you're sidestepping the biggest problem with NFTs. Does crypto have a (significantly) larger carbon footprint than video games? Probably not. I think video games (and crypto) are pointless. ymmv.

Per entertained / occupied (whatever) person, crypto has an orders-of-magnitude bigger footprint.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#286
post #221

You should consider an NFT to be something like a certificate. Some entity has issued you a certificate saying, e.g. you are the rightful owner of the Brooklyn Bridge. The value of certificates in NFT form is that they are difficult to forge and easy to verify. However, like a paper certificate that you might hang on your wall, the actual certificate is worthless. It is representative of something that may have value…

The same is true for basically all NFTs. You own the token, not the original object. The purchaser of a tweet not does not have power to delete or modify it. Similarly, the purchaser of Beeples NFT did not get exclusive rights to the original works.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#287

There are children going hungry at school, people with trivial to fix but prohibitively expensive medical issues, and silicon valley millionaires are spending more than many will make in a year by purchasing bullshit. Shit's on fire, yo.

Well purchasing an NFT doesn't really reallocate any resources that would have gone to those things, so I don't think it's a huge issue. They are just transferring money from one person to another, essentially.

> They are just transferring money from one person to another, essentially.

That's what "reallocating resources" usually means.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#288
NFTs make sense if you have a pile of volatile currency and you want to hedge that volatility by putting it into an asset with a different volatility profile, without having to convert it into a transaction that triggers income or capital gains tax.

I'd posit the NFT craze is an unintended consequence of cryptocurrency tax policy. The reason people are burning bubble money in NFTs is because it's more fun setting it on fire than taking on the massive accounting risk of reporting their gains.

While I don't hold cryptocurrencies for related reasons, if you're guaranteed to lose 35%+ of your chips when you cash them in, it makes no difference if you do something stupid and fun with it. If you have undeclared crypto gains, making it disappear into a hard to value joke NFT is even lower risk.

Just like real art.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#289
Is this supposed to make blockchain look bad or something? Everyone knows John Cleese doesn't own the Brooklyn Bridge. He could have also started a title company on paper and sold the "rights" to the Brooklyn Bridge as a printed certificate and I guess he would have made title companies look like bullshit. And distributed ledgers are still technically more secure than a bunch of trusted bank employees...if that's what you care about. You can place your trust in them on in yourself. Previously, only one of those options was possible. Just more anti-hype hype.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#290

There are children going hungry at school, people with trivial to fix but prohibitively expensive medical issues, and silicon valley millionaires are spending more than many will make in a year by purchasing bullshit. Shit's on fire, yo.

Rich people have always spent lots of money on bullshit. That's nothing new.
Post reply on HN