Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 404 posts

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#371

Post by echelon »

Talanes wrote: post #351
echelon wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not going to be able to sell a forged baseball card at Christie's. You can't prove its provenance, and it wouldn't hold up under scrutiny. NFTs aren't scarce. Anyone can make them for anything. I can sell you the couch I'm sitting on as an NFT. If I own a Picasso, I could burn it, have my tigers urinate on it, or make sure no other human ever sees it again. I can do whatever I want. What exactly can I do with…

I really don't understand your point. I can print trading cards for my cat. You can make NFTs for your couch. No one wants to buy either. But if the MLB or John Cleese are selling, the equation changes.

We're in the "determined moms are buying all the Beanie Babies in stock" phase.

Next you have the copycats, people selling shovels, and uber drivers investing in it.

Then comes the eternal stagnation.

These are worth jack shit except to the temporary evangelicals buying the craze. They aren't rare, you have to explain it ("I wonder if anyone knows I own the NFT of this song"), and the crypto will be broken before the holders update their wallets to safer algorithms.

Nobody will ever honor your CryptoKitties. You can't use them in Nintendogs or Neopets. The creators won't build a compelling platform for them and they'll simply die from waning interest.

These are moon certificates, except with crypto.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#372

Post by samatman »

echelon wrote: post #371
Talanes wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand your point. I can print trading cards for my cat. You can make NFTs for your couch. No one wants to buy either. But if the MLB or John Cleese are selling, the equation changes.

We're in the "determined moms are buying all the Beanie Babies in stock" phase. Next you have the copycats, people selling shovels, and uber drivers investing in it. Then comes the eternal stagnation. These are worth jack shit except to the temporary evangelicals buying the craze. They aren't rare, you have to explain it ("I wonder if anyone knows I own the NFT of this song"), and the crypto will be broken before the…

The fact that you have insisted (twice!) that the secp256k1 curve will be broken makes it impossible to take anything you have to say on this subject seriously.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#373

Post by eqvinox »

koonsolo wrote: post #111
schoen wrote: post #104

The original conceptual framework for NFT-like instruments is Nick Szabo's "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority": https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/ At the very end he says: > Largely unaddressed above is the problem of divergence between actual conditions and directory rights. [...] When divergence becomes too great, a solution to address the unreality of the title registry is needed. Almo…

This NFT is not "The Brooklyn Bridge", this NFT is "Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge NFT". Do you think nobody wants the bragging rights of owning that? I certainly do, but not for $50k, which it already has.

> This NFT is not "The Brooklyn Bridge", this NFT is "Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge NFT".

You certainly seem to be right, but where's the authority for that observation coming from? Or what would the actual Brooklyn Bridge look like as an NFT?

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#374

Post by echelon »

samatman wrote: post #372
echelon wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the "determined moms are buying all the Beanie Babies in stock" phase. Next you have the copycats, people selling shovels, and uber drivers investing in it. Then comes the eternal stagnation. These are worth jack shit except to the temporary evangelicals buying the craze. They aren't rare, you have to explain it ("I wonder if anyone knows I own the NFT of this song"), and the crypto will be broken before the…

The fact that you have insisted (twice!) that the secp256k1 curve will be broken makes it impossible to take anything you have to say on this subject seriously.

Longbets 20 years $5000?

I expect quantum to pick up major steam, especially if major state actors want to screw over the Bitcoin network.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#375

Post by bawolff »

andybak wrote: post #145
bawolff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can go to a library to use a computer, does that mean owning a laptop is meaningless? This seems like a very silly comparison.

Your analogy is flawed. The laptop has utility in terms of access and convenience.

Yes, that's my point.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#376

Post by rakoo »

koonsolo wrote: post #105
wrs wrote: post #27

Given there’s a $50k bid for this, I can’t decide if the joke backfired, or succeeded brilliantly. It’s a no-lose proposition for Cleese, I guess!

This is already a famous NFT. "Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge? Look, I have that NFT that he sold!". Heck, I would even pay money for that. First of all for the bragging rights, and second of all because I'm sure plenty of people would pay for it. But $50k is a bit over my budget ;). But in no way am I surprised that there is somebody out there that wants to pay this amount. If anyone is surprised…

But the very value of that specific NFT is to have been there when it happened. Buying this NFT 10 years from now will be useless, you were not part of the movement.

... Meaning a logical next step arises: you should create and sell a "I, koonsolo, was there when this NFT was a thing" NFT, which will perpetually be associated to you whoever buys it.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#377

Post by capableweb »

atweiden wrote: post #250
tippytippytango wrote: post #233

This is a perfect example of what NFTs really are, a mechanism to monetize attention, not ownership. Yes, they could be used to represent ownership; but, that's not what the current incarnation actually is. Anyone could have made a Brooklyn Bridge NFT (I've seen many make this joke). But, the value of the NFT is based on who is selling it and how compelling the narrative around the NFT is. The valuation of the NFT is…

This could easily turn into a situation where Twitter / IG profiles contain NFT inventories, which is scary to think about. Social media looks to be on the verge of transitioning into something catastrophically superficial. The pendulum will fully swing to “capturing the moment” then selling it on the way pornographers do, and it will be equally smutty. Everyone might as well soon be doing what CNN and Fox News are d…

> Social media looks to be on the verge of transitioning into something catastrophically superficial. The pendulum will fully swing to “capturing the moment” then selling it on the way pornographers do, and it will be equally smutty.

What do you mean "on the verge"? That shift happened a long time ago. I'd say the shift happened when suddenly everyone started being OK with taking pictures of themselves and posting it online. That's when everything was confirmed to just be superficial.

Before this, we used to say only vain people took photos of themselves, but now either everyone is vain, or our measure of vain people moved.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#378

Post by Jolter »

systemvoltage wrote: post #218
toyg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just USGOV who has to approve that claim, it’s every country on COPUOUS : https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html It’s more likely that Musk will have to settle for his Earthen technokingdom.

Who enforces this? Elon can just say he refuses to follow any gov mandates. If they try to penalize or jail him, he is going cause a massive uproar from the public that will prevent any such shenanigans. Power is in people that follow you.

I think you overestimate the proportion of people on Earth who are in favor of Elon being held above law and international treaties. Personally I certainly think it would be appropriate for a state to act against a citizen who was violating a treaty that the state had signed.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#379

Post by capableweb »

manigandham wrote: post #220
capableweb wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say we could replicate the painting stroke by stroke. Let's say we also use the same painter. Still, it doesn't matter. A copy is a copy. It's not the same as the first and initial incarnation of that artifact, physical or digital.

This is not true. Digital items do not have an original. In fact creating the digital item itself creates multiple copies in the process, and every viewing of it creates infinitely more copies.

> Digital items do not have an original

Sure, except in the case of NFTs which is the subject of this discussion. Then there is one original (the NFT that the original creator created) and it has exactly one owner. Anything else is a copy.

Re: John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT

#380

Post by kllrnohj »

madrox wrote: post #365
kllrnohj wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick search finds that a single bitcoin transaction consumes around 773.80 kWh. That's enough to power a video game console, like a PS5 for example, for around 3100 hours. So the simple act of buying the video game to play would cost vastly more electricity than playing it ever will. Whether or not gaming as a whole consumes more power than crypto as a whole isn't the question, it's whether or not crypto would con…

I honestly don't know where the power is better spent. There are quite a few industries I personally find superfluous in the world according to my personal set of values. Ironically for this context, I consider bitcoin to be among them. But I also don't think judging the industry on power consumption is particularly fruitful, unless we want to look industry-by-industry and weigh utility vs energy, which we do not do.…

> We don't even have these numbers for, say, the stock market, so we don't even know how good or bad that is. We can't answer the first questions that arise from this kind of analysis.

Crypto isn't competing against the stock market, it's competing against something like Visa. And we can answer that comparison: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co....

1 bitcoin transaction takes more power than 100,000 Visa transactions.

> But I also don't think judging the industry on power consumption is particularly fruitful, unless we want to look industry-by-industry and weigh utility vs energy, which we do not do.

That's exactly what I think we as a society should do. We are limited on the amount of sustainable power generation, so looking at cost vs. value is exactly what we should be doing. Especially when something comes along that does the same basic thing as an existing system, but 100,000x more expensive.

Post reply on HN