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Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

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Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#141

Post by stanzheng »

djoldman wrote: post #113
zcw100 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because NFT's have nothing to do with collecting digital trinkets and everything to do with money laundering. The only thing that is remarkable about NFT's is how absolutely brazen they're being about it. The only positive is that hopefully it will keep them from screwing around with the housing market that has real life consequences for people although now we're just throwing away electricity rather than empty house…

If NFT money laundering is: acquire Ethereum with dirty money -> buy NFT's -> sell NFTs for Ethereum -> sell Ethereum for USD -> deposit USD in bank account I fail to understand how that is materially different from: acquire Ethereum with dirty money -> sell Ethereum for USD -> deposit USD in bank account Besides there being more steps with NFTs, I don't understand how it would attract less scrutiny. In both cases, o…

theres a dimension where an NFT "appreciates" in value and sold at a premium or offset than what was it was originally acquired at.

theres also the uncaptured exchanging of hands between bidders overpaying to build an asset bubble.

I think its better researched replacing NFT with "Fine Art" and seeing how money laundering in the art world happens [1]

[1] https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works...

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#142

Post by hluska »

btilly wrote: post #121
echelon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of a Beeple NFT minted by Beeple is $0. The market just hasn't discovered that yet. An NFT has no more value than a JPG. I'll longbets anyone that says otherwise.

Let me guess, you're over 40? The following Douglas Adams quote sums it up perfectly: Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. NFTs were invented in 2017. So if you're over 40, it is against the natural order of things. But the id…

I’m over forty and quite frankly, I’m tired of this ageist crap. This entire premise is complete fucking bullshit. Do yourself and everyone over 40 you come into contact with a favour and pretend you never believed anything so toxic.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#143

Post by wglb »

sneak wrote: post #138
pmulard wrote: post #68

I was really hoping they were going to dunk on the technology itself, like how the media of the NFT is lost if the platform hosting it is ever compromised - only the meta data is stored on the blockchain. Instead, they just attacked the contents of the NFTs, akin to my mom telling me my pokemon cards are a waste of money all those years ago. Value is only whatever someone is willing to pay.

It's important to remember that these people are also the kind of industry personalities that would speak at and participate in a conference run by an organization in 2004 that backdoored their crypto products for government bribes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG I'm of the belief now that those associated with the RSA conference are more interested in the publicity/reach of the conference than anything t…

Well, the conference essentially just borrows the name, in effect. The conference is highly vendor oriented, unlike Blackhat or Defcon. The speakers, however are RSA themselves. Keep in mind that they are no longer associated with the company.

And the theme "crypto means cryptography" is a losing battle, I think.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#144

Post by intotheabyss »

singold wrote: post #130
intotheabyss wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the NFT is only as good as the blockchain it was minted on. The vast majority of (valuable) NFTs are minted on Ethereum. If someone mints the same NFT on Flow for example, it won't be as valuable because it's a copy (verifiably so) and it's secured by a centralized chain. NFTs are supposed to live on as if they were physical objects, so minting an NFT on a centralized chain has a significant risk of not exist…

I get the difference between different blockchains, but what I can't see is what value I get when I buy an NFT. As I see it I only get the brag rights of "owning" something on some blockchain and the posibility of reselling that right. But I may be missing something

It takes a particular kind of person to buy an expensive NFT. It's just not for you it sounds like. But yeah, you get the bragging rights and you own the asset through your private key. A lot of the "crypto OGs" own some of the more expensive NFTs like the cryptopunks and they use these assets to show off essentially.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#145

Post by ASalazarMX »

btilly wrote: post #121
echelon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of a Beeple NFT minted by Beeple is $0. The market just hasn't discovered that yet. An NFT has no more value than a JPG. I'll longbets anyone that says otherwise.

Let me guess, you're over 40? The following Douglas Adams quote sums it up perfectly: Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. NFTs were invented in 2017. So if you're over 40, it is against the natural order of things. But the id…

Douglas Adams was a humorist first and philosopher second, quoting him literally is borderline naive.

For starters, not everything invented when you are 15-35 is good. Take reality shows: they were indeed new and revolutionary (exciting idk), but they didn't pass the test of time. Stupid stuff is invented all the time, regardless of people's ages.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#146

Post by TigeriusKirk »

hluska wrote: post #142
btilly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess, you're over 40? The following Douglas Adams quote sums it up perfectly: Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. NFTs were invented in 2017. So if you're over 40, it is against the natural order of things. But the id…

I’m over forty and quite frankly, I’m tired of this ageist crap. This entire premise is complete fucking bullshit. Do yourself and everyone over 40 you come into contact with a favour and pretend you never believed anything so toxic.

>This entire premise is complete fucking bullshit

I'm over 50 and this does not match with my observations of the world. Older people, as a general trend, do in fact seem to be resistant to new ideas. There are exceptions, of course. The trend still stands in my experience.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#147

Post by defaultcompany »

singold wrote: post #93

What I dont understand is what stops you from minting the same thing on multiple NFT blockchains and why is it any diferent than something centralized, and thats why I dont like all the NFT hype (I may be dumb and dont get what NFTs really are)

There is nothing that stops you from making the same NFT on multiple blockchains. Even within the same blockchain there is nothing that stops you from creating a new NFT with the same NFT payload. NFTs are only unique in the same blockchain within the same smart contract. Which is a very narrow definition of unique.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#148

Post by intotheabyss »

th0ma5 wrote: post #134
intotheabyss wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said this elsewhere, but Uniswap V3 liquidity positions are NFTs. Are those NFTs useless?

You mean for money laundering? No I guess not?

Oh ok. So NFTs aren't useless then?

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#149

Post by Animats »

driverdan wrote: post #117
Animats wrote: post #14

The NFT thing seems to be settling out. It's for collectables, like Magic, the Gathering cards. I've been following this because I'm interested in virtual worlds. There are at least four virtual worlds that use some kind of NFT thing to register land ownership. Nobody does much in those worlds, and the graphics aren't all that good. It's all about trading land and speculating in some minor cryptocurrency. The newest…

> They already have five cryptocurrencies of their own, plus an NFT system. Pretty clear what their priority is. It's not building a good game, it's making money off of suckers.

Pretty clear what their priority is. It's not building a good game, it's making money off of suckers.

Yes, I get that feeling. They have a long, detailed story, but it gets vague around how things actually work.

There are useful metaverse design problems cryptosystems might address. You'd like to be able to move your avatar/furniture/vehicles/house from Roblox to Minecraft to Second Life to Facebook Horizon to Dual Universe or whatever comes next. Since much of that stuff is bought, the creators don't want you to be able to duplicate and resell it. Some kind of cryptosystem might be able to make virtual asset portability work.

You'd like to have a virtual world system that has multiple servers run by different organizations, yet can talk to each other. Like the Web. The walled gardens need portals to other walled gardens. Many of the problems doing that require permission and asset storage with no central authority.

Asset storage separate from virtual world operators could work. Arweave could potentially help with that. Arweave is a scheme where you pay about $10/GB to have a file supposedly stored forever. It's paid for by a speculation in declining storage prices. But the terms and conditions are highly inconsistent with the hype. And there seems to be a central point of failure in the way files are looked up.

Nothing I've seen from the NFT crowd seems to be addressing those hard problems. It's all Make Money Fast.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#150

Post by hluska »

djoldman wrote: post #113
zcw100 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because NFT's have nothing to do with collecting digital trinkets and everything to do with money laundering. The only thing that is remarkable about NFT's is how absolutely brazen they're being about it. The only positive is that hopefully it will keep them from screwing around with the housing market that has real life consequences for people although now we're just throwing away electricity rather than empty house…

If NFT money laundering is: acquire Ethereum with dirty money -> buy NFT's -> sell NFTs for Ethereum -> sell Ethereum for USD -> deposit USD in bank account I fail to understand how that is materially different from: acquire Ethereum with dirty money -> sell Ethereum for USD -> deposit USD in bank account Besides there being more steps with NFTs, I don't understand how it would attract less scrutiny. In both cases, o…

I’m not an expert in money laundering but I’ve been waiting for a cryptocurrency version of the restaurant laundering scam.

Essentially criminal A buys a restaurant. Some sales are legit and other sales are just criminal A filling the register and making sales. Police are relatively good at investigating this because ratios between income and expenses are always dramatically off.

What if instead of pizza you just mint and buy tokens?

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