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The NFT market bubble has popped?

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61–70 of 332 posts

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#61
post #31

This mania might have one last leg up, but that's it. The main thing to remember with markets that have ponzi characteristics is that there are tons of latecomers and few early adopters. While the early adopters might HODL in the face of a 70% downturn, the late adopters won't. They FOMOd in because they couldn't stand seeing their friends make easy money any longer. They don't have conviction because the only reason…

Just a little correction. NFTs, and crypto in general are critiqued as ponzis, but they are more accurately described as pyramid schemes, whereby early adopters rake in the lion's share of profits. Ponzis are where later investor money is used to pay out early investor money in a fraudulent never ending cycle.

I think pyramid scheme would be a better description if people had different incentives depending on when they got in. With a pyramid scheme people who invite many others personally benefit, and those who join but don't invite others don't gain anything. Think multi-level marketing.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#62
post #31

This mania might have one last leg up, but that's it. The main thing to remember with markets that have ponzi characteristics is that there are tons of latecomers and few early adopters. While the early adopters might HODL in the face of a 70% downturn, the late adopters won't. They FOMOd in because they couldn't stand seeing their friends make easy money any longer. They don't have conviction because the only reason…

Just a little correction. NFTs, and crypto in general are critiqued as ponzis, but they are more accurately described as pyramid schemes, whereby early adopters rake in the lion's share of profits. Ponzis are where later investor money is used to pay out early investor money in a fraudulent never ending cycle.

Honest question: I fail to see to difference between this (the pyramid scheme part) and let's say buying stock in early Apple or Google?

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#63
post #41

I personally rather like the idea of NFTs. NFTs could become gamechangers, in the literal meaning of the word. The project Enjin for instances focuses on NFTs in the gaming world. One selling point is, that you might be able to collect items in one game and transfer it to another. Collect a rare trophy in Fortnite and show it off in your Steam VR Home, the trophies uniqueness and legitimacy verifiable by everyone. Of…

> collect items in one game and transfer it to another

This has been touted for years now.

It's not something studios are going to want to support, nor code for - how does this item behave in an entirely different game by an entirely different publishing house? Do I have to write my game to support every single possible one of these? Why would I let you bring your level 9000 sword of whacking into a new game?

And steam can already easily make something unique - they are the authority there, there's no need for trustlessness.

(edit - you know what? Proof of ownership is not the hard part of transferring assets between games, it's likely to be pretty darned easy to do that just with a database. Textures, models, in-game attributes, all that stuff. That's the hard problem there, if anyone even wants to bother.)

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#64
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes no less sense than a painting. If you accept that an original painting has more value than a perfectly good copy, whilst being undistinguishable for anyone except a few experts, you should realize NFT's have the exact same arrangement, except 'originality' is determined by the blockchain instead of an expert.

Well yes, exactly. The original painting has value exactly because it is not a copy. And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? At the end of the day "ownership" mostly has any meaning within the legal system. NFTs seem to create something akin to a shadow copyright but which makes no sense. Oh well, maybe I am just a simpleton.

>And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean??

No, no, no. It's worse than you think. An NFT is more like a plastic cup with Pikachu printed on it. You don't own the rights to Pikachu. You just bought a cup with his face on it. With NFTs, there is no contract to own the actual "thing". Just simply the piece of "merch" (the NFT) with the likeness associated with it. Except, a plastic cup still has value to drink from or hold your toothbrushes.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#65
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question - why are they there then if not to make money? What other reasons exist for selling NFTs if not to make (quick) money? I'm genuinely curious here :)

He did say "not to make a quick buck" and not to not make money in general. As an artist, it's cool when you're getting paid for your work, but it doesn't mean it's the primary motivator for everything you do.

Exactly. The media is all about the money aspect of NFTs. There is much more to it. At least in the art world.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#66
post #41

I personally rather like the idea of NFTs. NFTs could become gamechangers, in the literal meaning of the word. The project Enjin for instances focuses on NFTs in the gaming world. One selling point is, that you might be able to collect items in one game and transfer it to another. Collect a rare trophy in Fortnite and show it off in your Steam VR Home, the trophies uniqueness and legitimacy verifiable by everyone. Of…

Your gaming scenario still requires EPIC to issue trophies and be the sole arbiter of who gets trophies. People have to trust them to prevent cheating, and not to hand them out in an unsporting way. EPICs game servers will be minting your trophy-tokens.

It doesn't make a difference whether EPIC provide a public API for querying a users profile for what trophies they have, or whether EPIC put that information on a blockchain.

NFTs also don't help digital artists in that NFTs don't prevent copyright infringement. A certificate of ownership can be placed in a blockchain, with a hash, but unless you have a copy of the art to hash then you can't verify it. Once you have a copy of the artwork, you can just ignore the blockchain or claim ownership on a less reputable blockchain. So again, reputation of the organisations minting tokens on the blockchain is key.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#67
post #28

One thing I have noticed when listening to the interviews of NFT companies is that, when describing NFT is the future, the arguments from these founders are examples of people/artists made money by selling NFT online. It has become more and more a theme for cryptocurrency technology has well: the reason you should be in is that other people have made money rather than the benefit of the technology itself. It is not a…

Imho it stems from a lack of understanding and faith in the financial services industry, probably exacerbated by the financial crisis. A large % of people now believe that the finance industry only exists to work against them and make an elite minority rich. There's a strong sense of "Fuck You, I Got Mine" from the last generation, so the current generation is saying "Fine, I'm going to invent my own system... with B…

> A large % of people now believe that the finance industry only exists to work against them and make an elite minority rich.

Yes, because that is the very definition of capitalism: people own, others work. That's the reason modern forms of slavery, colonization and patriarchal control were developed, historically.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism or Silvia Federici for some great perspectives on the control of births/sexuality, patriarchy of the wage and oppression of women under capitalism.

> people are thinking "I will never own a home"

A lot of people i meet from the younger generation don't care at all about owning a home. They feel concerned that the privileged elites are ruining the show for everyone and by the next decade we'll be more and more struggling for drinkable water and basic survival.

Punks were derided for their "No future" stance, but it looks like the entire world has gone "No future" and just keeps fucking up as much as they can. Spending billions of KWh on blockchains so rich people can speculate on buying their own number (correct me if i'm wrong but to me a NFT is just a number) is just part of this.

We have to stop this madness, abolish private property and the capitalist industry entirely and go back to communal living and producing stuff based on actual needs, not dumb single-use Internet of Shit products and other planned-obsolete non-flashable-single-purpose computers.

> After many hours I couldn't find anything even remotely interesting.

The only interesting "dApp" i've seen so far is radicle.xyz, a decentralized forge built on top of git. Still i'm skeptical of tying money and financial incentives into my software development practices, but at least those folks (free software people) had the decency to make crypto-payments optional by adding opt-in Ethereum integration. Clever move.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a little correction. NFTs, and crypto in general are critiqued as ponzis, but they are more accurately described as pyramid schemes, whereby early adopters rake in the lion's share of profits. Ponzis are where later investor money is used to pay out early investor money in a fraudulent never ending cycle.

Honest question: I fail to see to difference between this (the pyramid scheme part) and let's say buying stock in early Apple or Google?

If you consider the market a casino there is no difference. Buy low sell high. But if you approach the market like an investor you try to estimate the intrinsic value of the assets and liabilities of a company, their cash flows, their growth prospects, and their management. Then you find those companies where the market price doesn't match what you think the business is worth and you go long/short those businesses where you think the mismatch is the greatest.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#69
post #28

One thing I have noticed when listening to the interviews of NFT companies is that, when describing NFT is the future, the arguments from these founders are examples of people/artists made money by selling NFT online. It has become more and more a theme for cryptocurrency technology has well: the reason you should be in is that other people have made money rather than the benefit of the technology itself. It is not a…

Imho it stems from a lack of understanding and faith in the financial services industry, probably exacerbated by the financial crisis. A large % of people now believe that the finance industry only exists to work against them and make an elite minority rich. There's a strong sense of "Fuck You, I Got Mine" from the last generation, so the current generation is saying "Fine, I'm going to invent my own system... with B…

Is it lack of understanding of the financial industry or the opposite? I observe that through Bitcoin much more people have become interested in (austrian) economics. I think especially in times when everyone says that the problems e.g. central banks are “solving” are too complex to understand for 99.99% of the people, an uptrend in a much more simple theory (that is hence also more compatible with Occam’s razor) is a good thing.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#70
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho it stems from a lack of understanding and faith in the financial services industry, probably exacerbated by the financial crisis. A large % of people now believe that the finance industry only exists to work against them and make an elite minority rich. There's a strong sense of "Fuck You, I Got Mine" from the last generation, so the current generation is saying "Fine, I'm going to invent my own system... with B…

"I will never own a home" is not the only reason. The whole financial system is "fuck you this and fuck you that, incl. when you least expect and depend the most, and we won't tell you why". Yesterday here were news about PayPal terminating an account without explanation again (by the way, even when they don't ban you, their verification and customer services are a disaster anyway). This bullshit has to stop. Every p…

Maybe if we would question why we (don't) need money in the first place, and why people turn to terrorism, we wouldn't have problems in the first place.

Let everyone have a home, eat and drink as much as they need, receive proper education and healthcare, and thrive working for something they see interest in not a paycheck/boss and you'll see terrorism will be entirely rid of.

In the meantime, i agree it's a reasonable expectation that people can exchange money freely with the caveat that there should be taxes. As much as i hate taxes because they will fund police terrorizing my neighborhood, big corporations for their next nature-destroying megaproject, and cameras everywhere in the big cities, they are important as long as we live in a capitalist system to ensure we have basic public services.

A system like GNU/Taler is really interesting because it promises buyer's secrecy while retaining public accounting for receivers so that they can be subject to taxes. Cash is better of course as anonymity is guaranteed on both sides, and that's precisely why the chief scammers are pushing for the abolition of cash... so much of informal economy/solidarity would disappear overnight i'm having nightmares over it.

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