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

The NFT market bubble has popped?

protos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 332 posts

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#241

Post by yoz-y »

driverdan wrote: post #237
Grustaf wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. If it is known from the start that this is how it works, you can just avoid those CDs. 2. CDs are copies, NFTs are sort of originals, so it's pretty different.

> NFTs are sort of originals There is no such thing as an original digital media asset. The digital media attached to an NFT is by definition a copy.

I tend to agree. There is nothing preventing an artist to sell two NFTs for the same media. Then you would have two competing "originals". Can't do that with a physical object. However it is also progressively harder to prove that a physical thing is actually an original.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#242

Post by ansible »

koheripbal wrote: post #220
ansible wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A large % of people now believe that the finance industry only exists to work against them and make an elite minority rich. And that's because it is true. The vast majority of the financial services industry is designed to screw people over. The only thing an average citizen can do is let them skim off as little money as possible. Buy stocks in solid companies, and hold on to them for a long time. Index mutual fund…

> The vast majority of the financial services industry is designed to screw people over. I don't know where to begin with a comment like this. It's being so heavily reinforced by social media, but is so hyperbolically outside reality that I honestly don't know where to start. It's similar to saying that the vast majority of the medical industry only exists to make people sick. Do people die on the operating table? Su…

The most useful aspects of the financial industry are the most heavily regulated... by government.

Banks have rules on what they can use the money in your savings account for. They have government backed insurance.

Regular stocks are also heavily regulated. Financial reporting requirements, disclosures, auditing, etc.

Why does all this regulation exist? Because people we getting screwed over, and it was bad enough the government had to step in.

The mortgage industry was not heavily regulated enough, and what happened there? A large financial crash. And who got bailed out? The banks, many of whom were somewhat complicit and profiting off the situation.

Who didn't get bailed out? The little people.

This is still happening now. Most hedge funds, high frequency trading, the lure of day trading, and may other schemes exist to siphon off money from regular people.

Think for a minute about the hedge fund manager who gets tens of millions in bonuses. Where does that money come from? Ultimately the companies and other investors. That money could have gone into higher wages for the workers, but instead is being funneled to a few elites.

Since ancient times, the powerful have sought to retain and grow their own power. They use whatever means are available to them. It can be the use of force, but things have gotten more sophisticated.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#243

Post by muttled »

southerntofu wrote: post #139
prepend wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather pay someone to take my turn for me. There’s a whole theory of competitive advantage [0] where I’m better doing some things than others. I’d rather do the thing I’m good at and use the money to pay others to do stuff I’m marginally worse off doing. I’ve lived in communities for a few decades and every day it crosses my mind that I want to establish a price for someone to come clean my toilet. [0] https:…

> I would rather pay someone to take my turn for me. Yeah, that's precisely what's wrong in our society that it appears normal to pay for inconveniences to disappear. Except of course for most of us who don't have money so we get paid shitty wages for making other people's inconveniences disappear. If such jobs were the highest paid, that would be less of a problem of course. But the highest paid jobs under capitalis…

>Have you considered why you're so reluctant to do it?

It's funny, I had a conversation with a roommate that went something like I said I hated dishes, and that I'd rather be outside in the cold, under the car lifted on jackstands, draining the oil and replacing it and servicing the oil filter, coming back in and cleaning up. For both our cars. And my roommate seemed shocked. It seemed like such a bigger task to them than just quickly cleaning the dishes and throwing them in a rack to dry. But I just hate doing the dishes. And I don't mind changing the oil in the car.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#244

Post by jtolmar »

maaaaattttt wrote: post #62
phist_mcgee wrote: post #51

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?

The value of stock comes from a several things:

- A voting share lets you participate in company decisions (not that anyone votes for much other than the board recommendations / increasing profits)

- The company may pay dividends

- The company may participate in stock buybacks

- If the company is sold, the profits are distributed among shareholders

- The value of all of the above grows if a company grows, so stock in a growing company is worth more

- The same "get in early before other people get in and raise the price" mechanism as a pyramid scheme

And then all of those factors are awkwardly summed together into a single number.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#245

Post by ac29 »

Nursie wrote: post #104
thatguyagain wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sources on how many Venezuelans actually moved their money into crypto?

Usually this is where someone from Venezuela comes along and tells us that this is a tiny minority, and most people want US Dollars because they can actually use those.

I was under the impression US cash apps like Zelle were far more popular than cryptocurrency: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-11/zelle-has...

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#246

Post by Igelau »

fnord77 wrote: post #114
roytries wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how NFTs or blockchain in general helps in any way for this, or many other examples of this. All an NFT is is an encrypted hyperlink in the blockchain. The hyperlink points to a resource on someone's server. I think people forget that the NFT doesn't store the real thing. All an NFT is is basically an encrypted DNS server with some ownership data attached to it. Right now you could showcase your Fo…

> All an NFT is is an encrypted hyperlink in the blockchain. So if someone moves urls around on the server or if the company goes bust, that link is dead.

Yep. I'm curious what while happen when the NBA decides it doesn't want to license its video clips to Top Shots anymore.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#247

Post by detaro »

yoz-y wrote: post #241
driverdan wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NFTs are sort of originals There is no such thing as an original digital media asset. The digital media attached to an NFT is by definition a copy.

I tend to agree. There is nothing preventing an artist to sell two NFTs for the same media. Then you would have two competing "originals". Can't do that with a physical object. However it is also progressively harder to prove that a physical thing is actually an original.

If an artist makes prints another dozen of a printed physical work, asks the factory that made a sculpture to produce another one, ... you would have competing originals too (indeed replacing damaged/destroyed prints sometimes happens, the newly printed taking the place of the destroyed one - otherwise it is considered bad taste for an artist to actually do that). Or an installation piece that everyone could copy by following the setup instructions, but is just "original" if the installer has the artists permission to do so. Or an art film that's sold as a single DVD: surely the physical DVD is not the art piece, but the film is, even though the film on DVD is clearly a copy of a file on the artists computer. Sometimes in art it really comes down to whatever the artist declares to be an original work. (With an NFT you even get a clear order which one was first if you are worried about repeated minting)

Not that I'm a big fan of NFTs or anything, but they really are not that different from what already happens in art.

(There's also NFTs that are images generated by code that takes where in the blockchain it was added into account - that image has not existed before the NFT was minted)

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#248

Post by yebyen »

rymate1234 wrote: post #239
yebyen wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You say this as if numbers have no utility. Is an IP address "just a number"? What about a /8 cidr block? How much energy should we be allowed to spend to secure global address space and provide a secure implementation of identity for all pe…

> Because you know what happens when private property is abolished? Spoiler, only the well connected and powerful will hold private property If only a few people can own private property then you haven't abolished private property, you've just limited who can own it. This was the main issue caused by the massive state control of Marxist Leninist countries like the Soviet Union -- by centralizing all control within on…

Thanks, that was probably my point. Consensus is hard. Ethereum is one of the global systems that currently exists for tackling the consensus problem. Shouting at clouds is on the other hand, not tackling the consensus problem.

Someone or something has to be at the helm of the command economy. I'm definitely not saying we should "go back to communal living and producing stuff based on actual needs" but I am saying that without a rigorous system for distributed consensus, you really don't have a chance of achieving this.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#249

Post by bitcurious »

habosa wrote: post #20

NFTs are dumb however some of the NFT markets have one cool thing that I hope sticks around: the artist gets a cut of all future sales. If you sell your NFT art for $10 and then someone resells it for $1M, you will get some percentage of the $1M. We've all heard the stories of "collector buys 10 Jackson Pollock's for $10 in the 70s, sells the collection for $100M today". Wouldn't it be nice if the artist could benefi…

If NFT resales take off, resales will just happen off chain via contracts. $1Million wire transfer and a concurrent $10 NFT sale. This has the added benefit of some legal enforcement.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#250

Post by caylus »

ansible wrote: post #242
koheripbal wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of the financial services industry is designed to screw people over. I don't know where to begin with a comment like this. It's being so heavily reinforced by social media, but is so hyperbolically outside reality that I honestly don't know where to start. It's similar to saying that the vast majority of the medical industry only exists to make people sick. Do people die on the operating table? Su…

The most useful aspects of the financial industry are the most heavily regulated... by government. Banks have rules on what they can use the money in your savings account for. They have government backed insurance. Regular stocks are also heavily regulated. Financial reporting requirements, disclosures, auditing, etc. Why does all this regulation exist? Because people we getting screwed over, and it was bad enough th…

> Why does all this regulation exist? Because people we getting screwed over, and it was bad enough the government had to step in.

I think the analogy still holds here. Medicine is highly regulated because people sometimes die as a result of medical intervention, and as a result of that regulation (hopefully, but debatably) less people die, but that doesn't prove that medicine is designed to kill people.

Post reply on HN