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NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

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Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#51

Post by pinoli »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #41
taylorfinley wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the sort of shallow understanding I mean to point at. NFTs are so much more than "owning jpegs." This is the same mistake as saying "owning bitcoin is just owning a cell in a spreadsheet." Can I have the title to your car? After all, it's just a piece of paper. NFTs are access tokens to social communities, where owning a particular token grants you access to a community that shares ownership. Collab.L…

Why would you put a concert ticket on a distributed ledger if there's only a single party who can honor this ticket? There's a company who issued the ticket, and it's the same one that will either let you in or not at the date and time the concert is supposed to happen. Why would they put it in a distributed ledger instead of a database managed by themselves?

because once you have a global, indestructible infrastructure that embeds the same principles, companies would find it more efficient to do so, instead of building their own unique and non-compatible version.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#52

Post by m_ke »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #45

> This Ape sold for $2.3M (769 ETH) last night. NFTs make me think our society has gone completely insane. People sometimes ask me to explain them because I, like, "understand technology", and I have no explanation for what they want explained.

It's simple, people who got rich on imaginary coins are turning their imaginary coins into imaginary art tokens.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#53

Post by stickfigure »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #43
stickfigure wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scarcity is necessary but not sufficient. What sets BTC apart from NTFs is its fungibility. In theory, there are an infinite number of potential cryptocurrencies, sure. But everyone has already embraced bitcoin (and a small handful of others), and replacing that userbase is an incredibly tall hurdle. On the other hand, minting a new beanie-baby-NFT takes less effort than making an actual beanie baby.

I think you're missing the purpose of NFTs. Again, I think the best analogy is really the art market. Most art in the art market is pretty worthless (at least monetarily) - just go to one of a bajillion garage sales to see why. But a few pieces of art will be worth a lot because something about them is desirable. It's the same with NFTs. There will be a bajillion "beanie-baby-NFTs" that will be close to worthless. An…

The difference is that you can hang art on your wall and say "that's an original" when your other rich friends come to visit.

"I control some arbitrary bits on an arbitrary blockchain" will never have the same cachet.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#54

Post by danShumway »

stickfigure wrote: post #2

> The venn diagram of NFT haters are almost exact matches of Crypto haters Nonsense. I'm pro-crypto but think NFTs are absolutely idiotic. Scarcity is fundamental to any store of value. There are an infinite number of potential NFTs.

I think there's a big overlap -- if you're a crypto skeptic, you are almost certainly going to be an NFT skeptic as well.

But the reverse is not necessarily true. NFTs are just fundamentally a lot worse than cryptocurrencies. They have every problem that cryptocurrencies have, except they're also not scarce, require centralized verification mechanisms, have bad incentive structures around hoarding, are prone to link rot, etc, etc, etc...

NFTs are much harder to justify than cryptocurrencies are. They're all of the drawbacks with virtually none of the upsides. I don't know anyone who likes NFTs but dislikes cryptocurrency.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#55

Post by echelon »

SantalBlush wrote: post #28
roweow wrote: post #10

Here’s an amazing email from Hal Finney on proto-NFTs 1993- https://imgur.com/a/UJpFjzx I think people who have been in bitcoin for 10 years are more skeptical of NFTs because suddenly they’re framed as the ultimate crypto use case. And Eth is ultra sound money. And while there’s some interesting generative art (eg deafbeef) most of the industry is hyping NFTs for videogames. There are better and more transformative…

I don't see how this email is supposed to describe NFTs. This email describes cryptography being used as an artistic medium, which is different.

I disagree. That email describes their scarcity, desirability, tradability, and monetary exchange.

It's prescient. Twenty years ahead of implementation.

Absolutely wild.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#56

Post by teej »

iAm25626 wrote: post #33

Car/bag/cloth/jewelry/art - these type of things are sometime considered status symbol. It help people convey certain “message” to other. NFT might could be the same in the ever more virtual world. I might not be be the target audience; but it does not meant that it hold no value to other. People spent lots of money on game skins, rare weapon. So there is a market. When one goes to a physical conference: flair/badges…

When it comes to luxury cars and clothes, you force others to see that you’ve spent for status. That doesn’t exist for NFTs. There’s no public forum I can go to where others are forced to observe my status signals.

High end art is more about investing, money laundering, and tax havens then status.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#57

Post by square_usual »

teej wrote: post #36
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would have been more interesting if the author had traced where all the money being plowed into NFTs is coming from. Not possible to trace where the money is coming from. In fact, someone can "sell" an NFT to themself in a wash trade between two wallets they control. The last trade price of the NFT is now recorded as the transaction price, but it's possible that money never actually changed hands. Want to have…

> In fact, someone can "sell" an NFT to themself in a wash trade between two wallets they control. The last trade price of the NFT is now recorded as the transaction price, but it's possible that money never actually changed hands. I heard rumors this is what happened with the Beeple nft

Beeple actually got paid, though, and (smartly) cashed it all out into fiat.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#58

Post by baby »

stickfigure wrote: post #31
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scarcity is fundamental to any store of value. There are an infinite number of potential NFTs. I'm a pretty big crypto-skeptic, and I'm especially an NFT skeptic, but this is a weird argument. It's kind of like saying there could be an infinite number of paintings, so why should Picassos be worth very much? Even more, it's possible to create extremely high quality reproductions of famous Picasso paintings, but they…

Scarcity is necessary but not sufficient. What sets BTC apart from NTFs is its fungibility. In theory, there are an infinite number of potential cryptocurrencies, sure. But everyone has already embraced bitcoin (and a small handful of others), and replacing that userbase is an incredibly tall hurdle. On the other hand, minting a new beanie-baby-NFT takes less effort than making an actual beanie baby.

There is no “scarcity” notion in NFT, each is by design unique.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#59

Post by baby »

danShumway wrote: post #54
stickfigure wrote: post #2

> The venn diagram of NFT haters are almost exact matches of Crypto haters Nonsense. I'm pro-crypto but think NFTs are absolutely idiotic. Scarcity is fundamental to any store of value. There are an infinite number of potential NFTs.

I think there's a big overlap -- if you're a crypto skeptic, you are almost certainly going to be an NFT skeptic as well. But the reverse is not necessarily true. NFTs are just fundamentally a lot worse than cryptocurrencies. They have every problem that cryptocurrencies have, except they're also not scarce, require centralized verification mechanisms, have bad incentive structures around hoarding, are prone to link…

It doesn’t make sense to say that an NFT is not scarce. Every NFT is unique by design.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#60

Post by cinquemb »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #41
taylorfinley wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the sort of shallow understanding I mean to point at. NFTs are so much more than "owning jpegs." This is the same mistake as saying "owning bitcoin is just owning a cell in a spreadsheet." Can I have the title to your car? After all, it's just a piece of paper. NFTs are access tokens to social communities, where owning a particular token grants you access to a community that shares ownership. Collab.L…

Why would you put a concert ticket on a distributed ledger if there's only a single party who can honor this ticket? There's a company who issued the ticket, and it's the same one that will either let you in or not at the date and time the concert is supposed to happen. Why would they put it in a distributed ledger instead of a database managed by themselves?

Interoperability out of the box with protocols for escrow/dispute and resolution without having to solely trust the company issuing the nft ticket, esp with PII (I'm thinking hotel/bnb bookings, I know of a DAO[0][1] that has already partnered with a few places in europe and facilitated this). Just have to walk in, sign a message with the address that holds the nft and then you have access to the space for the duration. They're trying to solve all the kinks before trying to scale though.

Granted, I really can't be bothered to care about all the stuff going on out there with nft's but i'm not going to let it sour me on those trying to build decentralized alternatives for systems people like to engage in now while cutting out the centralized platform rentiers/censors.

[0] https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785611286100049941/88...

[1] https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785611286100049941/88...

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