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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

#61

Post by stickfigure »

doublerebel wrote: post #46
stickfigure wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hang a painting on your wall and flaunt it. Nobody looks at the bits on your hard disk.

Many NFTs either come with or are designed for a physical representation. 100s or 1000s are already installed and viewable IRL. Being an NFT does not preclude the art from being traditionally enjoyed.

Being an NFT does not preclude anyone else from hanging the exact same physical representation on their wall. Exclusivity matters if you want to impress your rich friends.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#62

Post by doopy1 »

This whole rant assumes that people just buy NFTs to sell them to the next guy, but that's not the case. Some people buy NFTs to support artists (like Patreon) - others are gamified to represent something in a dapp, for example metaverse parcels are like domain names. And of course some just collect them for the flex. It's not really an MLM anyway you slice it.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#64

Post by gruez »

avs733 wrote: post #34
gruez wrote: post #27

sorry to be pedantic, but it's literally not multi-level-marketing? Specifically, it's missing the multi-level part. Your upline isn't getting $$$ when you sell a NFT. I suppose you can make the argument that if you then take the money and buy more stuff, then your upline gets paid, but that describes most distributor arrangements. Come to think of it, there isn't really even an upline. It's just a network of artists…

I think you could argue that the 'upline' acrues value even if they aren't paid directly. Greater interest in an NFT drives the value up. As with everything NFT crypto, the value is all probabilistic anyways /s

> I think you could argue that the 'upline' acrues value even if they aren't paid directly. Greater interest in an NFT drives the value up.

right, but uplines getting paid in a necessary but not sufficient condition for MLM. In a MLM it's usually derived through their downlines. The mechanism described is a general benefit to all participants in the system which isn't very MLM-like. platforms (eg. youtube) tend to have the same "general interest drives the value of the ecosystem up" (ie. creators convincing other creators to join your youtube clone increases your site's catalog, which boosts the quality of recommended content you can show to your user to get them to stay on longer, making it easier for creators to get views), but you wouldn't call that a MLM.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#65

Post by rices »

For me nfts provide an easier way for me to support digital artists I love that I've been following for a while.

I don't really like the collectable scarcity kind of thing, but I like building a collection and having an easy way to explore and find art and artists. Also a lot of these websites are providing this art at higher resolutions and quality than social media would allow for (IPFS) and without direct hosting.

I think it's here to stay in some form but it'll definitely undergo some change.

Not everything exists for function, let's enjoy our time.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#66

Post by danShumway »

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.

> minting a new beanie-baby-NFT takes less effort than making an actual beanie baby.

I'll add onto this that the core technology has no way of verifying which beanie baby NFT is "valid" outside of traditional centralized mechanisms like IP law and large validators. You can duplicate NFTs that point to the same beanie-baby-NFT link, are totally indistinguishable, that don't have any artwork that you own, and nobody can stop you outside of centralized mechanisms. As soon as you try to build a market on top of NFTs, you're right back inside the current system of ownership enforced by legal contracts and centralized validators.

At least with Bitcoin, you don't have to tie your wallet to a Twitter verification system to figure out whether or not your funds are real or just a low-effort scam.

People can disagree with whether Bitcoin has value (I think it's a bad system), but at least it doesn't completely fall apart as soon as you leave Coinbase. NFTs really don't work at all unless they're tied to centralized services, because anybody can make an NFT for anything, regardless of whether they have any real relationship to the asset they're issuing. Even official accounts that are validated: you can mint 5,000 NFTs of the same beanie baby, nobody can stop that from happening. Any scarcity in the system is only self-imposed by the actors within that system.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#67

Post by baby »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14
SrslyJosh wrote: post #3

This would have been more interesting if the author had traced where all the money being plowed into NFTs is coming from. I suspect that most of it does not come from outside of the current ETH (or whatever) ecosystem. I'd bet that most of the volume comes from people who are either treating it as play money, or trying to pump the NFT scam for their own benefit (real or imagined).

> 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…

This is what happens whenever you see a large amount associated with an NFT. I bet that the art market started like that.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#68

Post by Godel_unicode »

spoonjim wrote: post #6
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.

Interesting. I actually think that scarcity is the only thing that NFTs have. I almost think of them as the purest distillation of scarcity. Everyone knows you can get a perfect copy of a Vermeer done for $10k. Why is the real Vermeer worth more? Because the guy with the real Vermeer knows that while you can have the lighting and you can have the shadows, you can’t have the scarcity. And the concept of an NFT is just…

Right, because the creator of the NFT totally can't just mint another token right after you buy the first one. Oh wait, just kidding they can. And there's absolutely nothing you can do, because you don't _actually_ own the thing, you just own a trivially replicated pointer to the thing.

It's ok though, because at least the original will definitely be the one to be valuable, and not the 42nd, 69th, or 420th. Right? Right??

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#69

Post by LegitShady »

rices wrote: post #65

For me nfts provide an easier way for me to support digital artists I love that I've been following for a while. I don't really like the collectable scarcity kind of thing, but I like building a collection and having an easy way to explore and find art and artists. Also a lot of these websites are providing this art at higher resolutions and quality than social media would allow for (IPFS) and without direct hosting.…

Massive speculation scam to take advantage of the uninformed. Let them enjoy their time without making digital beanie babies and pretending they have value.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#70

Post by analog31 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23
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.

> 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…

In my view there's a finite number of Picasso paintings, but an as yet unlimited possible number of digital artworks, and an unpredictable number of things that could compete with digital artworks for the dollars of buyers.

To fix the supply of digital artworks, there has to be at least a loose consensus on what the accepted "canon" of those works consists of. For now, that's an unknown.

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