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

NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

every.to

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 687 posts

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#81

Post by ryan93 »

taylorfinley wrote: post #24
ryan93 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to dig in to understand there is a distributed ledger saying you “own” a jpeg

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…

A big example is that you have to buy a jpeg to join a shitty forum?

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#82

Post by hanklazard »

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.

Let’s look beyond the “art” NFTs for a moment and think about how else they can be used.

NFTs, in addition to being collectibles, can be used to unlock access to features, like an exclusive chat room or give the holder access to bonus content only available to those X number of NFTs which were minted. Furthermore, secondary markets could easily exist for transferring access, something that is not really doable these days with accounts.

I’m with you that the current art/collectible NFT craze seems a bit much, but I actually think the future utility of this “access” property is where things will get interesting.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#83

Post by doublerebel »

stickfigure wrote: post #61
doublerebel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is a circular argument. That is the same argument as print vs original -- NFT owners are paying for the original to support the art regardless of how accurate a print may be.

It's much more impressive to those people to have paid to support the original rather than having a knockoff... This has been true as long as goods have been produced.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#84

Post by analog31 »

stickfigure wrote: post #79
analog31 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, and I'm much less skeptical, if it's seen as akin to buying tickets to a concert. The value is in enjoying the music in the present moment, and knowing that the musicians are receiving some income. A concert ticket is an NFT of sorts. Nobody will ever be able to attend that concert again. I own plenty of concert tickets.

Did you buy the ticket and skip the concert? How did you feel about paying 30% to ticketmaster?

I've missed concerts that I had tickets for. Fortunately I'm mostly into classical, jazz, fiddling, etc., where Ticketmaster doesn't have much of a presence.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#85

Post by cryptoboid »

teej wrote: post #56
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.

Well, it doesn't exist...yet. NFTs could serve as badges, why not?

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#86

Post by hzambo »

Most of the comments assume that with NFTs you are buying just a piece of digital image with no utility whatsoever. And yes, it is the case with most of the things we see on https://opensea.io/.

But on the other hand, there are a bunch of interesting projects out there where you can do some cool things with your NFTs, like the "card game" Axie Infinity and other ripoff projects - with a very few original ones - inspired by it.

NFTs for collectible card games is promising and maybe this can lead to some other interesting use cases in the future.

Anyway, I recommend searching for "utility nft projects". Most of them seem just like something to steal money from other people, but again... there are some interesting things coming out from it.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#87

Post by darcys22 »

teej wrote: post #56
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.

Except twitter profile pictures now right? Verified NFTs are in the pipeline.

https://twitter.com/af_mada/status/1443243702156206089?s=20

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#88

Post by avs733 »

gruez wrote: post #64
avs733 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

I think it has many of the characteristics of an MLM

* value is accrued by getting new people involved who buy something

* that they are buying in part because they believe they can make more value by selling it to someone new they recruit

* non-salaried workforce

* built on relationships and word of mouth

In the end, its an analogy not a proof of work...

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#89

Post by larsiusprime »

I summed up all my complaints about NFT's in this (short) article:

https://www.fortressofdoors.com/the-degraded-blockchain-prob...

> In short, the minute you connect your blockchain to an app frontend you now have a degraded blockchain, one that cannot even in principle guarantee immutability, trustlessness, and decentralization – at least not for assets that the app's customers actually care about.

Scratch the surface on almost any NFT ecosystem or blockchain application and I find I'm still relying on trust, or a centralized service, or a service that's more mutable than it advertises. So if I don't get the purported benefits of blockchain anyways, what was the point of getting a blockchain involved?

EDIT: Getting a lot of responses that I don’t have time to reply to. My more involved thoughts on the entire space are here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fZBIYjsXT_s

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#90

Post by danShumway »

doublerebel wrote: post #80
danShumway wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then there will be a few of the "Charlie Bit My Finger" variety that people actually have desire to uniquely "own". Not necessarily. The original creator that issued that "Charlie Bit My Finger" NFT could also create 1,000 more of them tomorrow. And all of those NFTs would be exactly as valid as the original, it wouldn't be equivalent to making a print of the Mona Lisa. It wouldn't be downstream of the original…

This is no different than any current artist with a limited print run. The earliest prints are typically still the most valuable and the artist has incentive not to create additional runs of the same artwork.

> This is no different than any current artist with a limited print run

Right. But also nobody acts like limited print runs are mathematically non-fungible.

If the best argument for NFTs is that they're scarce in the exact same way that existing systems produce scarcity, and that this scarcity is enforced using the same systems we already have, that's not a good argument for the existence of NFTs. You might as well just do normal token issuance using existing technology.

Post reply on HN