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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

#221

Post by larsiusprime »

neuralzen wrote: post #202
larsiusprime wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I think Bitcoin is bad as well. Speculation is not productive, and this particular form of it has negative externalities - costs the rest of society is forced to pay, which is both bad and unfair. Proof of work is far too expensive and wasteful, and the necessary private key discipline to not lose all your coins puts it out of reach of normies (immutability is a bug not a feature for normies), and it’s deflationa…

I agree PoW is bad, and I'm hopeful for the future of Proof of Stake. Just like using coal and oil to fuel our industries is bad, and we are moving more and more towards renewable energy it is a path of progression. You have to start somewhere and grow, but I think it is somewhat disingenuous to discuss them as if they are static states which are not seeking and progressing to more ethical models.

I will, sincerely, believe it when I see it.

Until then criticizing the status quo, which is doing harm right now, is absolutely valid and not disingenuous in the least.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#222

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #216
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the community cares they'll try and find out people that do that and blacklist them. hicetnunc does that, it's the only one I could speak to. That's generally referred to as copy-minting. EDIT: here's the hicetnunc community write up for basic steps to minimize the change you buy a copy-mint: https://github.com/hicetnunc2000/hicetnunc/wiki/Beware-copym... !

This is a lot of words to say "there is by design no way to do that". DeFi systems are all designed around the unspoken (although sometimes spoken, honestly) assumption that rules are bad and that the system should make enforcing them difficult-to-impossible. A fun exercise is to consider, if all businesses went to using *coin overnight and one accidentally overcharged your wallet, how would you get your coins back?

You do realize that replicas are a problem in the real world art world as well right?

In real world art this is resolved by proving providence, in crypto providence from minting is trivial, but you still need to prove providence that the minting was honest.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#223

Post by panabee »

ashtonkem wrote: post #155
panabee wrote: post #146

it's easy to get blinded by the scams and abuses enabled by new technology, but what matters in the long term are the new benefits and use cases. will NFTs last? unclear. however, one benefit is clear and compelling: decentralized royalty capture and IP management. the NBA and other large enterprises could build and manage IP APIs that mimic NFT functionality. but what if you're an individual artist? or what if you'r…

> however, one benefit is clear and compelling: decentralized royalty capture and IP management. Bzzt. No. This is what NFTs claim they do, not what they actually do. How do you know that the person creating a NFT has the right to do that? The NFT tracks the chain of ownership for the NFT itself , if the initial person creating the NFT did not own the copyright for the art in question, then the NFT itself is useless.…

we agree NFT fail in these case. however, these were not the ones i defined nor was there a claim NFTs work in all cases.

the metapoint is that whether NFTs are a fad or fundamental technology will be defined by new use cases, so we should focus analytical efforts there and see if any yield sustainable value.

if taylor swift wants to outsource royalty capture to law-abiding companies, who provide the bulk of royalty revenue, she can do so with NFTs.

we also agree that NFTs do not replace legal courts, but neither do record labels.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#224

Post by vokep »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91
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…

> It's kind of like saying there could be an infinite number of paintings, so why should Picassos be worth very much? We could mint an infinite number of Picasso NFTs, though. None of them are the actual piece of art. You could argue that one particular NFT is the official Picasso NFT because it was sold by the owners of the Picasso painting, but it’s still just a fancy hyperlink to a page that says “This is a Picass…

But they aren't. They're pieces of cardboard with a particular story. The card has no value itself, which is why a rookie card isn't very valuable, unless its of someone famous. Why? because one is a story right at the beginning, which may not even be a good one, where there other has an established success story behind it. Owning the card is representative of owning a chunk of that story. You can say its arbitrary, but the fact is the picture on the card is of a real person with a real story, and their image on the card is part of literally that same story.

So with NFTs, its the same, anyone can write a document that says "this certifies ownership of a picasso painting" and it doesn't mean much of anything. However if Picasso writes up a document broadcasts somehow he has done so and the document says you own x painting, then its easy enough to certify to anyone that you own a Picasso from the man himself. The story is not arbitrary, this is precisely why it has value. The arbitrary easily copied stuff is cheap and meaningless and known as such. The "rare" NFTs and stuff selling for massive prices is expensive because it is genuinely so. You can write a comment here about how easily you can create a counterfeit NFT, but how easily can you actually convince someone to buy it from you? You can observe that baseball cards are just pieces of cardboard but how easily can you acquire a card printed when batter X was a rookie?

I'm not saying this sort of value is easily quantifiable, but it is easily observable, identifiable that its reflective of a real element of reality and not (entirely) arbitrarily imagined.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#225

Post by NicoJuicy »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #187
dehrmann wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pump and dump.

Which is different than an MLM. Honest question though: how long does it have to go on until it stops being a pump and dump in your mind?

When it's regulated and you can sue.

Then there's a potential to stop the pump's.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#226

Post by [deleted] »

omarfarooq wrote: post #190
root_axis wrote: post #170

All of this gushing hype for the future of artistry is transparently performative. Nobody in this tech cares about art or artists, any of the useful functions of NFTs have long been possible and many orders of magnitude less expensive using public key cryptography or digital signatures.

> any of the useful functions of NFTs have long been possible and many orders of magnitude less expensive using public key cryptography or digital signatures. A major useful function being the ability to buy and sell with purely digital money, was that possible before?

[deleted]

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#227

Post by neuralzen »

duskwuff wrote: post #218
neuralzen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you can email Universal Talent Agency and tell them they are wrong. Trademarks and copyright infringement exists in the NFT world, just because you can mint an NFT doesn't mean you own the art associated, particularly if you didn't create it. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/uta-crypt... https://meebits.larvalabs.com/meebits/termsandconditions

> Perhaps you can email Universal Talent Agency and tell them they are wrong. About what? If anything, this goes to prove my point. These NFTs cannot "manage commercial and IP rights" to themselves, so Larva Labs has contracted with UTA to perform that task. > Trademarks and copyright infringement exists in the NFT world, just because you can mint an NFT doesn't mean you own the art associated, particularly if you di…

Alright, it is a fair point that it isn't a closed system, but you have to start from somewhere in order to grow from there into something with more of a closed loop. At the end of the day, courts of law have to decide on the outcomes of contentions, and this holds true with traditional crypto as well. - Perhaps one day we'll see smart contracts which are honored by courts to uphold the contracts in a lawful way, if written in a specific way (like what Agrello is/was trying to do...dunno if they are still around), but it has to be built first, it can't be perfect day one out the door, it's a journey.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#228

Post by vokep »

danShumway wrote: post #66
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.

> 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 ca…

Is this really a meaningful thing? I mean, of course it is somewhat in terms of how things are viewed. But, theres no religious law that NFTs must be a pure blockchain thing. Possibly they're finding their niche, and that is to be a sort of intermediate, which uses traditional systems as the origin of verification/trust, but can then go forward on its own with no further verification. (Of course, your wallet keys could be stolen and used to impersonate you, but the same is true for login credentials of twitter blue checkmarks)

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#229

Post by Tenoke »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #216
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the community cares they'll try and find out people that do that and blacklist them. hicetnunc does that, it's the only one I could speak to. That's generally referred to as copy-minting. EDIT: here's the hicetnunc community write up for basic steps to minimize the change you buy a copy-mint: https://github.com/hicetnunc2000/hicetnunc/wiki/Beware-copym... !

This is a lot of words to say "there is by design no way to do that". DeFi systems are all designed around the unspoken (although sometimes spoken, honestly) assumption that rules are bad and that the system should make enforcing them difficult-to-impossible. A fun exercise is to consider, if all businesses went to using *coin overnight and one accidentally overcharged your wallet, how would you get your coins back?

I can see exactly how much I'm being charged when making a tx and I can ask them for a refund the way I would if they overcharge my card..

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#230

Post by Godel_unicode »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #222
Godel_unicode wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of words to say "there is by design no way to do that". DeFi systems are all designed around the unspoken (although sometimes spoken, honestly) assumption that rules are bad and that the system should make enforcing them difficult-to-impossible. A fun exercise is to consider, if all businesses went to using *coin overnight and one accidentally overcharged your wallet, how would you get your coins back?

You do realize that replicas are a problem in the real world art world as well right? In real world art this is resolved by proving providence, in crypto providence from minting is trivial, but you still need to prove providence that the minting was honest.

None of which in any way responds to what I said. NFTs, by design, have no fraud prevention mechanism and no mechanism for getting your money back if you were scammed. They allow for arbitrarily many tokens to be minted of the same thing, with no obvious mechanism for people to realize that's what's happening.
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