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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

#481

Post by jameshart »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #446

NFT always felt ridiculous to me, but I though I understood the mechanism: "it's like baseball cards but in the blockchain". This week I learned it's not. NFT are Non Fungible Tokens, which means tokens that can't be divided, unlike crypto currencies like Bitcoin that can be divided in Satoshis. So you exchange the totality of it, or not. Basically it's a unique number in the blockchain you change ownership by applyi…

So I do wonder whether the NFT divide (between people who get it and people who don’t) might be a generational split, related to a larger societal shift away from ‘owning things’. We’ve definitely passed ‘peak thing ownership’.

For those of us old enough to have grown up with the idea of ‘buying a book’, ‘buying a toy’, ‘buying a CD’ or ‘buying a magazine’ we have a particular mental framework for ‘owning’ stuff.

But people stopped buying those things a while ago (people stopped buying toys? Not completely, but certainly some of that spend now goes on apps right?).

So for people who have grown up in a digital-subscription world, they might just have a fundamentally different mental model of ownership - one which is more compatible with NFTs as a reasonable idea than the paradigm us old ‘thing owners’ have.

Like, consider some of the things you likely have bought recently: a ‘twelve month Netflix subscription’, a ‘Steam library game’, an ‘app’… you bought those things with no expectation you could resell them later because you don’t think of those as ‘things’. And because you haven’t yet adjusted your mental model to the reality that this is what you spend your wealth on now - ephemeral digital rights you won’t be able to pass on to your kids when you’re gone.

But if you grew up digital native and the only things you’ve ever been able to buy are non transferable digital pointers to rights to use something, maybe the idea of a transferable digital rights pointer seems like a crazy innovative new idea that changes everything?

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#482

Post by bvaldivielso »

jameshart wrote: post #464
highfrequency wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the baseball card’s value does not come from the fact that you can hold a piece of cardboard in your hand. Whether the data representation is a piece of cardboard or a JSON string replicated on 10,000 Ethereum nodes or a tulip or a Venmo balance is arbitrary; it just matters whether a lot of humans are looking at the same thing. And for the time being, a lot of humans are looking at crypto ledgers!

> Surely the baseball card’s value does not come from the fact that you can hold a piece of cardboard in your hand. Oh but surely it does. Cardboard is fragile, and degrades if not looked after. Over time, the average condition of cardboard cards will deteriorate. So, if you own a baseball card in good condition, and can look after it better than the average, over time you will end up with one of an increasingly rare…

I think placing the value of baseball cards on the fact that they are made out of cardboard is mostly trying to rationalize a preconceived notion that baseball cards make sense whereas NFTs don't. But even then, similar dynamics to the one you mention also apply in the NFT world: people lose the keys to their wallets. In that sense, the NFT completely degraded. This will probably happen to many NFTs as has happened to a significant amount of bitcoins.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#483

Post by snarf21 »

highfrequency wrote: post #330
tdeck wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a baseball card, the first sale doctrine means that you at least have the legal right to display and transfer that card. With NFTs, even that is not necessarily the case because displaying the content of the NFT is making a copy, and you may not have a license to do that.

If you own an NFT, you have the ability to write someone else’s address on a socially recognized ledger of ownership. That is all that matters. If the NFT and the ledger have wide interest, this ability to transfer ownership has value regardless of any legal subtleties.

Exactly, you own a ledger entry. Stop saying that is like baseball cards. I can frame and hang a real baseball card on my wall because I own it and it is real. I can hang a digital frame on the wall and point it at your NFT and have the "real" thing even though I don't own it. It is simply a pyramid scheme. Some people will make a lot of money and some will lose a lot. I do see people who are so convinced that NFTs will be around 20 years from putting their entire net worth into NFTs and planning to HODL.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#484

Post by user-the-name »

miracle2k wrote: post #458
user-the-name wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not. Nothing about an NFT ensures it is from the artist, and not just from someone random scammer.

Correct. This is your job to ensure.

So why do you say that is the point?

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#485

Post by slmnsmk »

As financial holdings or blockchain assets they also seem speculative at best to me. I participate, however, because some digital artists are truly truly good; and they are finally seeing success/sales.

Without getting too far into it, the Mona Lisa is of undeniably high quality. But its (is saying “her” gauche?) value is certainly not just a function of quality. Cultural relevance, scarcity, etc. I like that digital artists found a way to participate in the culture and make money. This is why I buy NFTs.

It’s also the most transparent “shill” pump and dump scheme ever. :) The article is not wrong, but there ARE other motivations. Especially on PoS low-electricity blockchain technologies.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#486

Post by snarf21 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #89

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 surfa…

The benefits of the blockchain are simple. To drive the pyramid scheme to profitability. It helps obfuscate the scam from people who don't know any better.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#487

Post by qeternity »

I've read a lot of very well meaning, starry-eyed opinions of NFTs and to be honest, most of what is claimed is true. But it belies the pragmatic reason that NFTs are popular: mass speculation.

People have been collecting things for years, often at prices that make outsiders scratch their heads. The difference is that the current mainstream hype around NFTs has nothing to do with the true fandom of collectibles of yesteryear, where speculation is a side-effect of scarcity. Current NFT hype is rooted solely in the fact that some people are (seemingly) making money flipping NFTs.

If there was a huge market for buying digital collectibles from artists, athletes, etc pre-NFT then we would see large markets for that. It's not as if there was anything stopping A-list celebs from dropping limited availability collectibles...there just must not have been much demand for it. Gaming has seen healthy digital asset economies because there is utility to use these items in-game. But prices have remained moderated because there is (usually) no secondary market, so people are paying roughly whatever utility they gain from using the items in-game.

So whilst NFTs have potential, and I'm sure we will see some successes, the current popularity is simply down to speculation, as with pretty much everything else crypto.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#488

Post by highfrequency »

jollybean wrote: post #448
highfrequency wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the baseball card’s value does not come from the fact that you can hold a piece of cardboard in your hand. Whether the data representation is a piece of cardboard or a JSON string replicated on 10,000 Ethereum nodes or a tulip or a Venmo balance is arbitrary; it just matters whether a lot of humans are looking at the same thing. And for the time being, a lot of humans are looking at crypto ledgers!

"Surely the baseball card’s value does not come from the fact that you can hold a piece of cardboard in your hand" Yes, the value of the Baseball Card is derived from the fact that it actually exists. The fact that someone is arguing that 'The Baseball Card' is not materially different from 'a number' is really an interesting cultural phenom.

It is a small leap. The balance in your bank account is also a number without a physical presence. It has value because you can convert it to physical goods. The same is true of a Bitcoin balance.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#489

Post by MR4D »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #446

NFT always felt ridiculous to me, but I though I understood the mechanism: "it's like baseball cards but in the blockchain". This week I learned it's not. NFT are Non Fungible Tokens, which means tokens that can't be divided, unlike crypto currencies like Bitcoin that can be divided in Satoshis. So you exchange the totality of it, or not. Basically it's a unique number in the blockchain you change ownership by applyi…

My favorite description, heard just this week:

“Here’s a receipt for the Mona Lisa that says that you own this receipt of the Mona Lisa”.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#490

Post by ashtonkem »

chrisco255 wrote: post #220
ashtonkem wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

> 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. That's very simple. Taylor Swift registers an on-chain address via ENS. TaylorSwift.eth, let's say. Then she publicly posts that public key to the world on social me…

Your scheme of public keys on websites only works for the Taylor Swifts of the world once they’ve become Taylor Swift. It depends heavily on the social capital of websites verifying identity, a system that is pretty useless for new artists.

This is roughly as practical as pgp key parties were: not practical at all. What are you going to do, go manually check the signing key on every artists website before doing some NFT transaction with them? Crypto already has a UX problem, don’t make it worse!

> A lot of NFTs forego the physical court enforcement over IP. In the same way that fake Luis Vuitton purses don't devalue the original, it's largely ignored. It's still quite possible to find free MP3s on torrents, but the vast majority of people nowadays just use streaming services because it's official and they want to support their favorite artists with revenue. Same will go with NFTs.

You can interpret this in one of two ways.

1) NFTs are completely incapable of managing royalties, so they don’t matter.

2) Things wildly unrelated to NFTs do royalties way better, so it doesn’t matter.

Neither is a good argument for NFTs, as they tacitly admit that NFTs are incapable of doing royalties at all.

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