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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

#601

Post by user-the-name »

miracle2k wrote: post #562
user-the-name wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why do you say that is the point?

Because that's the reason people value the NFT. The fact that someone can take a picture of the Mona Lisa and try to sell it as an NFT is not the point; people don't value that NFT, and NFTs are not designed to prevent that from happening. It is a simple ledger entry that records the ownership of an edition released by an artist, and people choose to value it because of that.

It is none of those things. It does not record ownership, there is no guarantee it is released by an artist... And people do not really value them either, other than people speculating or scamming.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#602

Post by denton-scratch »

Sargos wrote: post #593
denton-scratch wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ETH (or whatever) ecosystem "Ecosystem" is a word that I believe sprung to life in the 70s, referring to the entire collection of organisms inhabiting a 'place', along with the weather conditions etc. in that place. The term was coined because without it, you need (or rather, I needed) 16 words to express it. So it bothers me when people use the term to refer to collections of stuff that's never been alive: the Jav…

"system" denotes something which was designed to work as a whole. Pieces are connected together by a manufacturer to build a system. The operating system is a kernel, UI, tools, etc taken by a creator and put together into a packaged tool that people can use on their computers. "ecosystem" denotes an environment created by some kind of vessel e.g. Earth, the ocean, Ethereum, etc where independent entities can be crea…

> "system" denotes something which was designed to work as a whole.

I don't agree that systems have to be designed.

I mean, it depends on what you mean by "system" - was The Capitalist System designed? Who designed it? The atmosphere is a system, by most standards; it wasn't designed (or if it was, I'll shoot the designer). The human brain has most of the properties I'd expect a "system" to have; but hopefully you share my view that it wasn't designed.

But I'm not really bothered what a "system" is. I was just having a rant about words that used to mean something specific, until they were borged by lazy opinion-formers and made into cliches, rendering them useless for their original specific denotation. C.f. "epicenter".

(This seems to be a thing I care about more than other people; discount my remarks accordingly)

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#603

Post by smallnamespace »

seanhunter wrote: post #473
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…

Non-fungible doesn't mean something can't be divided, it means a specific one just can't be substituted for another one. An example: If I trade oil, one barrel of oil with a certain spec[1] is fungible with another barrel of oil with the same spec. If I sell you some oil you don't care which specific barrel you get as long as it's the same kind of thing. Likewise if you borrow 10 dollars from me you can pay me back w…

Divisability is often related to fungibility in that the ability to divide a resource is a way to create fungibility (e.g. the sea of oil is split into barrels)

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#604

Post by mathdroid »

meheleventyone wrote: post #296
mathdroid wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean everyone can verify the ownership too since it's on the public blockchain?

Right but who verifies that the particular NFT is the original one that has all the feel good magic and not a copy someone else minted?

You can see which collection an NFT belongs to, their contract addresses, and transaction history. This is a non-problem. I'm sure it will be visible in Twitter's implementation too

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#605

Post by sneak »

vintermann wrote: post #258
sneak wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and then returned it quietly to the person who had loaned it to him temporarily to elevate his brand?

That's at least riskier to do with "fiat" (not that it would be legal with blockchain money either).

Why would it be illegal? Wash sales of NFTs aren’t illegal, as far as I understand. It could be a legitimate marketing procedure.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#606

Post by jcelerier »

user-the-name wrote: post #600
jcelerier wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yes, but if you buy a painting you have the exact same issue no ?

No?

... you think counterfeits are not a thing ? People spend inordinate amounts of time and money to ensure that the painting the buy is indeed from the painter it is said to come from

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#607

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #598
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news, you can sue. Regulation is applied in some circumstances and there's a lot of movement for further clarification at the moment. https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-sec-sues-bitconnect-fo... https://www.courthousenews.com/class-claims-securities-backe... https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/coinseed... https://www.paulweiss.com/practices/litigation/white-collar-... https://www.cbsnews.com/n…

Sue who?

Did you click through to any of those links? People that are running scams. If you have standing sue them.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#608

Post by int_19h »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #583
int_19h wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing feels like some kind of postmodernist performance art about property and ownership. Actually, come to think of it, maybe that's a great idea. If people ask questions about NFTs, they might start asking more questions about intellectual property as well, and ultimately about property rights in general. In a sense, NFT is the ultimate absentee property - it's impossible to use or occupy. It's a title to…

I'm slightly afraid of the asking because of what answers parties might arrive to. Someone pushing for intellectual property maximalism might see in NFTs a technical counterpart to the legal monopoly on the ownership of digital information. Why not encode the ownership of a copy of the newest game as a NFT, and then have the console check at startup? And similarlines of thought that I don't have the imagination to co…

I mean, that's basically just DRM, and we already have it - the blockchain adds nothing to the picture.

Well, such validation would continue working for as long as the blockchain on which the tokens are checked is still running, as opposed to when the manufacturer takes down their DRM servers. But that's added convenience to the user; the manufacturer actually loses a degree of control, so I don't see why they'd go for it?

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#609

Post by thebean11 »

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…

Fragileness is not a requirement for rarity, you can just as easily print fewer baseball cards / NFTs to begin with to reach the desired circulating supply.

Beyond that though, keys get lost so NFTs do have a mechanism of leaving circulation.

Re: NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites

#610

Post by thebean11 »

jameshart wrote: post #492
tel wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then I come by and scan your card and print a fresh one. This is fairly cheap to do. Why is mine not valuable? Does this process devalue yours? NFTs posit that the answer is that yours isn’t authentic and the process won’t devalue mine because mine is. And they offer an algorithmic mechanism to enforce and verify authenticity. In the baseball card world, that ought to be true, but may not be. Maybe my fake is suf…

Your copy doesn't just lack 'authenticity', it also lacks something uncopyable, and which is only relvant to physical artifacts: 'age'. The fact that digital copies can be perfect, and never age or deteriorate due to the inevitable march of entropy, is a fundamental difference and yes that affects how valuable 'owning' a digital artifact is versus owning a physical one.

> The fact that digital copies can be perfect

But you've hit on exact problem the blockchain solved from day 1, you can copy the image (just like you can download hi resolution scans of baseball cards) but the underlying "cardboard" cannot be copied, or copies can be detected with 100% accuracy (depending on how you look at it).

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