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TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

thenftbay.org

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Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#231

Post by root_axis »

skizm wrote: post #83
jordemort wrote: post #55

If an NFT just contains a URL, is there anything stopping me from minting a bunch of new NFTs that contain the same URLs as existing NFTs? Is there some sort of uniqueness constraint on the URLs or is it just taken on faith that nobody would ever do that? What if I added some nonsense (like, I dunno, an fbclid) to the URL query string? What if I minted duplicates of all the NFTs on the Ethereum chain on the Solana ch…

You can tell who minted it. So the "uniqueness" comes from the fact that the original artist minted the NFT and the timestamp tells you if this was the first and/or only one minted by this artist for this URL.

In other words, the NFT adds nothing of value since you already have to establish an out of band trust chain with the artist.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#232

Post by joeman1000 »

I think misunderstanding of NFTs is caused by one or all of: a persons generation, a persons hatred of crypto, a persons lack of openness to change.

- Generational: I grew up playing Habbo hotel, club penguin, TF2. I am comfortable with the idea of digital goods. You pay for something that is not real and can sell ‘it’ later. ‘Ownership’ is a decidedly different concept for me and many other younger people. If I ‘own’ a hat in TF2, I can display it on my avatar, but I really have nothing. It’s a piece of code in Valve servers that renders some pixels on my characters head. Imagine if you buy some NFT art, and the metaverse becomes popular. You will have the ability to display the art (in your ‘house’ or something). If you think this is dorky and no one will bother, think about the resistance then explosion of social media in the mid 2010s.

- Hatred of crypto: people hate crypto ideas for various reasons. Either environmental reasons, social pressure (from news and friends), fear of missing out, resentment at having missed out etc. I don’t comment on the validity of these beliefs, but they cloud peoples judgement either way.

- Lack of openness to change: it is just a weird concept, like many crypto concepts. Even the thought that there could be underlying value to crypto currency was indeed a radical notion. Now it is mostly accepted (in my experience). The only people who don’t accept it are older and less willing to uproot the institutions which served them so well. Banks and traditional finance are still entrenched in our society. There are a huge set of people that have interests which oppose crypto. This is fine, I don’t blame them for disliking crypto. It is just something to keep in mind when making decisions.

I hope my perspective helps some people.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#233

Post by nyhc99 »

pavlov wrote: post #205
clippablematt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youre almost there. But its more like tens of thousands of people putting hundreds of billions of dollars on the line to say that they witnessed the author sign your book, verifying your claims to whoever challenges them. Which turns out to be pretty useful and maybe have value.

Well, they didn’t actually witness the author signing anything. They witnessed the numbered piece of paper on a table in a bookstore, and the author may or may not have been present. To know if this piece of paper was actually touched by the author, we still need verification outside of the blockchain. It’s not obvious to me that all this has any value. “The author probably blessed a number” certainly doesn’t have th…

Anyone at any time can see the wallet address that created the NFT. It's trivial for any author or creator to publish their wallet address; it's simply a short hash value. That's the "verification outside of the blockchain" that you seem to think is such a stumbling point. I would suggest thinking more on the subject if it isn't obvious to you that this has value.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#234

Post by SrslyJosh »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #217
reginold wrote: post #146

If these images were stored on the blockchain, would that make a difference?

None at all, since those "unique" assets can be copied freely because the blockchain is public. I'm really puzzled about why aren't they publishing a low-res copy of the image, and sending the buyer of the NFT the unpublished high-res version. That way only the buyer (and the artist) would have that file, and by keeping it secret they could make it rare, albeit not necessarily valuable.

Same reason they're not assigning copyright or granting a commercial license as part of the sale -- it's just a scam, and those things aren't necessary for the scam to function.

And because the marks think that they're gonna get rich off owning a blockchain pog with a link to a monkey jpeg, the art doesn't have to be good, either.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#235

Post by SrslyJosh »

diveanon wrote: post #223

ITT: People who don't know what NFT's are explaining what they think NFT's are to other people who don't know what NFT's are. HN is really good for tech & SF housing market news, but god awful for any other types of information because the users here think they are experts on every topic. If you are actually interested in how NFT's work, interesting projects using them, or just want to have a conversation around the…

> ITT: People who don't know what NFT's are explaining what they think NFT's are to other people who don't know what NFT's are.

Then you should explain what they are.

If you can't (or won't), why should we care?

> If you are actually interested in how NFT's work, interesting projects using them, or just want to have a conversation around the topic that isn't just snarky morons jacking each other off, I highly encourage you to engage some of these communities on twitter, telegram, or discord.

If it's not a scam or cult, then just publish something on the web. "Can't explain it here, come chat with us on discord" has big "free personality test" vibes.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#236

Post by malermeister »

NFTs are pure capitalist ideology. They introduce artificial scarcity for no good reason, without providing any actual value.

You can have the exact same bytes without an NFT backing it up and have functionally the same goods - as demonstrated here.

Cryptowarriors will come along and say something about how the NFT proves "ownership" or "provenance", but that's just ideological blindness. All NFTs do is wrap an pointless market layer around a digital good, for no reason and with no benefit to anyone, while using up electricity and killing the planet to power the insanity. Ideology at its worst.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#237

Post by nybble41 »

kashyapc wrote: post #96
theshadowknows wrote: post #11

I used to come onto HN and see crypto-coin news and I'd jump into the comments and ask something along the lines of "But isn't bitcoin and all the other things like it just a giant scam?" and someone who believed in Bitcoin to be a transformative technology would jump in and explain the real potential. I personally still think it's sort of a scam, but I'm happy for all of the people who used it to get rich....so, alo…

I'll quote this response[1] from the other day's thread: "Imagine a world where all or most of our interactions are in the digital realm. When you wake up in this place you are naked, cannot show anyone anything about yourself, but you are very rich. Now how do you show others that you are rich? Simple, you buy Gucci NFT clothes that other naked peasants can see. That's what's happening." Someone in the thread elabor…

That last point ("can set fire to it at any time") is wrong, at least for the many NFTs which use decentralized content-addressed hosting such as IPFS. Or even without the hosting, as long as the NFT identifies the content in sufficient detail—a hash is best but a plain-English description can also work. You just need to save the content yourself so it doesn't disappear if the original host shuts down. No matter what the seller does you'll still have your certificate.

I mostly agree regarding the limited practical value of most art NFTs, but then you could say the same about signed & numbered physical prints which are otherwise indistinguishable from their unsigned/unnumbered (but cheaper) equivalents—yet people pay a premium for those too.

NFTs are pretty general, so one could associate them with licensing or something like a VIP / backstage pass or rewards club membership. In the absence of these things, however, what you're mostly buying is the digital equivalent of the artist's autograph. Which isn't exactly nothing, but I still have a hard time justifying the prices many of these NFTs trade at.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#238

Post by nybble41 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #143
mythz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is running the same scam as buying a Star [1], except it's done on a blockchain selling to greater fools who are being promised of untold riches that will come their way from buying a row in a database containing a link to a CDN [1] https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795674696597506

The problem with "buying a star" or selling a star is there really is no provenance for it. Your bank account is simply a row in a Cobol database managed by some archaic institution. Your stocks in your Robinhood app are the same. You seem to be demeaning the value of database records when so much of the world economy is merely that.

> Your bank account is simply a row in a Cobol database managed by some archaic institution.

Your bank account is a set of contracts between you and your bank which say that when you want to withdraw funds or instruct the bank to send some of your money to someone else they are obligated to comply. The database is merely a summary of your interactions with the bank via those contracts, and their current obligations toward you. Delete the database and those contracts still exist, though the content may need to be reconstructed from other sources.

A similar argument can be made for stocks.

NFTs are just the database entries without the contracts. They have their uses, but it's not really the same thing at all.

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#239

Post by Jensson »

nyhc99 wrote: post #233
pavlov wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they didn’t actually witness the author signing anything. They witnessed the numbered piece of paper on a table in a bookstore, and the author may or may not have been present. To know if this piece of paper was actually touched by the author, we still need verification outside of the blockchain. It’s not obvious to me that all this has any value. “The author probably blessed a number” certainly doesn’t have th…

Anyone at any time can see the wallet address that created the NFT. It's trivial for any author or creator to publish their wallet address; it's simply a short hash value. That's the "verification outside of the blockchain" that you seem to think is such a stumbling point. I would suggest thinking more on the subject if it isn't obvious to you that this has value.

> It's trivial for any author or creator to publish their wallet address; it's simply a short hash value.

It's also trivial for any author to change that message to a new hash so they can sell their NFT's again. Or the service where that message was posted might disappear, so you can no longer view the message and therefore nobody knows that the NFT is "authentic". So you basically get the same problem as any central authority of trust. In this case you trust the message board the author posts on, and you trust the author, and you have to also trust the service hosting whatever art the NFT points to. If you trust those then why not just trust a regular exchange instead?

Re: TheNFTbay.org – The Billion Dollar Torrent (All NFT's from Ethereum and Solana)

#240

Post by edanm »

joeman1000 wrote: post #232

I think misunderstanding of NFTs is caused by one or all of: a persons generation, a persons hatred of crypto, a persons lack of openness to change. - Generational: I grew up playing Habbo hotel, club penguin, TF2. I am comfortable with the idea of digital goods. You pay for something that is not real and can sell ‘it’ later. ‘Ownership’ is a decidedly different concept for me and many other younger people. If I ‘own…

I mean, all of these are plausible reasons to misunderstand/hate NFTs.

Then again, it's also possible that people who dislike NFTs don't misunderstand or hate them, they understand them perfectly and hate them anyway. And maybe you misunderstand them as well.

NFT is just a technology. It's entirely possible to understand the technology and still hate it, e.g. I understand what nuclear weapons can do, yet I still hate them to some extent and would prefer they didn't exist.

Not saying this is correct, just saying that you don't seem to leave open that possibility in your post. For the record, I don't really get NFTs. I mean, I kind of get how it's the same as autographs / collectibles, which I vaguely understand, but I don't particularly get how mapping that into a digital-only setting makes sense to people. But then I probably fall into some of your boxes above :) (I'm 36, I think blockchain is mostly overhyped though I do think cryptocurrencies specifically are interesting. I do think I'm open to change but who knows?)

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