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TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

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Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#181

Post by GDC7 »

gruez wrote: post #178
GDC7 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like people paying millions for an original painting rather than getting a replica made for $100k (or whatever) for their private collection? The official art market action amounts to 50B/yr. Of the aforementioned figure the vast majority of that is then sent on loan to museums and thus produces revenues for the museum and passive income for the owner. Let's say 5B is the amount that people pay yearly for paintings…

>Of the aforementioned figure the vast majority of that is then sent on loan to museums and thus produces revenues for the museum and passive income for the owner. Source? Moreover, considering that museums need donations/government subsidies to stay afloat, I doubt "making money" is the primary reason people/institutions buy art. >5B/5M = 1000 individuals. >Of course we are 8 billion humans, you'll always find 1000…

> The thing that ties both of them is spending money on a non-productive asset, which serves as a costly signal of your wealth

For a common sense person only an expensive painting serves as tool to signal one's wealth.

An expensive NFT is a tool to signal one's foolishness. For all practical purposes it's like paying 6 figures for some bottled air sampled in Times Square and trying to use it as a way to impress people.

You'd get a huge minus both in your wallet as well as your social status. You could be living in Versailles but if you get to the last room and show people your collection of hashes....then you throw all the other 1000 gold plated rooms straight into the bin and your guests will laugh at you.

That is of course unless you preselect people who hang out in /r/NFTs and only ever invite them over. There's only 237k of them.

Let's say 25% would endorse spending 6 figures for an NFT and still think highly of you. So that's 60k people.

You have to preselect among 60k people on the planet, whereas the expensive paintings would get you the admiration of each and every of the 8.2 billion people. No preselection needed.

Again: Common sense.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#182

Post by gfodor »

zepto wrote: post #180
gfodor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, my point wasn’t to emphasize cryptovoxels but provide an existence proof where holding an NFT confers unique rights. There are many others.

This kind of conferring of unique rights is nothing to do with NFTs. For example, I can offer a free milkshake to anyone who parks in my parking lot in a yellow car. Then yellow car isn’t doing anything in this situation, I am, and if I can always change my mind. Then same is true with cryptovoxels and NFTs.

It has as much to do with NFTs as your example has to do with your parking lot, which is not nothing.

The point is if 1M people all agreed to give a free milkshake to people who parked in your parking lot, the parking lot is pretty important.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#183

Post by gfodor »

Volundr wrote: post #160
gfodor wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used meta because I assumed you’d be aware of what I was referring to instead of cryptovoxels, sommium space, or webaverse. If you grant that the meta example would be useful if it exists, then we’d just be haggling over if eg cryptovoxels has enough analogous utility to pull it into the set of things you consider worthy.

I'm not familiar with any of these, but then I'm not familiar with Meta Horizon either. I'll be the first to admit I'm not up on what the "cool kids" are doing. If it helps feel free to imagine your explaining this to your culturally clueless but technically savvy grandpa. But looking at these, I'm just not seeing the value that NFTs have provided vs already existing methods. For example I'm looking at https://somniu…

> But what prevents me from simply taking the source image and simply minting my own NFT and displaying it?

Because the NFT isn't just a pointer to an image, it's a tuple that also includes which wallet address is granting you that NFT. So, the "real" NFT for a work is the one granted by the original artist or other authority people culturally agree upon as the one that has real social and economic value. (For example, the artist may post the public key somewhere authoritatively that conveys it is the one they've sanctioned.)

It effectively acts as a fully-provable (and scarce) signature by the artist, and eventually if it isn't already, will be displayed visually on the work in these apps to confer legitimacy. Putting up an image that isn't signed by the original artist will be possible, but it won't confer the same status to a person the genuine NFT would, since observers will be able to know it is not the genuine NFT.

And of course, the reason you'd want to use this kind of environment is self-referential: you want to use it because you want the status or other benefits that come from being able to put your genuine NFTs on display. For example, it can show how wealthy you are, show that you are willing to patronize artists, cause the original artist to come visit your showroom, etc.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#184

Post by gfodor »

zepto wrote: post #159
gfodor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree a lot is lost in the noise due to presumption about what the other side means when they’re using “ownership.”

This isn’t correct. People outside the ‘community’ are using a long established meaning. People within the community are using a meaning that has essentially none of the attributes of the conventional definition while claiming that the meaning is the same . This isn’t a question of two sides disagreeing over meanings. It’s a question of a deceptive use of a very well established pre-existing term.

No, there are already a variety of uses of the term ownership. For example, copyright ownership, license ownership, or physical ownership. There isn’t a single definition, and the definitions of ownership have always been contextual and evolve based on things like norms and technological changes.

The ownership of NFTs is the ability to assert you control the keys of a wallet pointing to a tuple that pairs, for example, a URL to a smart contract. Both of these elements in the tuple then confer certain things by proxy: the URL a proxy to the work, and the smart contract a proxy to an authority. Once that linkage is accepted by a third party, then it serves as a form of semantic ownership with contextual benefits (there are several contemporary realized and theoretical future ones.)

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#185

Post by gfodor »

zepto wrote: post #140
gfodor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I own my home in the eyes of most people I care about (for example, most citizens and authorities of the United States.) But even within the US there are for example socialists who reject the idea I own my home. They just don’t have the means to overturn this particular norm within the sovereignty of my country - but in some circles like that insofar as “being a homeowner” confers privileges such privileges woul…

Sure but that’s what people mean by ‘at large society’. The fact that there are a few socialists tho object is irrelevant.

When it comes to physical land and real estate then I agree there is a pretty natural definition of “at large” - the sovereignties the land is located within.

For other things like copyright and other extra-physical forms of ownership that span society at large, there is no macro set of laws governing these things universally so context matters.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#186

Post by gfodor »

zepto wrote: post #148
gfodor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you presume that we will in large part be continually living in a video game of varying levels of immersion relatively soon then this becomes something fairly significant.

I partially agree with this. But then why all the bullshit? Why don’t people just come out and say that it’s all about in-game items for the metaverse rather than all the talk about owning media? Nothing suggests that existing NFTs will be relevant in that world even if the technology is. It’s also not obvious that a distributed ledger has an advantage over a centralized one.

I think whenever you see someone say "owning media" you should re-write it in your brain as "owning the only author-signed copy of media" - that's probably the most effective rewrite that maximizes the utility of analogy.

The value of the distributed ledger is rooted in a theory: that it will be, in the long term, the most durable and agreed upon place to look to for arbitrary third parties to decide whose artist's signature is legitimate.

The thing that suggests the NFTs of the world today will be relevant in that future world is pretty simple: take any piece of art where the artist involved has publicly sanctioned an NFT for it, and ask the question if the signature of that artist on that work will theoretically be something valued by society in the future. (Grounded by the well placed assumption that this is truly non-fungible - the artist can't even reneg on this, since history will record this was the original.) The number of times you can affirm this as a "yes" should increase the weight you put on the hypothesis today's NFTs will be valuable in the future.

It's worth noting: these two hypotheses are decoupled. The blockchain has already been written. So even if the idea of an NFT burns out so much that future artists do not make them anymore, this doesn't necessarily mean the NFTs that exist today will not be valuable or recognized. They are in the public record, and those who control the wallets they are assigned to will always be able to prove they are the owners of them, even if the chains they are on stop adding new blocks in the future.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#187

Post by zepto »

gfodor wrote: post #184
zepto wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t correct. People outside the ‘community’ are using a long established meaning. People within the community are using a meaning that has essentially none of the attributes of the conventional definition while claiming that the meaning is the same . This isn’t a question of two sides disagreeing over meanings. It’s a question of a deceptive use of a very well established pre-existing term.

No, there are already a variety of uses of the term ownership. For example, copyright ownership, license ownership, or physical ownership. There isn’t a single definition, and the definitions of ownership have always been contextual and evolve based on things like norms and technological changes. The ownership of NFTs is the ability to assert you control the keys of a wallet pointing to a tuple that pairs, for exampl…

> There isn’t a single definition

True but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a commonality to the meaning.

We don’t use the term ‘ownership’ to refer to preparing food, or driving a car for example.

And as I have pointed out. The lie is not that people don’t own NFTs. They do.

The lie is that NFTs confer ownership of the media that point to.

> Once that linkage is accepted by a third party, then it serves as a form of semantic ownership with contextual benefits

Only in the sense that owning a movie ticket provides benefits at a particular theater.

You can also keep the ticket stub as a memento or sell it if you like.

NFTs are no different.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#188

Post by zepto »

gfodor wrote: post #185
zepto wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but that’s what people mean by ‘at large society’. The fact that there are a few socialists tho object is irrelevant.

When it comes to physical land and real estate then I agree there is a pretty natural definition of “at large” - the sovereignties the land is located within. For other things like copyright and other extra-physical forms of ownership that span society at large, there is no macro set of laws governing these things universally so context matters.

There are in fact laws governing copyright, and international agreements.

Using the words macro and universally allow your statement to be true in the most literal sense that there are no universal laws, but otherwise, copyright is just as universal as land ownership. I.e. most places have a version of it, but there are many local variations.

Arguably, copyright is probably more universal than land ownership since it is a newer concept and there is less local divergence.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#189

Post by zepto »

gfodor wrote: post #186
zepto wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree with this. But then why all the bullshit? Why don’t people just come out and say that it’s all about in-game items for the metaverse rather than all the talk about owning media? Nothing suggests that existing NFTs will be relevant in that world even if the technology is. It’s also not obvious that a distributed ledger has an advantage over a centralized one.

I think whenever you see someone say "owning media" you should re-write it in your brain as "owning the only author-signed copy of media" - that's probably the most effective rewrite that maximizes the utility of analogy. The value of the distributed ledger is rooted in a theory: that it will be, in the long term, the most durable and agreed upon place to look to for arbitrary third parties to decide whose artist's s…

NFTs are not signatures on works of art. The media is not signed by the NFT.

A signed artwork is more valuable than an unsigned artwork.

However NFTs do not create signed artworks. The artwork remains the same.

The NFT is just a receipt for someone paying money to someone else, who in some cases is linked to the an artist.

Is that valuable? Maybe. I concede that a bill of sale from some point along the chain of ownership of ‘the last supper’ might have value to some kind of collector.

But, an NFT is not equivalent even to the bill of sale.

If you have the bill of sale, you have a unique historical item, whereas the NFT is on the public blockchain where everyone can see it and copy of it, so even that doesn’t have any scarcity.

Both the media and the NFT are infinitely copyable.

Re: TheNFTBay: Fake, but Worth Discussing

#190

Post by gfodor »

zepto wrote: post #189
gfodor wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think whenever you see someone say "owning media" you should re-write it in your brain as "owning the only author-signed copy of media" - that's probably the most effective rewrite that maximizes the utility of analogy. The value of the distributed ledger is rooted in a theory: that it will be, in the long term, the most durable and agreed upon place to look to for arbitrary third parties to decide whose artist's s…

NFTs are not signatures on works of art. The media is not signed by the NFT. A signed artwork is more valuable than an unsigned artwork. However NFTs do not create signed artworks. The artwork remains the same. The NFT is just a receipt for someone paying money to someone else, who in some cases is linked to the an artist. Is that valuable? Maybe. I concede that a bill of sale from some point along the chain of owner…

You seem determined to think with analogies. If my attempt above didn’t help you understand why people are paying tons of money for these things, I’m afraid I’ve run out of ways to help.
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