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The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

nautil.us

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Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#111

Post by acdha »

Zamicol wrote: post #98
acdha wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial aviation is at least useful: every year many millions of people travel for business, school, family, and pleasure needs which would be non-trivial to replace and aviation cargo is a key part of the global supply chain. If Bitcoin turned off tomorrow, some speculators would be very upset and nobody else would notice because 13 years in it still hasn't found something it can do competitively with alternative…

The current monetary system has absurd levels of hand wavy magic. Are you familiar with what is being done on these systems? Uniswap alone did $1 billion in fees last year, a distributed, permissionless, unstoppable exchange. Ethereum did $10 billion in fees last year. I know someone who bought their house with a loan from Dai, which is far less hand wavy magic than Wells Fargo. It took them 30 minutes and no permiss…

> Are you familiar with what is being done on these systems? Uniswap alone did $1 billion in fees last year, a distributed, permissionless, unstoppable exchange. Ethereum did $10 billion in fees last year.

Consider whether bragging about the overhead fees for a system which statistically nobody uses is a great way to sell people on it.

> I know someone who bought their house with a loan from Dai, which is far less hand wavy magic than Wells Fargo. It took them 30 minutes and no permission for the powers that be was needed.

How often do you buy houses that giving up protections is an important selling point? Someone is going to be left holding the bag if they're not scrutinizing the borrower's ability to afford the property and its value.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#112

Post by gus_massa »

diogenesjunior wrote: post #31

One of my favorite rappers, Nas, is selling royalty rights to his songs as NFTs[0]. I think selling NFTs as if they were trading cards is silly, but what Nas is doing? I think that's actually pretty cool. Thoughts? 0: https://www.nme.com/news/music/nas-to-sell-royalty-rights-to...

Why a non fungible token instead of a totally fungible ERC20 token for each song? So each person can buy the amount they want.

Why not use a traditional method like Bowie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_bond ? That gives some protection in case he, his manager or the discographic decides to do creative accounting.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#113

Post by cmgxyz »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #107

Astonishingly low quality article for a publication as wonderful as Nautilus. For now I just want to comment on one piece, this meme that NFTs are killing the planet through consumption of insane amounts of energy is silly and falls apart with a moment's thought. All estimates of per-txn energy usage take the total number of transactions and divide by the total energy usage of the chain. However... bitcoin (and other…

> This number is very difficult to estimate, but seems to be on the order of 10kwh, or as much as driving your tesla ~30 miles, or running your dishwasher 5 times, or running your air conditioner for 5 hours, or doing any of a number of other things which people happily do every day without thinking twice. It would be nice if energy consumption was even lower, and multiple chains are working toward lowering it, but popular articles all seem to believe your NFT could power Berlin for a day if only you weren't being so selfish.

Those are all astonishingly energy consumptive tasks for something that, I agree with the article author, is pretty much bereft of any value.

By contrast, you could make... what, five hundred thousand credit card transactions with that same energy? That's f**king insane.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#114

Post by dvt »

AlexandrB wrote: post #80
dvt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is (in most cases) true, you still own, say, a poster you bought of some artwork. The NFT is a sort of "poster" you own. You still own it, so I don't understand your criticism.

Owning and NFT is more like owning a sign that says there's a poster on the wall in the next room that's yours. For many NFTs the poster may be removed at any time by a third party you have no influence over. All you own is the sign.

> Owning and NFT is more like owning a sign that says there's a poster on the wall in the next room that's yours.

Even if this is true, okay: you still own a sign that says there's a poster on the wall in the next room that's yours. People own all kinds of things that I personally think are dumb: from beanie babies to baseball cards. If we have a problem with abstraction, people trade all kinds of abstract things: from options to futures to a veritable zoo of other derivatives.

Again, not sure what the direct criticism here is.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#115

Post by Zamicol »

acdha wrote: post #111
Zamicol wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current monetary system has absurd levels of hand wavy magic. Are you familiar with what is being done on these systems? Uniswap alone did $1 billion in fees last year, a distributed, permissionless, unstoppable exchange. Ethereum did $10 billion in fees last year. I know someone who bought their house with a loan from Dai, which is far less hand wavy magic than Wells Fargo. It took them 30 minutes and no permiss…

> Are you familiar with what is being done on these systems? Uniswap alone did $1 billion in fees last year, a distributed, permissionless, unstoppable exchange. Ethereum did $10 billion in fees last year. Consider whether bragging about the overhead fees for a system which statistically nobody uses is a great way to sell people on it. > I know someone who bought their house with a loan from Dai, which is far less ha…

Fees show obvious usage. "Statistically nobody uses" isn't fair.

The fact that someone is paying interested on their house, a physical asset, to a blockchain application instead of Wells Fargo is a huge deal.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#116

Post by pphysch »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #77
pphysch wrote: post #2

don't worry, "web3" nonsense will be among the first bubbles to pop as US monetary policy tightens over the next couple years

I'd replace the 'as' with 'if' above. I'm not convinced the Fed has the guts to significantly tighten monetary policy at this point. It's not just the NFT market that would crash, it's stocks and real estate as well - followed by a pretty significant recession.

Yeah it will set off a major financial correction and temporary crisis in the markets, but the alternative, letting the status quo of negative interest rates drive further inflation, will lead to a historic economic crisis. SME failures and a general breakdown of social order.

Worst case scenario, they wait too long to raise rates and only do it as a knee-jerk reaction to an unfolding economic crisis that threatens to destabilize the entire USA. Then we get a full-spectrum crisis.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#117

Post by danaris »

tablespoon wrote: post #94
deergomoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even aside from the baloney idea of ownership they offer, the thing that continues to baffle me about NFTs is that the very nature of them assumes that ownership is inherently valuable. Buying a painting allows me to hang it on the wall and admire it, where is where I derive the value of owning that painting. Buying a digital videogame allows me play it, even though there is no physical good (and is also a questionab…

> ... Even aside from the baloney idea of ownership they offer, the thing that continues to baffle me about NFTs is that the very nature of them assumes that ownership is inherently valuable. It's less baffling if you realize it's just BS "power of positive thinking" [1]. A bunch of people latched on to NFT's because they wanted to be in on the ground floor of the next big speculative bubble. However the thing is fun…

It's not just positive thinking; it's about creating a new kind of scarcity-based status symbol.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#118

Post by danaris »

strict9 wrote: post #39
vultour wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This video game comparison is super incorrect. If you own an item in a game it’s very often to show it off because others can’t use it, it’s only for you. The closed source nature of games enables this. Nobody would buy them if they were easily used by anyone but you had a super legit receipt saying “mhm this guy actually paid for it”. NFTs of dumb copy pasted JPEGs are completely useless.

You misunderstood my argument. I'm not comparing NFTs to video games for ownership purposes, but it's "contribution to society." The statement that NFTs "have no societal or cultural value" has been historically attributed to video games and other forms of leisurely/fun activity. It's a bad argument.

The fact that a specific argument has been used in bad faith in the past does not mean it cannot be used in good faith.

Games are demonstrably something valuable: they are art, they are entertainment, they are a product.

NFTs are none of those things. They're just a new way to try to milk money out of people, who gain nothing meaningful in return.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#119

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

jtxt wrote: post #81
threeseed wrote: post #21

The worst thing is the constant and malicious lie being perpetuated. You do not own an NFT in any legal or moral sense. The ownership is not recognised in any country, by any court or international body. All you have is an entry in a logical database that says you own it. But unless you have signed a contract with the seller transferring or licensing copyright then it as meaningless as you buying a certificate saying…

Yeah I think the art/jpeg part of it is somewhat meaningless. The creator can probably still can claim copyright, and of course anyone can copy it. At one level it's lust a link to URL that can be bought and traded. But also: proof of ownership of a NFT can be access to something else, that can be the "utility" defined by the NFT creator. Like the Board Ape Yacht Club gives access to parties. Others give other value…

Almost all of the time that "utility" isn't controlled on-chain, so it requires trusting the people/company backing it. So it doesn't need an NFT, they could just as easily maintain a database.

Re: The Worrisome Rise of NFTs

#120

Post by quickthrowman »

golemotron wrote: post #22

> It’s possible to see a purpose for cryptocurrencies, but NFTs are (for now) almost comically bereft of anything most of us would associate with social or cultural value. They incentivize energy production and research into better energy production. That isn't trivial.

Jevons’ Paradox implies any energy efficiency gains from cryptocurrency will be used by .. cryptocurrency.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

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