NFTs are bullshit.
NFT Canon
11–20 of 114 posts
Re: NFT Canon
#12It might be covered in one of the resources, but when people talk about NFTs, they just mean some token on Ethereum that the issuer of said coin say is "the" product. For instance, the NFT for "the first tweet" that sold is just someone created an Ethereum token and said "this one is the first tweet", presumably w/ some text in the token that states the tweet. In that regard, its kind of centralized. There can be mul…
> there is no dispute about what the original is
Still though, the value of collectible goes up if you have extensive documentation proving it is the original, vs it just merely being the original, or worse, it being the original and someone else having extensive documentation convincingly making the case that their counterfeit is actually the original.
Re: NFT Canon
#13It might be covered in one of the resources, but when people talk about NFTs, they just mean some token on Ethereum that the issuer of said coin say is "the" product. For instance, the NFT for "the first tweet" that sold is just someone created an Ethereum token and said "this one is the first tweet", presumably w/ some text in the token that states the tweet. In that regard, its kind of centralized. There can be mul…
It's a simulacrum, in the post-modern sense.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a simulacrum is a copy of something that has itself become hyper-real and usurped the reality of the original. The canonical example is Disney World, which is a copy of Disneyland, which is itself a copy of many elements of Americana (Louisiana Bayou, the frontier West, Main Street USA, etc.) Disney World has eclipsed Disneyland in visitors, which itself has eclipsed visits to various small town main streets or the Louisiana bayous. You plan a family vacation to Disney World, you don't plan a trip to Bumfuck, Wyoming. Even though it's a copy of a copy (and a poor one at that), its reality has eclipsed that of the original, just because the original is hard to get to and kind of boring.
Similar with NFTs. Yes, you can make an NFT of the Mona Lisa and claim that you have the only one. Yes, you're a lying swindler and probably a bad person. But your copy is much easier to trade, move around, and store than the actual Mona Lisa. And just as there's only one original Mona Lisa, there's only one original NFT of the Mona Lisa, so your copy still has the same scarcity. As more capital comes onto the blockchain, your NFT is likely to acquire its own hyper-reality and become the Mona Lisa, and the original painting will be hidden away in a museum somewhere and disappear from trading.
Re: NFT Canon
#14This makes it clear to me that a16z are in the same league as penny stock pumping grifters. It does seem obvious in retrospect.
Re: NFT Canon
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that's what I figured. I get the idea of it being tied to a game, but you don't really get the benefit of block chain, except for making the token sellable without having to go through the proper market channels. Overall I'm very bullish on crypto as digital gold, less so on Ethereum style apps and even less so on NFTs. It's an interesting litmus test. I see a lot of crypto enthusiasts speak highly about NFTs w…
> I see a lot of crypto enthusiasts speak highly about NFTs which I find odd. They generally have very well thought out and reasoned arguments for Bitcoin as a digital store of wealth, but then they go into NFTs and talk about scarcity. I've seen the opposite - most crypto enthusiasts I have spoken to don't seem to understand NFTs at all / why they are considered valuable by other people. I fit into that camp. > Over…
> Essentially, an app that you can deposit funds into, earn interest that is well above what your bank account pays, and earns rewards that are competitive (or ideally beat) with credit cards.
That would be fantastic! Give me 10% interest on my wallet, and 10% "cashback" for my purchases with crypto, and I'll switch my whole financial life to crypto.
Re: NFT Canon
#16Uhhh this isn’t a canon so much as a cannon for a VC to inject their own financial incentives into your thinking. Even if they’re wrong about what they cite, any conversation or discussion just draws more attention to them versus the competition. If you want to learn about NFTs, do you own research. Don’t lend your critical thinking resources to an investor unless they’re paying handsomely.
Re: NFT Canon
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see a lot of crypto enthusiasts speak highly about NFTs which I find odd. They generally have very well thought out and reasoned arguments for Bitcoin as a digital store of wealth, but then they go into NFTs and talk about scarcity. I've seen the opposite - most crypto enthusiasts I have spoken to don't seem to understand NFTs at all / why they are considered valuable by other people. I fit into that camp. > Over…
> Essentially, an app that you can deposit funds into, earn interest that is well above what your bank account pays, and earns rewards that are competitive (or ideally beat) with credit cards. That would be fantastic! Give me 10% interest on my wallet, and 10% "cashback" for my purchases with crypto, and I'll switch my whole financial life to crypto.
10% cashback is probably pushing it unless the wallet is giving away "platform tokens" as a growth hack at the beginning. 2 to 3% is probably more realistic given what merchants pay credit card providers.
Long term, if merchants were smart, they'd make their own reward systems on top of this to encourage usage.
Re: NFT Canon
#18It might be covered in one of the resources, but when people talk about NFTs, they just mean some token on Ethereum that the issuer of said coin say is "the" product. For instance, the NFT for "the first tweet" that sold is just someone created an Ethereum token and said "this one is the first tweet", presumably w/ some text in the token that states the tweet. In that regard, its kind of centralized. There can be mul…
It's a simulacrum, in the post-modern sense. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a simulacrum is a copy of something that has itself become hyper-real and usurped the reality of the original. The canonical example is Disney World, which is a copy of Disneyland, which is itself a copy of many elements of Americana (Louisiana Bayou, the frontier West, Main Street USA, etc.) Disney World has eclipsed Disneyla…
> And just as there's only one original Mona Lisa, there's only one original NFT of the Mona Lisa
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding, but can't you create as many NFTs of the Mona Lisa as you want? What's to stop someone from just creating a second one, even the original owner of the Mona Lisa? You can't copy the Mona Lisa (at least not in such a way as to call it the original), but you can make another NFT of the real Mona Lisa and...as far as I can tell it's just as good.
I realize you can't copy the chain that's already descended from the first NFT, but why does that matter? You can still say this is a genuine NFT for the real Mona Lisa, and the problem is you can make as many of those as you want. Or at least that's how I understand it.
Copying something digital is very different from copying something molecular. A digital copy is as good as the original. A molecular copy is almost certainly possible to distinguish, and if you can't you may as well not have an original.
Re: NFT Canon
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that's what I figured. I get the idea of it being tied to a game, but you don't really get the benefit of block chain, except for making the token sellable without having to go through the proper market channels. Overall I'm very bullish on crypto as digital gold, less so on Ethereum style apps and even less so on NFTs. It's an interesting litmus test. I see a lot of crypto enthusiasts speak highly about NFTs w…
> I see a lot of crypto enthusiasts speak highly about NFTs which I find odd. They generally have very well thought out and reasoned arguments for Bitcoin as a digital store of wealth, but then they go into NFTs and talk about scarcity. I've seen the opposite - most crypto enthusiasts I have spoken to don't seem to understand NFTs at all / why they are considered valuable by other people. I fit into that camp. > Over…
Why does defi imply higher interest rates?
Re: NFT Canon
#20It might be covered in one of the resources, but when people talk about NFTs, they just mean some token on Ethereum that the issuer of said coin say is "the" product. For instance, the NFT for "the first tweet" that sold is just someone created an Ethereum token and said "this one is the first tweet", presumably w/ some text in the token that states the tweet. In that regard, its kind of centralized. There can be mul…
In reality, I think a lot of art these days isn't created by the artist, at least not mostly - it's created by their technicians or students or other people they employ and then just given their blessing, maybe with a few last finishing touches. The thing that makes it not a forgery is literally the artist's blessing; in principle you could even have a "forgery" that was created by the same person as the genuine article. This isn't widely advertised for obvious reasons but it isn't exactly a secret either, and it's not really a new thing - the actual creation of some of the classic, famous fine art paintings was a lot like this too and it makes verifying authenticity very interesting.