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The Tinkerbell Griftopia

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#161

Post by mleonhard »

dbmikus wrote: post #49
danielvf wrote: post #21

I work in the crypto industry right now - my job is to keep bad guys from stealing XXX millions of dollars. I've also worked on a team that has done the tech side of several record breaking NFT's sales. And I've sold my own NFTS for fun, and strangers have bought them (wat!). I'm not a "believer". Crypto is indeed full of idiots - and scammers - and crazy people who will say anything to see the token they hold go up…

I really agree that it's good to go in with a level head. If you highlight the extremes of either "believers" or "non-believers", both sides seem like low effort takes. I bucketed crypto projects into two categories: (1) things that are only possible on crypto networks, and (2) things that people aren't motivated to do on other networks. For example, the US is woefully missing a banking API, especially for consumers.…

Any technological progress obtained from cryptocurrency research will be the most expensive progress ever purchased in human history.

The costs come from:

- Opportunity cost of having lots of smart people focusing on cryptocurrency who could have been researching medicine, clean energy, or space tech.

- Money spent on manufacturing and maintaining the cryptocurrency mining equipment. Those factories could be making other products that directly benefit peoples' lives. We currently have a shortage of electronics because of the pandemic. Cryptocurrency mining makes that shortage worse.

- Environmental pollution produced by the power plants used for cryptocurrency mining. For every $1 a miner spends on electricity, the rest of society will pay $N to remove the CO2 later. Also, emissions from coal power plants often poison people and soil nearby.

- Increased environmental destruction caused by digging up energy and building and running more power plants.

The ultimate benefit will not be worth the cost. How could it?

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#162

Post by [deleted] »

asfgfsigninoi wrote: post #6

>But unlike say the eternal emacs/vim war, the divisions on this topic are entirely philosophical and about culture instead of technology. What? My problem with "crypto assets" is that "blockchains" are outperformed by a System/360 while costing billions of dollars to run and drawing about the same power as all datacenters in the world put together. The fact that I like Star Trek is irrelevant.

[deleted]

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#163

Post by casi18 »

VHRanger wrote: post #139
fredfoobar wrote: post #93

The thing is, there isn't a bigger grifter than Stephen Diehl.

I dont see him selling anything You can just admit you dont like that he casts shade on stuff you like

his company makes the closed source financial infrastructure for digitising cash for multinational corporations, that is made useless by crypto becoming popular.

of course he doesnt mention this when writing hit pieces on crypto culture.

https://twitter.com/TBSocialist/status/1456963980577153026?s...

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#164

Post by kibwen »

paconbork wrote: post #156
esja wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculation and money laundering. NFTs are perfect for the latter.

Really that's just an inherited property from physical art

Digital art has been free of this "inheritance" for years. We don't need to impose the arbitrary constraints of physical art on digital art. It's as backwards as Blockbuster trying to ban digital video so that they can sell more DVDs. It's philosophical DRM for jpegs.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#165

Post by Cederfjard »

iskander wrote: post #143
Cederfjard wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious if anyone actually feels like it’s real, or if it’s 99% speculation. I tend to think it’s the latter.

Some people really feel it, I know a few long-term collectors. Some people are into the VR galleries they assemble, others buy non-standard sized displays fit for specific NFTs to display in their homes. It's definitely an odd little community of rich people collecting digital art. And more broadly people feel attachment to their Twitter PFPs and feel like they can't truly use it unless they own it. It's a new social…

But what is it really that they own? Bragging rights, that they paid for the artist to proclaim them the first (or subsequent) person to own a hash on one of multiple blockchains, that contains a link pointing to an image file of an artwork hosted on a CDN? And the artist can create infinitely more? And the image file might be taken down at any time? And while you can trace the provenance on the blockchain easily enough, linking the originating address with the actual artist needs some external evidence off blockchain that might not be around forever? And the blockchain it’s on might well lose popularity at some point and be forgotten? Etc?

I just can’t see why it’d be valuable to anyone, unless they’re just caught up in the hype and don’t think too hard about it. I can however see people taking advantage of the many, many people who feel like they missed out on, say, Bitcoin and want to get in on ”crypto”.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#166

Post by VHRanger »

casi18 wrote: post #163
VHRanger wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont see him selling anything You can just admit you dont like that he casts shade on stuff you like

his company makes the closed source financial infrastructure for digitising cash for multinational corporations, that is made useless by crypto becoming popular. of course he doesnt mention this when writing hit pieces on crypto culture. https://twitter.com/TBSocialist/status/1456963980577153026?s...

Uh, that's the worse citation source I've ever seen? It's a speculative twitter post?

Also, what you said is like saying someone working at Stripe felt threatened by crypto. He's still not selling you a product (anywhere I can find in his online presence!)

A full decade later, crypto still isn't used for payments except in PR puff pieces, like the El Salvador fiasco. No one working in serious online payments feels threatened by crypto. Some want to ride the crypto PR mania into popularity, however.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#167

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

paconbork wrote: post #150
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already had pateron, github sponsors, etc. for that with significantly less complication and barely any scams.

Do any of those allow you to resell purely digital art?

Yes, they just don't have any mechanism to assist you in doing so. Not that resale is of any use as regards funding the artist anyway.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#168

Post by vkou »

damon_c wrote: post #148
b3morales wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And amidst the flurry of insanity in NFT world, there is some genuinely good art being created. ... The whole game around who gets to pay a stupid amount of money to say they own it of them doesn't diminish the fact that art has been created, and the art can be enjoyed anyone. It is good art, and thanks for the link, I hadn't heard of them before. But I don't see what the NFT aspect adds. They've been creating art…

> What's the practical difference in outcome for the artist between selling an NFT and selling a print? With NFTs, the artist gets the money before they're dead!

What stops me from getting paid for selling an NFT of your art?

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#169

Post by kibwen »

h2odragon wrote: post #3

Soon we get to the point when the Tinkerbell believers become violent against the unfaithful because their heresy is what spoiling the magic. In practise this will mean legal regulation and support, probably by some further perversion of IP laws. Really dont see any end game that aint ugly.

Keep an eye out for cryptocurrency lobbyists passing laws to force browsers to disable right click > Save Image.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#170

Post by 015a »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #7

Anyway here you go https://thenftbay.org/description.html https://thenftbay.org/ You can have all the NFTs in existence without having to wear out your right click button. We can all be "rich"

Yet, are you rich after torrenting that? Of course not.

There's the disconnect. The phantom in the system that some people aren't groking; the leap of faith. Why do (a vast minority of) the NFTs in that torrent still have value, despite the torrent existing?

Why is Disney worth $275B despite all of their movies hitting The Pirate Bay immediately upon their release?

I can Google Image search pictures of the Mona Lisa with zero effort. Thus, the original is worthless?

I'd ask detractors of the crypto/NFT movement really think critically about those questions. Not just for minutes and hours; not just for the time it takes to bash Reply and say "lol right click save as". Read up about the history of money; integrate ideas about megacorporation control over our government and economic systems, human behavior and nature, and what the concept of ownership really means.

I can't refute all the arguments against in one comment, and some are legitimate. But I'll leave you with one thought which fundamentally changed my viewpoint on NFTs: isn't it beautiful that you can right click save as on an NFT? That this system exists which, theoretically, enables creators to see compensation for their work, one consumer of that work to feel ownership/responsibility, and the population at large to enjoy it for free?

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