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Beeple Mania

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Re: Beeple Mania

#51

Post by iamben »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #46
iamben wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rights do you own with an NFT? Say I bought a digital piece, can I print it on a million t-shirts and sell them? Or does the artist still retain the copyright etc.? I've seen people minting tweets as NFTs - again, how does the copyright work here. Genuine question - seen NFTs come up a lot over the last fortnight - don't really understand it at all (which makes me feel old!).

These largely remain open questions. Or rather, as far as I can tell the default off-chain answers apply in the absence of explicit directions otherwise. Physical fine art has come up with answers (you don't get the copyright just because you bought the original), though, and I'm sure NFTs will eventually. There's also the possibility of putting code into the smart contracts to explicitly give you the royalties earne…

Thanks!

So assuming this followed the physical art model, and in the absence of any kind of 'on chain' royalties, you're literally just buying to say "I own this"? Except you don't own the copyright, and, being a digital file, thousands of other people could have an identical copy?

Am I correct in thinking this is kind of 'digital bragging rights'? Like - without a physical copy, short of us all living in a 'Ready Player One' style virtual world that someone made it explicit that "XYZ owns this art by ABC" - there's not actually much you can do other than own it (and maybe sell it later)?

Re: Beeple Mania

#52

Post by qixxiq »

fumblebee wrote: post #21
qixxiq wrote: post #11

I bought one of his "Into the Ether" NFTs[1] but now I'm in a fairly interesting position. If I prove ownership of the artwork (via a signed message from the address) then Beeple will send the physical artwork to me but it'll immediately lose a high percentage of its value (currently trading at ~$90,000 from $969 original). Right now it's owned/stored by the artist and someone buying the piece from me would be able t…

Out of curiosity, when did you buy the artwork? $969 -> ~$90,000 is astounding, and I'm assuming it happened within a short time frame.

Was released early December, was pretty confident about it-- probably should have bought more than one ;)

Re: Beeple Mania

#53

Post by christiansakai »

CositaS wrote: post #48
christiansakai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoS blockchain like Cardano network now only consumes an energy as big as a household. They already have NFT implemented.

I always see people point to 'just round the corner' future Proof of Stake systems when the energy waste topic comes up, but it seems like there are still a lot of big unsolved challenges with that, as well as new problems introduced by it. As long as there's no actual widespread fully working currency using only PoS, it's a bit like justifying the emissions from flying by pointing to experimental solar powered aircr…

Not sure what you mean, there are already blockchains out there using only PoS...

Cardano already uses PoS

Re: Beeple Mania

#54

Post by nzmsv »

The way I think about this stuff (maybe my mental model will prove useful to you): imagine a parallel economy that only a small subset of people are plugged into. These people happen to belong to the top 5% of the "real world" economy. The lowest ranking member of this economy is your average software engineer.

So if you imagine a FAANG salary as being just slightly above minimum wage in this alternate universe you can derive all the consequences of what happens in crypto markets from there, including the new top 5% who can casually pay these sums for art.

Re: Beeple Mania

#55

Post by breckinloggins »

libertine wrote: post #6

Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine to try to wrap our heads around what's happening, and we can't help but feel that a lot of this NFT hype is based on FOMO and the craving for having something unique with high perceived value: like, everyone wants a Black Lotus, without having to wait 30 years to find out that there's actually people that have also some emotional investment into these items, and are willi…

> Yet, some how, can't help but feeling that something is off. Or it's just me that I'm just not getting "the thing"?

This is (or will be) one of "the next big things" in this century; I'm fairly confident about that. What's off is that it's very new and so people don't know how to talk about it yet.

Witness this article, which seems to deliberately confuse the predictable weirdness of the art style (it's not that weird... it's just neo-Dadaism for our times) with the unpredictable emergence of NFTs.

I think NFTs are yet another interesting (perhaps local) maxima of the search space, which is "ways to get back some of that old-fashioned tangible value from digital goods". Looked at this way, it's not really surprising that something like NFTs would become a thing.

What's silly (and cynical, in my opinion) is when tech writers bury the lede by associating the technology with the avant garde uses of it. This is similar to the bizarre obsession by many legacy mainstream car manufacturers for making their electric cars look like hippie pretentious toys. The tech is obviously useful. The fashion is the trojan horse for the tech. But it gets old when people realize the almost banal usefulness of the tech itself. Then you don't need the silly-looking horse anymore.

Re: Beeple Mania

#56

Post by samvher »

adamredwoods wrote: post #50
samvher wrote: post #45

Huh. I did not see this coming but I think this actually kind of makes sense. I think many people see being a "patron of the arts" as something very high status, and having your ownership encoded publicly seems much more status-enhancing than just having something hanging in your home. Sure, you could brag that you just bought a piece of physical art on Facebook or Instagram, but that seems a bit like showing off - m…

Maybe I'm missing the point, but doesn't this then only apply to the blockchain, and not necessarily the art? Therefore this status symbol can be applied to anything (supposedly) sacred: books, movies, sexual partners, etc. To me it may devalue art, seeing how I feel it's the NFT and not the art that people value.

I'm not sure I see the same point as others. But the way I imagine it would work is that you buy art from the artist and the artist confirms (on the blockchain) that you bought it from them, thereby supporting them. So (a) you "own" it, (b) you signal being a patron of the arts and (c) the thing you paid for can be enjoyed right next to this confirmation.

Yes I guess it can apply to other things as well. I would indeed expect books and movies to possibly fit the same pattern. And I guess you could set up a public sexual partners log as well where both participants can use their private key to sign a statement that they did indeed engage in intercourse but I'm not sure that that would take off :)

I think the point is still being discovered and it also seems totally possible that this is just a fad. It's the first practical application of cryptocurrency that I can somehow see making sense (if I squint).

Re: Beeple Mania

#57

Post by furyofantares »

libertine wrote: post #34
furyofantares wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like people want collectibles but seem to have decided to cut off a big part of what makes a collectible valuable. What makes a collectible valuable? I think it's just scarcity plus a group choice to value that scarcity. I don't think this is new or unique to non-physical collectibles, other collectibles also follow a pattern of increased demand for scarcity. Take baseball cards. We know that better players ha…

I understand that in the great scheme of things is just a group of people that values scarcity, but you don't need to go deeper to see it's more then that. People don't just value baseball cards because there's a designed scarcity for particular players and there's a consensus that a specific card is valuable. You're missing the history of a game that took many years to establish themselves and grew a base of followe…

I think another way to think about it is to think about poker.

You've got the blinds or the antes, and fundamentally, every pot is about fighting for that money. Without the ante, nobody should put any money into the pot.

But once you have a penny ante, the pot size can grow exponentially, and you can find yourself fighting over a many-thousand dollar pot, even if the truth is the fight started over a fight for a penny, and the game is about fighting for a penny every hand.

What I'm saying is, sure, with baseball cards the ante might be an emotional bond to the subject matter. But it quickly spirals and becomes about the collectible, primarily. I can go look at amazing pictures of famous baseball players I love all day, I don't need to own the cards.

I don't think NFTs are really skipping a step, Top Shots is selling you an MP4 of a basketball player you love sinking a shot. It's just the absurdity of it is more apparent when the ante is something you could press Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V to copy.

Re: Beeple Mania

#59

Post by trhway »

tshaddox wrote: post #49
libertine wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Right now it's owned/stored by the artist and someone buying the piece from me would be able to get it delivered directly from Beeple. That's a new level of unboxed where the piece of art is basically unseen at this point in time and can easily be guaranteed original. But doesn't this defeat the goal of NFT? If you are the owner, then if it's stored by the creator or not it's irrelevant, right? It's just like buying…

> But doesn't this defeat the goal of NFT? If you are the owner, then if it's stored by the creator or not it's irrelevant, right? Assuming the creator is trustworthy, then I don't think so. Isn't this common in the art world? I thought lots of expensive art is stored in expensive secured vaults. Or maybe I'm thinking of the film Tenet (I don't actually know anything about the art world).

>lots of expensive art is stored in expensive secured vaults

in tariff/tax free zones between jurisdictions, in a kind of customs limbo - exported from one jurisdiction, yet not imported into another (and thus no need to pay taxes/tariffs). The bill of sale is basically your NFT.

Re: Beeple Mania

#60

Post by bondarchuk »

libertine wrote: post #6

Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine to try to wrap our heads around what's happening, and we can't help but feel that a lot of this NFT hype is based on FOMO and the craving for having something unique with high perceived value: like, everyone wants a Black Lotus, without having to wait 30 years to find out that there's actually people that have also some emotional investment into these items, and are willi…

I am completely on board with normal cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and what have you. With NFT art I just get the feeling that people are trying too hard to find "the next big thing" in the space, and they have latched onto this for some strange reason. Might be nothing more than that it makes for a good story. I guess now I know how nocoiners feel about any kind of cryptocurrency..

But it does make sense, in a way, to explore the complete opposite of the (almost) perfect fungibility of normal cryptocurrency, even if only in a "what if we flip one of our basic assumptions on its head" kind of way.

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