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“The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

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Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#91

Post by lottin »

GDC7 wrote: post #76
Vetch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs are probably best thought of as a recapitulation of status goods into the digital world, outside video games. The physical good versions has never made sense to me either. Thorstein Veblen already in the late 1800s had pointed out that an object's utility as a status signal increases in tandem with its uselessness. The object must then also be recognized among peers as difficult to obtain. For the moon shares an…

> NFTs are probably best thought of as a recapitulation of status goods into the digital world Status cannot be manufactured, it spurs naturally due to having rare things such as a big mansion, grammys, academy awards, winning the Super Bowl , winning the NBA title, winning the World Series etc. All those things are both rare and cannot be copied. NFTs instead are easily copied idividually (right click) or even in bu…

Agreed, and NFTs are probably conferring anti-status, rather than status, considering NFT owners can be easily perceived as simpletons who have fallen for an obvious scam.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#92

Post by Vetch »

chanc3e wrote: post #32
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s like video game cosmetics Video game cosmetics derive their appeal from people using them while they actually play the game, not from showing off the database flag that activates it for the account. With NFTs, the whole game part of the game cosmetics analogy is missing.

Totally. Who is going to pay a studio to develop the models, artwork and code required to have a ‘NFT skin’ in a game? Money is made by selling a skin multiple times to return effort. And what if I want that skin in League, rather than GTA? The whole concept is a nonsense. Influencers + shady finance have collided to *create a climate melting scam. Edit: spelling and errant word

NFTs are a form of Status or Veblen good. This means being useless or grossly overvalued, exploiting craftspersons, being exclusive, prices defying reason are all good properties to have.

A physical world example is the combination of social media marketing, fast fashion and product drops. Items are sold for many multiples of their production cost due to a manufactured air of exclusivity and scarcity. As the items are mass produced from exploited labor, a bottleneck from time consuming highly skilled craftwork cannot be the cause of high prices.

There are many examples of conspicuous over consumption and status goods, all of them defying common sense to most. Remember the "I AM RICH" app? The NFT version is the same principle, merely on a different type of datastore.

Particularly relevant to NFTs is the art world of artificially inflated prices, donations to manufacture prestige and where fakes are hard to tell to the untrained eye and wealthy buyers bring lawsuits or otherwise buy the silence of those who can prove forgeries.

The artifact or artwork is not the goal, instead the ability to take something useless or mundane but somehow demonstrable as unique, prove provenance and flaunt wealth to some peer group considered high status is the goal. I suspect NFTs are currently in a gold rush stage and comparatively more open. When the loose flow of money is over, I expect it will decay back to gated elitism typical of the existing art world.

Underlying something like an Ethereum linked IPFS hash artifact are interesting consensus algorithms for persistent data-structures on open distributed networks. That they're being used in this manner is not surprising. It's reflective of humans, not something inherent to the utility of the tech.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#93

Post by Dylan16807 »

imgabe wrote: post #85
tomp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Moon Shares from like 20 years ago. You could buy property on the moon and the company would verify ownership for you. Although this is totally different, because it’s blockchain.

Except the company that sold Moon shares had no authority to offer ownership over any part of the moon. The blockchain does have authority to offer ownership over particular tokens on that blockchain. Those are valuable so long as there are enough people that agree they are valuable and are willing to exchange other goods and services for them. Oh yeah, kind of like fiat money.

What do you mean "except"?

Within the moon share ecosystem, moon shares have the exact same kind of authority.

Value's always worth what someone will pay, sure. But blockchain authority isn't more special than any other database. It has some fancy properties, but they don't affect the authority.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#94

Post by imgabe »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #93
imgabe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the company that sold Moon shares had no authority to offer ownership over any part of the moon. The blockchain does have authority to offer ownership over particular tokens on that blockchain. Those are valuable so long as there are enough people that agree they are valuable and are willing to exchange other goods and services for them. Oh yeah, kind of like fiat money.

What do you mean "except"? Within the moon share ecosystem, moon shares have the exact same kind of authority. Value's always worth what someone will pay, sure. But blockchain authority isn't more special than any other database. It has some fancy properties, but they don't affect the authority.

What does it mean to own something? It what sense does a Moon share give you any ownership over any part of the moon? If someone else goes up to the Moon and builds a lunar base on "your" piece of the Moon, does your Moon share give you any way to stop them? Can you sue them in any court? Does it prevent anyone in any way from doing whatever they want with that piece of the Moon? No, it doesn't.

Contrast with a token in your wallet on the blockchain. As long as your private keys are secure, nobody else but you can transfer that token anywhere else. Nobody else can convincingly represent that they are the owner of it. The blockchain proves irrefutably that you own it. The blockchain, as represented by the consensus of thousands of nodes, is the ultimate authority of who owns what on that blockchain.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#95

Post by capableweb »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #93
imgabe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the company that sold Moon shares had no authority to offer ownership over any part of the moon. The blockchain does have authority to offer ownership over particular tokens on that blockchain. Those are valuable so long as there are enough people that agree they are valuable and are willing to exchange other goods and services for them. Oh yeah, kind of like fiat money.

What do you mean "except"? Within the moon share ecosystem, moon shares have the exact same kind of authority. Value's always worth what someone will pay, sure. But blockchain authority isn't more special than any other database. It has some fancy properties, but they don't affect the authority.

Authority on the blockchain is validated by a bunch of different actors, none who trust each other but reaches consensus anyways.

Authority within the moon share ecosystem is validated only by the people who own the company.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#96

Post by mewse »

nathias wrote: post #58
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s like video game cosmetics Video game cosmetics derive their appeal from people using them while they actually play the game, not from showing off the database flag that activates it for the account. With NFTs, the whole game part of the game cosmetics analogy is missing.

Think of it as breaking out of the games, imagine something like steam profile avatars/pictures etc. tied to your identity that you can use on any page that implements it.

Gravatar has been a thing since 2007.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#97

Post by jstanley »

boldslogan wrote: post #52
episteme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was 70% of the trading done on -unregulated- exchanges.

right, but doesnt the alledged spill over effect of increasing the price on the unregulated exchange, impact the price regardless of exchange? You don't ask for btc price X on coinbase versus btc price Y on biance? Wouldn't you just care about the price of btc? and if it rises on certain exchanges, then it would arbitrage until it rose on other exchanges as well?

> if it rises on certain exchanges, then it would arbitrage until it rose on other exchanges as well?

More like the opposite. The fake price rise would be arbitraged away to match the real price.

At some point there has to be a real buyer/seller, otherwise arbitrage doesn't work. And a real buyer/seller is trading at the real price.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#98

Post by m1sta_ »

judge2020 wrote: post #8

Isn’t the point of NFTs that it verifies ownership, not “you’re the only one that can access the content” (although there are indeed NFTs that can only allow the owner to decrypt the content)? It’s like video game cosmetics - many people can have the same skin, but people you want to impress or show off to can see that you own x, y, and z.

"ownership" of a copy of something infinitely reproducable.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#99

Post by GDC7 »

detaro wrote: post #89
lottin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ownership implies some kind of exclusive rights. If everybody has the same rights over the content as the supposed owner, it means they're not the owner.

But just because you have the ability to download something from the internet doesn't mean you have the same rights to it as someone who has given some kind of license to it (which is often attached to NFT sales).

And how is the licence enforced?

Is it recognized by the law? Can people sue those who fail to comply with it?

You can do all the circular reasoning you want but at the end of the day everything is backed by violence and coercitive power.

That's why nations have army/navy , to make other countries know that what they say carries weight because they can back it up with bullets and bombs, not just words.

Re: “The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

#100

Post by Vetch »

GDC7 wrote: post #76
Vetch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs are probably best thought of as a recapitulation of status goods into the digital world, outside video games. The physical good versions has never made sense to me either. Thorstein Veblen already in the late 1800s had pointed out that an object's utility as a status signal increases in tandem with its uselessness. The object must then also be recognized among peers as difficult to obtain. For the moon shares an…

> NFTs are probably best thought of as a recapitulation of status goods into the digital world Status cannot be manufactured, it spurs naturally due to having rare things such as a big mansion, grammys, academy awards, winning the Super Bowl , winning the NBA title, winning the World Series etc. All those things are both rare and cannot be copied. NFTs instead are easily copied idividually (right click) or even in bu…

While I agree such transactions and dynamics make more sense in established widely accessed virtual worlds, status can in fact be manufactured. I can give two examples.

In the art world, wealthy collectors will overbid on works by artists within their collection to hugely inflate their price. There is also a large amount of pressure on appraisers to overvalue work and for Art houses to turn a blind eye to some known forgeries. The wealthy will donate to museums to lend to an air of prestige to their collections (with tax evasion by charity write offs a nice bonus) and, whenever forgeries are found in collections, lawsuits and bribes are used to silence all but those with rare levels of integrity.

A less exclusive but still grossly over priced example is the recent world of fast fashion product drops. There, mass produced, cheaply manufactured, labor exploited goods are sold for many times their production costs by creating an illusion of scarcity and prestige. This is done by manipulative marketing tricks where social media and celebrity worship are key vehicles.

This, sadly, is the nature of humans. NFTs are in the process of attempting to install themselves as status goods. That is the psychology when denouncing "right clickers".

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