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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

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 willing to pay some big money to have a piece of that... ... yet apparently there are "Black Lotuses" everywhere, because people are making them left and right (not literal black lotus ofc). And we left it here: - are people mistaking something "unique" with something that's "rare"? - is money really that much inflated? - is crypto that much inflated? - are these transactions being done among the same "kind of people", and it will reach a cap eventually with no one to dump these NFTs to? It's like people want collectibles but seem to have decided to cut off a big part of what makes a collectible valuable. Everyone want's to get rich with the next big rare item, without having to go through years of cultural shifts. For example, some MTG cards/sets represent a time and a place for many people, they were part of a culture. The rareness comes from the fact that a lot of these items had limited (some were literally alpha and beta versions of the game), and few endured the weight of time and life. It's not because they have a unique id. Cryptopunks represent the early move of the NFT... but is that such a noteworthy valuable thing? Maybe it is. I'm not saying that Beeple isn't a good digital artist, he is. Neither I'm saying his art isn't worth what people paid for, probably it's worth it. 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"?

3np 6y ago
I think that, just like the first NFT craze (Cryptokitties), a lot of it is conscious money down the drain from people who already got dirty rich and now care less about $100k than about stimulating the market and promoting the growth of cryptocurrencies in general. They'll throw money at anything they perceive as aligning with their vision of what should come. Consider the case that this truly is here to stay. Kind of cool to be able to flair one of the first really pricey NFTs, which also happens to be an art piece you think is kind of rad.
- libertine 6y ago
  I understand that, but those are the wrong motivations in my point of view. That's just overbloated hyped, I don't see it stick. >Kind of cool to be able to flair one of the first really pricey NFTs, which also happens to be an art piece you think is kind of rad. Which you nailed here, it's like they are pricey for the sake of being pricey. Or they're unique for the sake of being unique, not being unique because there were restrains that make it rare. If some of these pieces are going to millions of USD, then we might be at a point where any Picasso painting reached the billion dollar mark, that circles back to one of my questions: is there so much money in circulation? Or this is just fake money being thrown around?
  - bondarchuk 6y ago
    If we use the Dow Jones index with dividends reinvested as a proxy for inflation, instead of the phony official stats, then we can see that Picasso's self portrait, which was sold in May 1989 for 98.7m usd, would be worth 1.2 billion in today's dollars.
furyofantares 6y ago
> 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 have more expensive cards, and the more scarce the card the higher the value, along with other characteristics of the card. Makes some intuitive sense. But that's not enough for collectors who want some cards to have a very high value. So then there's this collective agreement that rookie cards are going to be worth a lot more, not just based on print run, but based on the ability of the whole group to point at it and say that's a thing we value. Then we have condition of the card, mint or near mint or worn, those are all different values. Again it makes intuitive sense because it's based on quality in some way. But it's not enough, so ever more sophisticated grading mechanisms are invented, well beyond any actual value to someone observing the card. It's a difference the naked eye can't perceive, only experts with sophisticated tools. But once they inspect it and give their mark of approval, it's a new point of scarcity that everyone can value. It's all just invented value for the sake of value, the main thing is that the group can collectively point at something scarce and call it valuable. Misprints are another example, where the value is obvious not coming from quality and only from scarcity.
- libertine 6y ago
  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 followers and fans over decades. It's a competitive game, with different leagues, with teams that have fans. This is why the cards have value, and there's no consensual agreement that X and Y card is valuable, it's something so simple and intuitive that even children understand this. Even if it's just by the transactions in their playground among colleagues and friends (not because many people have some card, and everyone seems to want it, but because it's represents a popular player and it's a rare card - that's why they want it). Then there's plenty of sub sections of this, like you said: misprints, particular years, etc. But it all revolves around a cultural event. What you're seeing with NFTs are assets created for the sake of being unique - it's not consequential of anything. It's designed to be that way. It's like they turned the baseball card analogy upside down - they created NFTs for the sake of being NFTs, it's not serving any purpose and scarcity has no logic behind it. I think the closest analogy would be the Beanie Babies, that were trying to hack this mechanic with nothing else to support it no other then "they are scarce". There's no emotional bond to it, it doesn't serve the purpose of a game (like balance wise), it's not even merchandising to promote something that's eventually going to become popular and that's popular to a specific niche.
tippytippytango 6y ago
It reminds me of the beanie baby craze of the 90s. Same thing, different tech. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this may happen again with some yet unimagined tech in the future.
- libertine 6y ago
  Funny enough I just used the Beanie Baby example in a reply to other user: it's the closest analogy I found in modern history. Something that was designed to be scarce, for the sake of being scarce. Serves no other goal: it's not a balancing mechanism to game (overpowered cards are rare), it's not promoting something that people love and want to be a part of (like baseball cards), hell it's not even a celebration of some success with the fans, nothing that holds people emotionally attached to any of it other then those that want to hope on something to resell later - this is completely the wrong motivation.
swang 6y ago
i agree. i have the same feeling of not getting it.. but they are skipping a step look at what happened to baseball sports cards in the late 90s and still continue today holograms, refractors, patch cards, "printing plates" cards. these cards are "valuable" because of the perceived scarcity but the issue is trying to get one is completely random and based on luck whereas the original value of baseball cards was people didn't keep them in mint condition and kids put them on their bikes to make cool sounds. same thing with comic books. the comic book makers produced the scarcity or collectible, and then produced too much of that scarcity and the whole comic book market imploded. this guy's art is cool, and good for him for making tons of money off it. but it does feel like partly FOMO and also some people have too much money during the pandemic that they don't know where to park so they dump it into stuff like this. i think the biggest issue with this stuff is it's already skyrocketed well outside the range of even relatively well off individuals. i certainly don't have the money to outbid someone who put in nearly $800K for basically a blockchain entry. like how are you going to get normal people to care about this other than, "it sold for a lot of money" which is basically the only reason this stuff got an article in esquire.
breckinloggins 6y ago
> 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.
bondarchuk 6y ago
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.

3np 6y ago

I think that, just like the first NFT craze (Cryptokitties), a lot of it is conscious money down the drain from people who already got dirty rich and now care less about $100k than about stimulating the market and promoting the growth of cryptocurrencies in general. They'll throw money at anything they perceive as aligning with their vision of what should come. Consider the case that this truly is here to stay. Kind of cool to be able to flair one of the first really pricey NFTs, which also happens to be an art piece you think is kind of rad.

libertine 6y ago
I understand that, but those are the wrong motivations in my point of view. That's just overbloated hyped, I don't see it stick. >Kind of cool to be able to flair one of the first really pricey NFTs, which also happens to be an art piece you think is kind of rad. Which you nailed here, it's like they are pricey for the sake of being pricey. Or they're unique for the sake of being unique, not being unique because there were restrains that make it rare. If some of these pieces are going to millions of USD, then we might be at a point where any Picasso painting reached the billion dollar mark, that circles back to one of my questions: is there so much money in circulation? Or this is just fake money being thrown around?
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  If we use the Dow Jones index with dividends reinvested as a proxy for inflation, instead of the phony official stats, then we can see that Picasso's self portrait, which was sold in May 1989 for 98.7m usd, would be worth 1.2 billion in today's dollars.

furyofantares 6y ago

> 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 have more expensive cards, and the more scarce the card the higher the value, along with other characteristics of the card. Makes some intuitive sense. But that's not enough for collectors who want some cards to have a very high value. So then there's this collective agreement that rookie cards are going to be worth a lot more, not just based on print run, but based on the ability of the whole group to point at it and say that's a thing we value. Then we have condition of the card, mint or near mint or worn, those are all different values. Again it makes intuitive sense because it's based on quality in some way. But it's not enough, so ever more sophisticated grading mechanisms are invented, well beyond any actual value to someone observing the card. It's a difference the naked eye can't perceive, only experts with sophisticated tools. But once they inspect it and give their mark of approval, it's a new point of scarcity that everyone can value. It's all just invented value for the sake of value, the main thing is that the group can collectively point at something scarce and call it valuable. Misprints are another example, where the value is obvious not coming from quality and only from scarcity.

libertine 6y ago
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 followers and fans over decades. It's a competitive game, with different leagues, with teams that have fans. This is why the cards have value, and there's no consensual agreement that X and Y card is valuable, it's something so simple and intuitive that even children understand this. Even if it's just by the transactions in their playground among colleagues and friends (not because many people have some card, and everyone seems to want it, but because it's represents a popular player and it's a rare card - that's why they want it). Then there's plenty of sub sections of this, like you said: misprints, particular years, etc. But it all revolves around a cultural event. What you're seeing with NFTs are assets created for the sake of being unique - it's not consequential of anything. It's designed to be that way. It's like they turned the baseball card analogy upside down - they created NFTs for the sake of being NFTs, it's not serving any purpose and scarcity has no logic behind it. I think the closest analogy would be the Beanie Babies, that were trying to hack this mechanic with nothing else to support it no other then "they are scarce". There's no emotional bond to it, it doesn't serve the purpose of a game (like balance wise), it's not even merchandising to promote something that's eventually going to become popular and that's popular to a specific niche.

tippytippytango 6y ago

It reminds me of the beanie baby craze of the 90s. Same thing, different tech. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this may happen again with some yet unimagined tech in the future.

libertine 6y ago
Funny enough I just used the Beanie Baby example in a reply to other user: it's the closest analogy I found in modern history. Something that was designed to be scarce, for the sake of being scarce. Serves no other goal: it's not a balancing mechanism to game (overpowered cards are rare), it's not promoting something that people love and want to be a part of (like baseball cards), hell it's not even a celebration of some success with the fans, nothing that holds people emotionally attached to any of it other then those that want to hope on something to resell later - this is completely the wrong motivation.

swang 6y ago

i agree. i have the same feeling of not getting it.. but they are skipping a step look at what happened to baseball sports cards in the late 90s and still continue today holograms, refractors, patch cards, "printing plates" cards. these cards are "valuable" because of the perceived scarcity but the issue is trying to get one is completely random and based on luck whereas the original value of baseball cards was people didn't keep them in mint condition and kids put them on their bikes to make cool sounds. same thing with comic books. the comic book makers produced the scarcity or collectible, and then produced too much of that scarcity and the whole comic book market imploded. this guy's art is cool, and good for him for making tons of money off it. but it does feel like partly FOMO and also some people have too much money during the pandemic that they don't know where to park so they dump it into stuff like this. i think the biggest issue with this stuff is it's already skyrocketed well outside the range of even relatively well off individuals. i certainly don't have the money to outbid someone who put in nearly $800K for basically a blockchain entry. like how are you going to get normal people to care about this other than, "it sold for a lot of money" which is basically the only reason this stuff got an article in esquire.

breckinloggins 6y ago

> 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.

bondarchuk 6y ago

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.