4 ms·

Mania for now but long term it will bring scarcity to the digital realm something that's important to fully develop the digital economy. Right now digital has b

Mania for now but long term it will bring scarcity to the digital realm something that's important to fully develop the digital economy. Right now digital has been very profitable for a relatively few since it takes lots of money to develop a product but scarcity will let many more people make a living. A simple example are artists. Artists have been mostly locked out of making a good living with their digital works but NFTs will fix that. We will also start to see new forms of products that aren't profitable now since there is no way to cover the costs to develop them but with NFTs there is now a way to cover the costs. I see the book market changing. Established authors will be able to sell their books and not have to go through publishing houses. They can sell them to the public and now the public will be able to resell the book and gain some of the money back and the original author can get some money too. The future is very bright, as they say. There's finally a way to monetize cyberspace for the everyman.

new_guy 6y ago
> Right now digital has been very profitable for a relatively few since it takes lots of money to develop a product but scarcity will let many more people make a living. This doesn't really make any sense. Right now I can write one piece of software and sell it thousands of times. The return on investment (time and energy) is absolutely huge. Introducing scarcity only hurts my bottom line and customers who can't get what I'm selling. NFTs seem like complete nonsense. But I thought the same about BitCoin (and honestly still do) but we know how that turned out.
carmen_sandiego 6y ago
I'm not sure I get it. If the art is digital, then copies can be identical to the original (apart from the NFT), no? So why would this model succeed over, say, a Patreon-like model where many people get access to the product? Even in the traditional sales model, I would think the typical PED for digital goods means that selling multiple copies provides more revenue than selling one copy for a higher price. Most things aren't Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
- doopy1 6y ago
  I think you can think of this as patreon in many cases. It's not really about the art itself though, it's more about this conceptual idea of "digital ownership".
  - WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
    Very true, ownership is what it's all about. In the real world there can be 100 exact copies of a Picasso but the only one that has enduring value is the original. NFTs become the place holders for originals in digital. It's what people will value and will pay for over time. As an NFT owner you own a portfolio of rights to the work. What are they? One very important one is resale. But we don't know all of them, yet .They will be defined as people start to use them and the courts/laws decides what they will enforce. But without place holders there's no way to apply the rules. A real world example is the idea of owning a copyright. What do you own there? The right to monetize it, yes. Bragging rights, yes. The right to resell it, yes. And others I can't think of. If someone decides to encroach on any of the rights then you can go to court and seek retribution.
imhoguy 6y ago
> Artists have been mostly locked out of making a good living with their digital works but NFTs will fix that. What? "NFTs will fix" the competiton and marketing? Sounds like snake oil. Artists/authors have unpredecented ability to scale their art sale to entire World with simple means like own webpage PoS, right. But surely that is not enough for one to live a decent life from art, because what is crucial is to reach the right audience and compete in a popularity contest. That is what intermediary services, like Spotify, Youtube, Deezer, iTunes, Gumroad, Amazon, Shutterstock etc, do with their hefty commissions. How are NFTs going to bring customers with their money directly to the artists?
Barrin92 6y ago
>it will bring scarcity to the digital realm something that's important to fully develop the digital economy[...] The future is very bright, as they say. There's finally a way to monetize cyberspace for the everyman. This isn't the future, this is enclosure of the commons feudal style, except for the fact that the physical commons were actually scarce so the proponents I suppose had some sort of point, whereas in the internet age we're actually making free and ubiquitous information artificially scarce to make the internet obey our insane economic logic

new_guy 6y ago

> Right now digital has been very profitable for a relatively few since it takes lots of money to develop a product but scarcity will let many more people make a living. This doesn't really make any sense. Right now I can write one piece of software and sell it thousands of times. The return on investment (time and energy) is absolutely huge. Introducing scarcity only hurts my bottom line and customers who can't get what I'm selling. NFTs seem like complete nonsense. But I thought the same about BitCoin (and honestly still do) but we know how that turned out.

carmen_sandiego 6y ago

I'm not sure I get it. If the art is digital, then copies can be identical to the original (apart from the NFT), no? So why would this model succeed over, say, a Patreon-like model where many people get access to the product? Even in the traditional sales model, I would think the typical PED for digital goods means that selling multiple copies provides more revenue than selling one copy for a higher price. Most things aren't Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

doopy1 6y ago
I think you can think of this as patreon in many cases. It's not really about the art itself though, it's more about this conceptual idea of "digital ownership".
- WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
  Very true, ownership is what it's all about. In the real world there can be 100 exact copies of a Picasso but the only one that has enduring value is the original. NFTs become the place holders for originals in digital. It's what people will value and will pay for over time. As an NFT owner you own a portfolio of rights to the work. What are they? One very important one is resale. But we don't know all of them, yet .They will be defined as people start to use them and the courts/laws decides what they will enforce. But without place holders there's no way to apply the rules. A real world example is the idea of owning a copyright. What do you own there? The right to monetize it, yes. Bragging rights, yes. The right to resell it, yes. And others I can't think of. If someone decides to encroach on any of the rights then you can go to court and seek retribution.

imhoguy 6y ago

> Artists have been mostly locked out of making a good living with their digital works but NFTs will fix that. What? "NFTs will fix" the competiton and marketing? Sounds like snake oil. Artists/authors have unpredecented ability to scale their art sale to entire World with simple means like own webpage PoS, right. But surely that is not enough for one to live a decent life from art, because what is crucial is to reach the right audience and compete in a popularity contest. That is what intermediary services, like Spotify, Youtube, Deezer, iTunes, Gumroad, Amazon, Shutterstock etc, do with their hefty commissions. How are NFTs going to bring customers with their money directly to the artists?

Barrin92 6y ago

>it will bring scarcity to the digital realm something that's important to fully develop the digital economy[...] The future is very bright, as they say. There's finally a way to monetize cyberspace for the everyman. This isn't the future, this is enclosure of the commons feudal style, except for the fact that the physical commons were actually scarce so the proponents I suppose had some sort of point, whereas in the internet age we're actually making free and ubiquitous information artificially scarce to make the internet obey our insane economic logic