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Just to put this in perspective, the global population of mountain gorillas is 1,063, so this represents the symbolic adoption of over 3 times the mountain gori
by skohan 6y ago
Just to put this in perspective, the global population of mountain gorillas is 1,063, so this represents the symbolic adoption of over 3 times the mountain gorillas alive in the wild!
I hope this unexpected boon in capital will allow for some meaningful work in preserving and protecting these rare animals. It would be an interesting footnote in history if we can look back in 50 years and draw a line between an internet meme, reckless asset trading, and a change in the trajectory of the fate an endangered species.
- tudorw 6y agoCan someone get busy wrapping endangered species as NFT's and direct the funds accordingly, timing seems about right...
- tudorw 6y ago'Virtual Trophy Hunt', the Big 5, surely owning a Lion gives you serious flex these days? Not much more genuinely limited edition than an Iberian Lynx.
- epanchin 6y agoA token that needed a regular transfer of funds to retain ownership would be really quite neat. A contract that showed I am the adoptee of Harry the gorilla, and provides a regular income for the charity. If I can’t keep up the payment I sell the token. Fail to pay or sell the token and it reverts to the charity issuer.
- viraptor 6y agoYou can do that without the NFT right now with many charities. If you want it publicly visible you can tweet your receipt.
- tudorw 6y agoYes, but I cannot buy, sell and speculate with that.
- ilikehurdles 6y agoWell you can put the tweet up for sale or auction on eBay. Just like with NFTs, you wouldn’t actually be transferring the underlying asset, nor would the tweet actually be hosted within eBay (or an NFT chain) for some kind of archival purpose, nothing stops you from selling it again on Amazon or Craigslist or any other marketplace (or another NFT). If Amazon, EBay, or the company behind the NFT decides to close up shop, that’s it for your listing. Heck, just as with NFTs, you could put tweets you don’t even own in your listings, since you’re really just selling the listing with some media linked in it rather than transferring the media or the rights to it. The problem of course is the word crypto doesn’t appear in any of the traditional platforms, so no hype/demand exists for your tweets there. Those users have also over time not only been trained to recognize scams, but are provided with a little bit of buyer protection if they end up buying something you couldn’t really sell them in the first place.
- colejohnson66 6y agoYep. Take a look at Jack Dorsey. He’s “selling” the first ever tweet as an NFT and it’s currently at 2.5 million dollars.[0][1] But what does that even mean to “sell” a tweet? It’s still visible to everyone at its permanent URL.[2] What’s stopping Jack from just auctioning it off again later? [0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-is-selling-his-first-tweet-ever-as-an-nft-worth-millions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-is-selling... [1]: https://v.cent.co/tweet/20 https://v.cent.co/tweet/20 [2]: https://twitter.com/jack/status/20 https://twitter.com/jack/status/20
- nerdponx 6y agoI don't believe this at all. If Jack Dorsey sold the "rights" to the first ever tweet, I'm confident someone would pay at least $1 million for it, even without an NFT involved. The fact that there's an NFT involved makes it more valuable, because now the buyer can show off in more ways than one. But that's it. There have always been, and always will be, rich people with more money than sense, who want to demonstrate their great wealth and worldliness by buying silly stuff to show off with.
- nerdponx 6y agoWhy do people say stuff like this? You don't need email either, just write a letter or send a fax. The point is that here is a piece of new technology that's part of a new vision for the future. Maybe you think it's an unrealistic vision, but that's no reason to sneer at people who disagree with you.
- viraptor 6y agoEmail is easier and provides more features than a letter or fax in most cases. (With both still having some use in specific cases like personal messages or gov regulated messaging) NFT is harder and doesn't seem to provide any features over current donations. (It's actually worse due to unstable exchange rates and large fees) Unless the vision provides benefits we did not have before I will continue to sneer at "the same thing but on blockchain" ideas.
- nerdponx 6y agoSome people think it's a good idea to have a distributed, immutable ledger for stuff like this, with the ability to make payments without depending on a handful of individual corporations like Paypal and Visa. The fact that it's "blockchain" is immaterial except that blockchain happens to be the technology that makes it possible. There's so much knee-jerk opposition to "blockchain" stuff just because some nerds get too excited about it (and some people are trying to get rich off it). It makes no sense to me.
- viraptor 6y ago> Some people think it's a good idea to have a distributed, immutable ledger for stuff like this Ok, still - what's the benefit of that in the discussed context (donations to an organisation preserving wildlife) which they can't easily provide with existing programs? (Accepting the payment is slightly unrelated - if they want donations via cryptocoins, there's a bunch of payment gateways they can enable today)
- nerdponx 6y ago
- jayp1418 6y agoYou can just delegate Cardano's ada and give those as Charity. Or check Wozx which is trying to bring efficient energy to industries so while helping animals you help save climate as well.
- hanniabu 6y agoThere's streaming (https://sablier.finance/ https://sablier.finance/), I'm sure this could be used. Although I'm not sure how it would be used in the NFT aspect. Maybe they could be used for gaming mechanism. "Upgrade your gorilla to a larger environment!" "Unlock a new toy!"
- o_m 6y agoOr take the adoption a step further and create an unique NFT for each Gorilla
- tudorw 6y agoThat's along the lines I was thinking, then they could be freely traded by collectors with some kind of profit share going back to those in a position to help.
- edoloughlin 6y agoCan someone get busy wrapping endangered species as NFT's and direct the funds accordingly' Can't help but wonder how much habitat is destroyed by the generation of a token.
- tudorw 6y agoEnergy usage is a recognised issue and while it offers challenges they are understood and developers are keen to address this. If you want to start deconstruction of the industrial military complex that would be just fine and might really start to change things, until then I argue there are more worthy targets for your ire than the energy use of an emerging technology.
- tudorw 6y agoWhich token, which platform, there are more than 1
- MR4D 6y agoGorillaCoin (tm).
- jonfw 6y agoThis is like saying that pollution is a recognized issue with fossil fuels and while it offers challenges they are understood and engineers are keen to address this. There aren't always easy solutions and you can't hand wave aside a massive problem because 'our best people are on it'
- agumonkey 6y agoOh I can foresee a lot of old legendary trees as NFT
- yitchelle 6y agoA bizarre scenario would be a digital photo (NFT of sort) of the rare animal becomes extremely high value, and end up causing the animal to be extinct.
- ethbr0 6y agoTo be macabre, genetic sequencing an animal and then eradicating the species would increase the data value. Thankfully, posting an open sequence on the net would remove the rationale for the horrible part of that sentence.
- SyzygistSix 6y agoMost likely the anti-poaching squads will get better funding. As it is they are poorly paid and do a lot of work with shabby equipment.
- scotty79 6y agoNFT doesen't work like that. After minting it has nothing to do with the initial cause. It could work if they released and auctioned new NFT for each gorilla periodically.
- colejohnson66 6y agoBut the person who the money/etherium is sent to could be the charity, no? As in, people donate their digital art or whatever to a charity and the charity auctions off the NFTs to raise money. That’s the way real life charity fundraisers sometimes work: you donate a physical object and they sell it to raise money. The benefit over you selling at and donating the money is that you don’t have to deal with selling it. The usage of NFTs here would be to take advantage of the mass hysteria(?) surrounding them to drum up the price.
- elliekelly 6y ago> The usage of NFTs here would be to take advantage of the mass hysteria(?) surrounding them to drum up the price. You said the quiet part out loud!
- hanniabu 6y agoYeah, yearly support tokens for each gorilla
- vidarh 6y agoYou "just" need to tie each NFT to a specific gorilla and raise enough to find someone willing to sell an annuity tied to the expected lifespan of said gorilla. Or just raise enough for the average investment returns from the one-off sales to fund the charity.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoAn NFT could work like that, though. There's nothing stopping someone from writing an NFT smart contract that directs a percentage (of any size, including 100%) of future sales to the initial cause. The NFT standard itself is quite basic, nearly every NFT people talk about are controlled by smart contracts that expand on the standard.
- xattt 6y agoHow about seniors living in long-term care to improve their living conditions as well?
- geoduck14 6y agoThey don't count. Let them wallow in their isolation.
- patentatt 6y agoI take this as a joke, but ... you may actually be on to something here. Like, seriously.
- plumeria 6y agoIt would be cool for trees in, for example, the Amazon and Madagascar. I would like to sponsor a Tahina spectabilis in its habitat.
- internetslave 6y agoHomes this is a great idea.
- arcsincosin 6y agoYes, this exists! [1] [1]: https://wildcards.world/ https://wildcards.world/
- dmos62 6y ago> the global population of mountain gorillas is 1,063 Who will be producing the rest of the gorillas?
- tudorw 6y agoTime :)
- BelleOfTheBall 6y agoWhen a momma gorilla and a papa gorilla love each other very much... (and significant resources are dedicated to keeping them safe, content and ready to procreate, which is what I'm assuming Reddit has achieved.)
- nonameiguess 6y agoOkay, I laughed at this, but unfortunately gorilla mating is quite a bit more brutal than this, more like an aspiring young alpha discovers the last alpha has grown old and weak, murders him, then murders all of the children as well, enslaves the gorilla women, and periodically rapes them. All he really offers in return is he'll keep other up and comers from murdering their new babies until he also grows too old and weak. But yeah, basically it's love.
- dmos62 6y ago> But yeah, basically it's love. Okay, I only giggled at the first one, but I laughed at this one.
- imbnwa 6y agoEh, female/male sexual relations amongst gorillas aren't as fantastically patriarchal as this, female Gorillas solicit males for sexual coitus themselves, including males other than the silverback, even after conception, and have even displayed homosexual tendencies[0][1][2][3], and they have preferences that have been genetically impressed on Gorilla males, which is why Gorilla males, unlike Chimp males, are not only amenable to interacting and playing with their own offspring but also those of others[4]. Their sexual lives aren't solely at the privy of the dominant male, waiting around for his urges passively, that's something of a fantasy. The dominant male is rarely the sire of all offspring in a troop, the has proven genetically. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3431b8twU-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3431b8twU-U [1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19399838/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19399838/ [2]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19722225/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19722225/ [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOtDSysn2kA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOtDSysn2kA [4]https://qz.com/1484989/male-gorillas-who-care-for-infants-have-five-times-more-babies/ https://qz.com/1484989/male-gorillas-who-care-for-infants-ha...
- Black101 6y agoInstitutions own more than 100% of GME and the people own more than 100% of gorillas... makes sense to me.
- lower 6y agoYou mean they've been short-selling gorillas?
- SyzygistSix 6y agoNo, we have been short-selling the environment gorillas live in. And people are straight up poaching gorillas as well.
- Cerium 6y agoSounds like someone is trying to corner the gorilla futures market.
- Tyr42 6y agoSounds like someone is shorting gorillas. Gotta hold and show them.
- triceratops 6y agoYou'd really need diamond hands to hold a gorilla. They're strong AF.
- jzig 6y agoI don't want to draw a line between them. I want to draw a circle around them!
- flimflamm 6y agoI think this adoption on non-existent gorillas is perfectly in line with over shorting positions with Game stop stocks.
- jl6 6y agoFractional reserve gorillas?
- bpodgursky 6y agoBut seriously, there are more like 100,000 lowland gorillas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_lowland_gorilla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_lowland_gorilla. So there's plenty of adoption to go around.
- ISL 6y agoSo someone is selling gorillas short in order to make it possible for WSB to be able to adopt >200% more extra gorillas than actually exist? Sounds like par for the course?
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- rossmohax 6y agoGorilla squeeze is coming!
- twic 6y agoGorillas are going to the moon.
- jdauriemma 6y ago:diamond::hands::gorilla:
- christophilus 6y agoThat was Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 4.
- throwei32423 6y agoGorillas are too hot; we need to pivot to other primates bro. https://chimpsnw.org/ https://chimpsnw.org/ In all seriousness, Chimps who've been used and dumped for science need to be supported.
- codyb 6y agoOrangutans are very endangered due to palm oil production. I haven’t donated here [0] yet but according to Charity Navigator [1] it seems okay. Once I get up and moving I’ll chip in a few bucks a month. I also do the Cheetah Conservation Fund [3] which is great. [0] - https://orangutan.org/donate/ https://orangutan.org/donate/ [1] - https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.programs&orgid=6474 https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.progra... [2] - https://cheetah.org/ https://cheetah.org/
- diarrhea 6y agoIs that number accurate? If so, I think it's wild (no pun intended) that humankind knows the exact number of animals of that species, globally.
- skohan 6y agoOfficially this is an estimate, but having been where these animals live, I believe we can have an exact count. Keep in mind that when we say “globally” this means a tiny region straddling the border between Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. We are talking about a few families of gorillas, some of which are tracked daily. There is a massive conservation effort on these animals, at least in Rwanda and Uganda, they all have names and I don’t think a gorilla is born without someone knowing about it
- ethbr0 6y agoI believe it also helps that they live in social groups, aside from some solitary males. So we're tracking (population / avg_group_size + misc_males) objects, as opposed to the entire population. Example on the other end would be snow leopards (130+ sq km) and grizzlies (380+ sq km), which are mostly solitary and have huge ranges.
- distribot 6y agoIf there are really 1063 I would think conservationists could know about almost every one individually. That's smaller than the high school I went to. I know they are spread out over a wide area in a dense jungle but I think it would be possible.
- mattowen_uk 6y agoThis film explains it all: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095243/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095243/ At the worst point their numbers dropped to the mid 100s. The main threat to them is poaching, and local wars. For further info: https://gorillafund.org/ https://gorillafund.org/