5 ms·

NFTs are one of these things that truly makes me feel like an old man, and I'm not in my thirties yet.

by Zealotux 6y ago

mustafa_pasi 6y ago
Think of them as creative gambling devices.
- Applejinx 6y ago
  I think of them as the canonical infinite of fiat currency. More than any other thing, they are ONLY the value of 'getting everyone to agree they are this value'. It's beyond meaningless, but there's a fundamental nature to what it is: a pure power play. You might as well go, 'I have eleventy billion dollars, prove me wrong' and save a heck of a lot of energy. It will all come down to how many weapons you can bring to bear, regardless.
  - dfhjgkljhf44 6y ago
    >...they are ONLY the value of 'getting everyone to agree they are this value'. This is true of all kinds of tokens. The real takeaway is that cryptocurrencies are now so valuable that there are a plurality of individuals with over $100M, no taste, and no sense. This is a result of massive flows of money into the space. Fungible tokens are trivial replacements for large swaths of any financial system. There are great things going on adjacent to this sideshow.
- rout39574 6y ago
  Money laundering. It's the art market, digitized.
  - ackbar03 6y ago
    This is actually The best perspective I've come across on NFTs so far. Looking at it from this framework suddenly it makes more sense to me how something like this could potentially survive
arsome 6y ago
Feels like they really jumped the shark pretty quick and I just started hearing about them. Seems closer to trading cards than just about anything else so I haven't even done enough research to wrap my head around the technical side of what people are doing with them yet.
varjag 6y ago
NFTs are the trading cards to Bitcoin's pet rocks.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  I'm still looking for funding to develop my Pet Rock Remote Control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1AamI__Rg&ab_channel=MarcCanter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1AamI__Rg&ab_channel=MarcC...
PretzelPirate 6y ago
They might make more sense when they are actually used in other applications. For example, NFTs representing probably rare digital playing cards (like magic the gathering).
- lottin 6y ago
  No, they still don't make sense. What do you gain from "representing" a digital object? Nothing. You already have the digital object. The "representation" adds nothing to it.
  - adnzzzzZ 6y ago
    All of these crypto things are protocols. The representation and actions on the representations are possible because everyone agrees on a protocol for it. Imagine a future where everyone agrees on using these representations where it makes sense by using the same protocol, just like everyone agrees to use the http protocol. In this case, it's an introduction of scarcity to digital items that wasn't possible before, and that has value in possibly lots of different environments.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      The only value in faking scarcity is increased extraction by the latest wave of rent seekers. The world should be striving as hard as possible to move toward post-scarcity, and instead we are burning cities' worth of energy on...lucky numbers.
      - adnzzzzZ 6y ago
        I'm sure there are many artists who would disagree with you and who aren't rent seekers at all. And they benefit massively from scarcity in the digital space. That's just one group, there are many others.
    - lottin 6y ago
      Making something more scarce only creates value if the thing being made scarce has negative value. It's basic arithmetic.
mc32 6y ago
They are like the SHA-1 of a celebrity’s played lottery ticket, where you own the rights to the hash of the numbers on the expired ticket.
acdha 6y ago
You get used to that feeling: there’s so much money whose holders can’t think of productive uses that these bubbles happen periodically – during the 90s it was dotcoms who were guaranteed to lose money on every sale still having enormous valuations, with the ensuing collapse then leading investors to pour money into the “safe” housing market, etc. The blockchain bubble has had enough speculators pump money in that there’s a whole industry creating things like NFTs trying to prop up valuations, and that part of the cycle always lasts longer than seems possible to anyone prone to thinking about the market analytically rather than emotionally.
satysin 6y ago
Ha such a true statement. I am mid-thirties but I agree with the sentiment with regards to sales of digital art as NFTs. I can see a use for NFTs such as for concert tickets but a JPG or GIF? Sorry but we already have good protocols in place to transfer ownership, copyright, etc. of artwork to someone that has been used for centuries. A blockchain isn't needed for a god damn GIF sorry.
jcpham2 6y ago
Just turned 40, early bitcoin adopter, no idea what the fuck this shit is. Congrats kids with yer NFT and tweets and meme stonks, gtfo my porch
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  My PokeMon Go has got up and went. http://holyjoe.org/poetry/anon7.htm http://holyjoe.org/poetry/anon7.htm
  - jcpham2 6y ago
    Gotta catch em all
DonHopkins 6y ago
I guess you missed out on the POGs craze then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs

NFTs are one of these things that truly makes me feel like an old man, and I'm not in my thirties yet.

mustafa_pasi 6y ago

Think of them as creative gambling devices.

Applejinx 6y ago
I think of them as the canonical infinite of fiat currency. More than any other thing, they are ONLY the value of 'getting everyone to agree they are this value'. It's beyond meaningless, but there's a fundamental nature to what it is: a pure power play. You might as well go, 'I have eleventy billion dollars, prove me wrong' and save a heck of a lot of energy. It will all come down to how many weapons you can bring to bear, regardless.
- dfhjgkljhf44 6y ago
  >...they are ONLY the value of 'getting everyone to agree they are this value'. This is true of all kinds of tokens. The real takeaway is that cryptocurrencies are now so valuable that there are a plurality of individuals with over $100M, no taste, and no sense. This is a result of massive flows of money into the space. Fungible tokens are trivial replacements for large swaths of any financial system. There are great things going on adjacent to this sideshow.
rout39574 6y ago
Money laundering. It's the art market, digitized.
- ackbar03 6y ago
  This is actually The best perspective I've come across on NFTs so far. Looking at it from this framework suddenly it makes more sense to me how something like this could potentially survive

arsome 6y ago

Feels like they really jumped the shark pretty quick and I just started hearing about them. Seems closer to trading cards than just about anything else so I haven't even done enough research to wrap my head around the technical side of what people are doing with them yet.

varjag 6y ago

NFTs are the trading cards to Bitcoin's pet rocks.

DonHopkins 6y ago
I'm still looking for funding to develop my Pet Rock Remote Control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1AamI__Rg&ab_channel=MarcCanter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1AamI__Rg&ab_channel=MarcC...

PretzelPirate 6y ago

They might make more sense when they are actually used in other applications. For example, NFTs representing probably rare digital playing cards (like magic the gathering).

lottin 6y ago
No, they still don't make sense. What do you gain from "representing" a digital object? Nothing. You already have the digital object. The "representation" adds nothing to it.
- adnzzzzZ 6y ago
  All of these crypto things are protocols. The representation and actions on the representations are possible because everyone agrees on a protocol for it. Imagine a future where everyone agrees on using these representations where it makes sense by using the same protocol, just like everyone agrees to use the http protocol. In this case, it's an introduction of scarcity to digital items that wasn't possible before, and that has value in possibly lots of different environments.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    The only value in faking scarcity is increased extraction by the latest wave of rent seekers. The world should be striving as hard as possible to move toward post-scarcity, and instead we are burning cities' worth of energy on...lucky numbers.
    - adnzzzzZ 6y ago
      I'm sure there are many artists who would disagree with you and who aren't rent seekers at all. And they benefit massively from scarcity in the digital space. That's just one group, there are many others.
  - lottin 6y ago
    Making something more scarce only creates value if the thing being made scarce has negative value. It's basic arithmetic.

mc32 6y ago

They are like the SHA-1 of a celebrity’s played lottery ticket, where you own the rights to the hash of the numbers on the expired ticket.

acdha 6y ago

You get used to that feeling: there’s so much money whose holders can’t think of productive uses that these bubbles happen periodically – during the 90s it was dotcoms who were guaranteed to lose money on every sale still having enormous valuations, with the ensuing collapse then leading investors to pour money into the “safe” housing market, etc. The blockchain bubble has had enough speculators pump money in that there’s a whole industry creating things like NFTs trying to prop up valuations, and that part of the cycle always lasts longer than seems possible to anyone prone to thinking about the market analytically rather than emotionally.

satysin 6y ago

Ha such a true statement. I am mid-thirties but I agree with the sentiment with regards to sales of digital art as NFTs. I can see a use for NFTs such as for concert tickets but a JPG or GIF? Sorry but we already have good protocols in place to transfer ownership, copyright, etc. of artwork to someone that has been used for centuries. A blockchain isn't needed for a god damn GIF sorry.

jcpham2 6y ago

Just turned 40, early bitcoin adopter, no idea what the fuck this shit is. Congrats kids with yer NFT and tweets and meme stonks, gtfo my porch

DonHopkins 6y ago
My PokeMon Go has got up and went. http://holyjoe.org/poetry/anon7.htm http://holyjoe.org/poetry/anon7.htm
- jcpham2 6y ago
  Gotta catch em all

DonHopkins 6y ago

I guess you missed out on the POGs craze then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs