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The original conceptual framework for NFT-like instruments is Nick Szabo's "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority": https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-
by schoen 6y ago
The original conceptual framework for NFT-like instruments is Nick Szabo's "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority":
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/
At the very end he says:
> Largely unaddressed above is the problem of divergence between actual conditions and directory rights. [...] When divergence becomes too great, a solution to address the unreality of the title registry is needed.
Almost nobody selling NFTs today has even bothered to address Szabo's final "correspondence to ground" point, i.e., why anyone should think that the ownership of a particular NFT means anything!
- koonsolo 6y agoThis NFT is not "The Brooklyn Bridge", this NFT is "Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge NFT". Do you think nobody wants the bragging rights of owning that? I certainly do, but not for $50k, which it already has.
- lisper 6y agoc.f.: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
- pmlnr 6y ago> Do you think nobody wants the bragging rights of owning that? It would be nice to believe that eventually we evolve beyond bragging about being an idiot. > I certainly do ...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- leokennis 6y agoExactly. There’s little I’d like less than bragging about having spent my life savings on a JPEG that everyone has but that I “own”...
- koonsolo 6y agoI don't think the person spending $50k does it with his lifes saving. You don't buy a jpeg, you buy the unique item that John Cleese sold. Same for movie props. You can buy a nice lightsaber below $200. The ones that were used in the movies... a bit more.
- AddisonRyan 6y ago"item"
- Igelau 6y ago> You don't buy a jpeg, you buy the unique item that John Cleese sold. A NFT is not an item. > Same for movie props. You can buy a nice lightsaber below $200. The ones that were used in the movies... a bit more. Those are things. There is no correlation. NFT is selling you a pointer. It's a hash that on one software platform says "that thing over there". When Bob buys a NFT, he isn't buying a lightsaber that he can display, loan out, or hold . Bob is buying a number.
- freeone3000 6y agoRight, but in this case, you're buying a number provably owned by John Cleese, as part of a performance piece where he sold a token representing the Brooklyn Bridge, as a commentary on the entire concept of selling numbers. It's meta, it's brilliant, it's popular, (it's absolutely going to devalue the other Brooklyn Bridge NFT I own because mine was minted first but this one's more popular), it's ART.
- mypalmike 6y ago*Edit: Too late to delete, but my sarcastic comment is likely against site rules. Apologies
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- moistly 6y agoI suppose one can “brag” about most anything. Seems to me, though, that a brag about “owning” an arbitrary sequence of bytes is pretty damn empty. Overcome a challenge that presses your personal limitations? Worthy of a brag: you took up the task, persevered, and conquered. Open your wallet to purchase something? I just don’t see that there’s any legitimate boasting to be had there: any damn fool with the same money could do it. There is no challenge, there is no accomplishment, there is nothing to be proud of at all. It’s such empty bragging. IMO people who brag about owning things have deep personal insecurities and would be better off putting the money spent towards therapy.
- koonsolo 6y agoHaving a unique and quirky item is worth a brag. Bragging with an expensive Rolex is very different than bragging with the NFT of a terrible image of the Brooklyn Bridge by John Cleese who sold it as a joke.
- dexterdog 6y agoExcept there is nothing unique about it.
- evilDagmar 6y agoJohn Cleese has done how many pieces of architectural art now?
- moistly 6y agoNor anything unique about a Rolex. Can’t see how a purchased watch qualifies for bragging. It takes no skill, no dedication, no smarts, no gumption to open one’s wallet to purchase a watch. The person who built the watch might have something to brag about.
- dexterdog 6y agoA Rolex is an actual thing with a function and an intrinsic value. It can be copied, but only at a significant cost.
- remram 6y agoI will remember this. I even bookmarked that tweet, and it cost me nothing.
- jljljl 6y agoThis isn't really convincing. If NFTs are only valuable when celebrities sell them as part of a fad, then they have absolutely failed to meet the "correspondence to ground" point.
- basch 6y agoHow about if somebody sells NFTs and then becomes famous? Maybe they become famous for NFT art, maybe not. Chances are most will expire worthless, but a select few may be early works from people who go down in history.
- eqvinox 6y ago> This NFT is not "The Brooklyn Bridge", this NFT is "Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge NFT". You certainly seem to be right, but where's the authority for that observation coming from? Or what would the actual Brooklyn Bridge look like as an NFT?
- predictmktegirl 6y agoIt's like you get to pay to be part of a joke with John Cleese. I think it's worth something too.
- monkeydreams 6y agoIMO NFT are a path to the commoditisation of belief and the communities which spring up around shared beliefs. Imagine if QAnon were to launch their own, with the proof of patriotism baked in to your online in or if some religion reinvented the indulgence. These would probably be done on their own coinbase.
- multjoy 6y agoDon’t give them ideas!
- monkeydreams 6y agoI haven't even mentioned intangible secessionist states setting up auto-resolving contracts systems and laws, taxation, etc.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoIn the case of real property the clearinghouse for this is the local courthouse. Deeds, liens, etc... all flow through the local (city/county) clerk. If you can create NFT's such that transfer requires two signatures (one of those being the jurisdiction of the real property) then it would function little different than how property transfers happen today. Furthermore NFT transfers signed by the court could reduce or eliminate the costly need for title searches and title insurance. If real property moves to the block chain in this manner all you need is one final title search, then signed by the court, from then on out title can be ensured by the blockchain. If you can do fractional ownership of an NFT then it greatly simplifies land development, mineral rights, and other more complex transfers such as sub-division of a tract. Having knowledge of this business for some time now I believe it's an issue of when, not if, real property will move to a blockchain of some sort.
- jjnoakes 6y agoIn the case of hacks (someone gets the court's private key and signs fraudulent transfers), mistakes (bugs, human error, etc), and other such scenarios, there would still need to be some kind of title insurance and human oversight.
- maxerickson 6y agoRight, even if you come up with a clean, secure way to publish attestations onto a blockchain, you've got a problem when they are transferred to an invalid or inaccessible destination. That a title can be contested is actually a feature of the existing system, not simply a problem.
- defen 6y ago> If real property moves to the block chain in this manner all you need is one final title search, then signed by the court, from then on out title can be ensured by the blockchain. Just because your "final" title search doesn't produce anything doesn't mean a future one won't, so I don't see how the blockchain solves anything here.
- viraptor 6y ago
- samatman 6y agoI disagree, but this is a common objection which is worth addressing. Specifically I disagree that NFTs are grounded in that particular conceptual framework. NFTs aren't attempting to be bearer instruments which convey ownership of some physical good, or even of a piece of intellectual property. Those require a corresponding Ricardian contract. This remains a good idea, but, to put it mildly, there are unsolved problems associated with it. A NFT is just a baseball card, what you're proposing is more like a baseball player packaging up 10% of his lifetime earnings into 5000 instruments and selling those. Baseball cards have provenance, scarcity, and IP protection of their appearance: that is, they're demonstrably produced by a company with a right to do it, there are only so many in existence, and it's illegal to make identical copies of the baseball card. NFTs have two of these properties and an adequate substitute for the third. They're signed, giving provenance, and scarce, due to blockchain-verified artificial scarcity. It's not illegal to make copies of the referenced digital artifact, because what fun would that be? No one could load the image or whatever in a browser. Nor is copyright currently assigned. I don't believe it's conventional to purchase copyright for an artwork along with the artwork itself, but I could be wrong about that, and it doesn't matter: this would be a cool thing to add to some NFTs, but we can just agree that it isn't a part of the package right now and move on. But it is impossible to make an actual copy of the NFT itself, even with the private key used to sign the original. That makes IP protection an inferior good: it's fraud to make a forgery of a rare baseball card, but it's quite profitable fraud if one happens to get away with it. Disclosure: I own no NFTs in the usual sense of the term, and don't intend to.
- Igelau 6y ago> A NFT is just a baseball card It's more like a pointer to a JPEG of a baseball card.
- samatman 6y agoThis is like describing a baseball card as a low-quality reproduction on cheap cardstock of an original photo. Personally, I don't care for baseball cards, I value them about as much as the paper they're printed on. But collectors like them, so if I found one (I dunno, dropped in its sleeve into a tip jar?), I'd check if someone else wanted to pay for it before I started using it as a bookmark. Same deal with NFTs. The difference is they're brand-new and white-hot, and it remains to be seen if they have enduring value. My guess: NFTs will continue to be valued, but the vast majority of those which exist right now (and of every NFT ever minted) will be worth so little that it isn't worth the transaction fee to transfer ownership. The John Cleese Brooklyn Bridge though? It's a great joke! Might not be worth whatever it goes for down the road, but it will probably still be worth something.