9 ms·

Dang, this is going to crash the NFT market for digital images of Lourve paintings.

0xmohit 6y ago
Not sure what it'd do to the NFT market, but it has crashed their servers for sure. > Server error. Continue to search the Louvre collections
- coldcode 6y ago
  Even when it's not crashing, the performance is terribly slow. Also the translations for English are mostly missing.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  The plot of the Louvre IT Department to get more resources is working as planned.
heckerhut 6y ago
I know you’re joking but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist, including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber. But it seems he finally understood it now thanks to this article: https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gif.html https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gi... [0] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts
- Barrin92 6y ago
  That explains why original signed artworks are valuable, not really why NFTs are valuable after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago
    I tend to view the NFT craze as just that, a craze. It started as a massive and intriguing stunt that spread far and wide because of how absurd it all seems. It’s the perfect storm of “I don’t get this at all” combined with “you just don’t understand how revolutionary this is”. You also have the appeal of “why don’t I just make a few of these NFT things and make some money too?” Additionally, I’ve read that the supposed $69 million dollars worth of ethereum used to purchase that famous NFT isn’t actually a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. So there’s a good chance this whole thing was a farce to jumpstart interest in the NFT market itself. Ultimately a few whales, famous people, and early adopters have already made out like bandits while the vast majority of people are barely going to make any money in the NFT market and it will sizzle out rapidly.
    - m12k 6y ago
      You're missing an important use case here: Money laundry. While regular cryptocurrency is quite useful for this, it comes with the drawback of having a well-defined market value at any given point in time, making it harder to cook the books since there is some "ground truth" to get audited against. NFTs don't have that limitation - the price at any moment can be as high or as low as you need it to be to shift any amount of money, instantly, from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. Regular art has historically been used for this too, as has high-end real estate (basically anything where rich "eccentrics" can pay whatever they want for something), but these come with the hassle of needing to also move a physical good, sign deeds, set up companies - plus there is a limited supply of these, limiting the bandwidth with which you can shift money around. NFTs overcome all these limitations, it's an entirely digital, global, endless supply of goods with no fixed marked value and a plausible cover story of why it's worth millions. If you're in charge of bookkeeping at a cartel, NFTs are probably the most exciting thing that has happened this decade if not longer.
      - Tarsul 6y ago
        I have no problem believing this. Nonetheless, I'd like to see a good hypothetical example to really understand how it would work. Would the seller have to be in on the deal? Probably, or not?
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  > The most expensive autograph ever sold as of the writing of this essay is John Lennon’s signature on a copy of Double Fantasy that he signed the day he died. It fetched $900,000 at auction in 2010. People imho buy the "uniqueness" of an item. This is why a poster of "the Kiss" by Klimt costs $10 and the original costs a $gazillion. The article mentions an autograph of Lennon. Not just any autograph, but one on the day he died. That means "no more after that". Maybe one will resurface, but A friend who is a painter was telling me that one of the reasons painters become famous after death is because they don't dilute the value of their works by creating more. Imagine they paint one bridge, and it is great! Someone buys it for $10k. Then they go ahead and paint 50 more bridges. Now they will sell for 2k. So the $10k-buyer just got screwed. And we don't know if one day thay paint 50 more bridges, or that was it (dilution ends). Now, she could be a bit bitter because she wasn't selling as high as she would wish, but she does make a good point.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    Uniqueness is only one part of the equation though. Hand made + beautiful + unique = amazing. Ugly pixelated jpeg generated by 300 lines of python + uniqueness = ??? It's kinda like playing all the notes from a Mozart piece in a random order, you could argue all the ingredients are there, but it won't be a masterpiece. People are delusional, they want all the fame and rewards while putting less and less effort in their craft, if we can even call that a craft anymore, I mean, look at that shit: https://opensea.io/collection/the-anime-girls https://opensea.io/collection/the-anime-girls
- coldtea 6y ago
  >but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist Huh? Isn't it obvious? They exist because some people have more money than sense. >including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber Edgy. Do you also spell that Seattle-based OS company with a dollar sign for the S?
- arkh 6y ago
  > the reason why NFTs exist Money laundering.
sn_master 6y ago
Not really. NFTs give 'ownership' to things that were already online and widely shared, sometimes for decades (first tweet, nayan cat gif). The Louvre can still NFT all the images as they please at millions for each one. If anything, it makes it easier now that people can start valuing the items before deciding to make a 'purchase' vs the museum starting auctions immediately.
amelius 6y ago
NFTs are a sign that we really need to do something about wealth inequality.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  No, NFTs are a sign we really need financial literacy. They are nothing.
  - andybak 6y ago
    So is money except when everyone agrees it isn't.
- logicchains 6y ago
  Aka "people should spend money on what I want them to instead of what they want to, because I'm morally superior to them"
  - amelius 6y ago
    Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. Not sure how to feel morally neutral about it.
    - fortran77 6y ago
      How many poor people were harmed because of NFTs? In fact, it seemed to transfer a great deal of wealth to an artist who was formerly of modest means.
      - afterburner 6y ago
        Seems mostly to transfer wealth to already famous or rich people. The rich buying stuff from each other. Perhaps even laundering money as they do so.
        fortran77 6y ago

Not sure what it'd do to the NFT market, but it has crashed their servers for sure. > Server error. Continue to search the Louvre collections

coldcode 6y ago
Even when it's not crashing, the performance is terribly slow. Also the translations for English are mostly missing.
BurningFrog 6y ago
The plot of the Louvre IT Department to get more resources is working as planned.

heckerhut 6y ago

I know you’re joking but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist, including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber. But it seems he finally understood it now thanks to this article: https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gif.html https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gi... [0] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts

Barrin92 6y ago
That explains why original signed artworks are valuable, not really why NFTs are valuable after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
- BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago
  I tend to view the NFT craze as just that, a craze. It started as a massive and intriguing stunt that spread far and wide because of how absurd it all seems. It’s the perfect storm of “I don’t get this at all” combined with “you just don’t understand how revolutionary this is”. You also have the appeal of “why don’t I just make a few of these NFT things and make some money too?” Additionally, I’ve read that the supposed $69 million dollars worth of ethereum used to purchase that famous NFT isn’t actually a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. So there’s a good chance this whole thing was a farce to jumpstart interest in the NFT market itself. Ultimately a few whales, famous people, and early adopters have already made out like bandits while the vast majority of people are barely going to make any money in the NFT market and it will sizzle out rapidly.
  - m12k 6y ago
    You're missing an important use case here: Money laundry. While regular cryptocurrency is quite useful for this, it comes with the drawback of having a well-defined market value at any given point in time, making it harder to cook the books since there is some "ground truth" to get audited against. NFTs don't have that limitation - the price at any moment can be as high or as low as you need it to be to shift any amount of money, instantly, from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. Regular art has historically been used for this too, as has high-end real estate (basically anything where rich "eccentrics" can pay whatever they want for something), but these come with the hassle of needing to also move a physical good, sign deeds, set up companies - plus there is a limited supply of these, limiting the bandwidth with which you can shift money around. NFTs overcome all these limitations, it's an entirely digital, global, endless supply of goods with no fixed marked value and a plausible cover story of why it's worth millions. If you're in charge of bookkeeping at a cartel, NFTs are probably the most exciting thing that has happened this decade if not longer.
    - Tarsul 6y ago
      I have no problem believing this. Nonetheless, I'd like to see a good hypothetical example to really understand how it would work. Would the seller have to be in on the deal? Probably, or not?
HenryBemis 6y ago
> The most expensive autograph ever sold as of the writing of this essay is John Lennon’s signature on a copy of Double Fantasy that he signed the day he died. It fetched $900,000 at auction in 2010. People imho buy the "uniqueness" of an item. This is why a poster of "the Kiss" by Klimt costs $10 and the original costs a $gazillion. The article mentions an autograph of Lennon. Not just any autograph, but one on the day he died. That means "no more after that". Maybe one will resurface, but A friend who is a painter was telling me that one of the reasons painters become famous after death is because they don't dilute the value of their works by creating more. Imagine they paint one bridge, and it is great! Someone buys it for $10k. Then they go ahead and paint 50 more bridges. Now they will sell for 2k. So the $10k-buyer just got screwed. And we don't know if one day thay paint 50 more bridges, or that was it (dilution ends). Now, she could be a bit bitter because she wasn't selling as high as she would wish, but she does make a good point.
- lm28469 6y ago
  Uniqueness is only one part of the equation though. Hand made + beautiful + unique = amazing. Ugly pixelated jpeg generated by 300 lines of python + uniqueness = ??? It's kinda like playing all the notes from a Mozart piece in a random order, you could argue all the ingredients are there, but it won't be a masterpiece. People are delusional, they want all the fame and rewards while putting less and less effort in their craft, if we can even call that a craft anymore, I mean, look at that shit: https://opensea.io/collection/the-anime-girls https://opensea.io/collection/the-anime-girls
coldtea 6y ago
>but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist Huh? Isn't it obvious? They exist because some people have more money than sense. >including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber Edgy. Do you also spell that Seattle-based OS company with a dollar sign for the S?
arkh 6y ago
> the reason why NFTs exist Money laundering.

sn_master 6y ago

Not really. NFTs give 'ownership' to things that were already online and widely shared, sometimes for decades (first tweet, nayan cat gif). The Louvre can still NFT all the images as they please at millions for each one. If anything, it makes it easier now that people can start valuing the items before deciding to make a 'purchase' vs the museum starting auctions immediately.

amelius 6y ago

NFTs are a sign that we really need to do something about wealth inequality.

bsenftner 6y ago
No, NFTs are a sign we really need financial literacy. They are nothing.
- andybak 6y ago
  So is money except when everyone agrees it isn't.
logicchains 6y ago
Aka "people should spend money on what I want them to instead of what they want to, because I'm morally superior to them"
- amelius 6y ago
  Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. Not sure how to feel morally neutral about it.
  - fortran77 6y ago
    How many poor people were harmed because of NFTs? In fact, it seemed to transfer a great deal of wealth to an artist who was formerly of modest means.
    - afterburner 6y ago
      Seems mostly to transfer wealth to already famous or rich people. The rich buying stuff from each other. Perhaps even laundering money as they do so.
      - fortran77 6y ago