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‘Disaster Girl’ has sold her popular meme as an NFT for $500k
- tapoxi 6y agothis is just a scam, right? if you actually want to buy something valuable, why not buy the copyright?
- brazzy 6y agoBecause copyrights are boring and don't bring free publicity.
- user-the-name 6y agoNo, he got it right the first time, it's a scam.
- brazzy 6y agoIf it's a scam, how does it work? Who's getting scammed?
- nickthegreek 6y agothe last buyer.
- HideousKojima 6y agoAnd copyright generally belongs to whoever took the photo, at least in the US. Simply being in the photo doesn't grant copyright
- IHLayman 6y agoThe best way I’ve seen it described as it is in a way a digital “baseball card”. Baseball cards in and of themselves have no value, just text on a piece of cardboard, and if it is of the same player, they are mostly fungible. But, if the baseball card is of Babe Ruth, and you bought the card before he got famous, and you took good care of the card, now it is a valuable antique worth money. NFTs seem to be a digital form of that, complete with a JSON of its “stats”, with the added benefit that each one is completely unique. As generous of a description as that is, I think your assessment of their current form is correct, as it really does feel like a scam. NFTs can’t be really “appreciated” the way that a collectible card can be appreciated, and heck I don’t think they have an actual viewer yet. I know that this criticism is a subjective thing, but I think it is significant. Then again, rich people buy valuable artworks that they don’t appreciate either, except for the price that the artwork is worth. It could be digital wealth signaling.
- tromp 6y agoI can see some of these "NFT sells for huge amount" cases being scams where the fake buyer is in fact the creator, and they're just after publicity or hoping to boost their future ability to sell to actual buyers.
- soarfourmore 6y agoWould someone explain an NFT to me, as an adult (not ELI5)? I keep reading stories like this and don’t understand why it would be valued at 500k
- ufo 6y agoI also don't get it. An NFT is basically a small piece of text on the blockchain saying that you own the thing at a given URL. It doesn't mean you have copyright over the relevant intelectual property. There's nothing stopping the URL from returning a 404 at some point. And anyone can create an nft of anything, even if they don't actually own the intelectual property. It really is as crazy as it sounds. The closest real world analogy I've seen is that it's like the people who sell deeds for plots of land on the Moon.
- jwilk 6y agoWhat's the URL for this particular NFT?
- js2 6y agoThe info is linked to from here: https://foundation.app/DisasterGirl/disaster-girl-25046 https://foundation.app/DisasterGirl/disaster-girl-25046 Here's the token: https://etherscan.io/token/0x3b3ee1931dc30c1957379fac9aba94d1c48a5405?a=25046 https://etherscan.io/token/0x3b3ee1931dc30c1957379fac9aba94d... What's burned into the blockchain is the URL of a JSON file which is hosted on IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmYBvcJMaYFrUwhTRcbiHqFBoYPP54t4aBCnk1KEv5n4tc/metadata.json https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmYBvcJMaYFrUwhTRcbiHqFBoYPP54t4aBCnk1K... That in turn points to the image, also hosted on IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmeQ6c5HdnEDcheHmWuKWdwMHBBZg1eGpgV5h3H2MyvdzR/nft.jpg https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmeQ6c5HdnEDcheHmWuKWdwMHBBZg1eGpgV5h3H... Here's the transaction which minted the token with the IPFS URL of the metadata as input: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xccc3f7ee08307dd469af7c65c55e087edc45ed9dbf716511d4c3e31643c0574a https://etherscan.io/tx/0xccc3f7ee08307dd469af7c65c55e087edc... More about hosting NFT content on IPFS here: https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/mint-nfts-with-ipfs/#a-short-introduction-to-nfts https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/mint-nfts-with-ipfs/#a-short-int... As to NFTs themselves, you’ll have to understand Etherium smart contracts. This particular NFT is a Foundation NFT which implements the ERC-721 interface: http://erc721.org/ http://erc721.org/ (Except the underlying contract actually appears to be https://docs.zeppelinos.org/docs/1.0.0/upgradeability_adminupgradeabilityproxy https://docs.zeppelinos.org/docs/1.0.0/upgradeability_adminu... which I understand to be a contract that proxies its implantation. I’m not entirely clear how that works.)
- vsskanth 6y agoWhy are people buying this ? Some money laundering thing going on ?
- poisonborz 6y agoEither that, or these are (bitcoin?) millionaires to whom this is pocket change and might as be a good investment as any crypto nowadays.
- bradleyjg 6y agoIf you have a heavy financial interest in meme NFTs or even just NFTs generally then all this publicity could easily be worth $500k. It’s not quite pump and dump, but it’s at least a cousin.
- user-the-name 6y agoIt's just one guy trying to pump prices: https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1387956657171271681 https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1387956657171271681 As always, if it's related to cryptocurrency, the answer to the question "why" is "because it's a scam". Always.
- poisonborz 6y agoGood for her. This could be a way for "meme stars" - who mostly got nothing out of their popularity besides anxiety, some weird talk show invites or webshop mug sales - to properly cash in on their immense cultural impact. Regardless of the value the buyer gets.
- user-the-name 6y agoGood for her, but, she's just being used here to trick people into pumping money into a huge scam.
- poisonborz 6y agoAnyone interested would just buy some other NFT instead. I'd say this is still a more valid """art piece""" to own compared to a random generated pixel dude.
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoAs Winston Zeddemore said during his interview to be a Ghostbuster, "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFX4fmldZFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFX4fmldZFs Of course a one-time six-digit check is also enough...
- jrochkind1 6y agoShe's the one who just made $500K, I agree it's a huge scam, but she doesn't seem to be the one getting exploited.
- e-clinton 6y agoWhy is this a huge scam but paying 500k for a baseball card isn’t? To me, a baseball card is equally useless.
- setr 6y agoperhaps because NFT's offer no meaningful version of ownership -- you don't control it according to the government (no copyright/ip transfer), you don't control it according to the physical universe (you don't actually have anything -- not even bits), you don't control it according to the internet (others have just as much access and distribution as they did before), you don't control it according to blockchains in general (you can trivially establish a second NFT chain and claim ownership there). The thing that's being traded is a certificate of ownership that is enforced and considered by almost no one. It's equivalent to trading on emails that say "I own the Eiffel Tower". The fundamental question is why the hell does anyone want an NFT in the first place? "it's art" doesn't cut it, and "it's like baseball cards" doesn't really cut it either, because you aren't buying the card in a way that you can claim ownership over -- you're buying a certificate that contains a link to the card, and trading on that. Entirely independent of the object under question. In fact, you don't need the digital asset in the first place. You might as well trade tokens directly, and let go of the farce. But I suppose you just have a normal coin then.
- roenxi 6y agoThis doesn't even work as a status symbol, because I think there would be mass confusion at a dinner party about what, exactly, has just been bought. This doesn't seem to be a good, service, right to do something and it is difficult to see why this particular non-fungible-token is distinct from a different NFT claiming to represent the same thing.
- xur17 6y agoIt doesn't work as a status symbol at a dinner party, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the target market someone buying an NFT is trying to impress.
- fassssst 6y agoI doubt anyone is trying to impress someone, it’s more likely they’re hoping to resell it to a greater fool.
- roenxi 6y agoWhy not create a new NFT and sell it instead? The NFT doesn't seem to convey any exclusive right here. This is pathetic more than crazy. They're going to struggle to even prove they have the NFT. Only a tiny circle of people even know how to verify this stuff. They'd get just as much practical leverage out of lying to say they'd bought the NFT and donating all the money to a charity on the sly. You know, maybe I bought it? Can we prove I didn't in a way I'd understand? Not only could they be lying, it is completely irrelevant to anyone even if they are. Unless I've really misunderstood something and am on the fast track to looking stupid - there is nothing here to care about even if I wanted to.
- fnord77 6y agorational me thinks NFTs are just an expensive fad - something that is arbitrarily "non fungible" really isn't non-fungible. You're not even getting the copyright IP. But maybe there's something to this? Is this real or is it a big scam?
- HideousKojima 6y agoIt's hype/tulip mania mixed with a scam. Even people who are generally skeptical of normal crypto recognize that at the very least it's a good way to buy drugs on the darkweb. NFTs, on the other hand, offer zero utility.
- jrochkind1 6y agoThinking about this, all i can come up with is: some people have WAY too much money on their hands.
- majinuub 6y agoIts disappointing that Hacker News can't seem to see past the fad. NFTs have some really interesting use cases. They're basically a digital deed or certificate of authenticity you can't just copy (at the very least it would be very difficult to do so). The patronage of art is just one use case. An interesting use for NFTs is having objects "know" who owns them by seeing which address holds its NFT. The object can then perform tasks or give access only if you can provide a signature. Here's a pretty good video on NFTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-i9Jsm95ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-i9Jsm95ro
- hnbad 6y agoWe're all aware that this is just for money laundry, yes? Nobody really thinks "owning" an NFT of a meme is really worth $500k to anyone, right?
- acomjean 6y agoI volunteer with a local arts organization. We have lots of artists (over 200) with in various stages in their careers. Fewer and fewer make a living at it full time. They struggle to make a business out of this. I feel like the art world has a very weird “winner take all” mentality. I kind of wish it was more distributed. I appreciate new revenue models, but I have mixed feeling about this. Shameless plug: We’re Sommerville open studios and we’re having our (outdoor and virtual) open studios this weekend. https://www.somervilleopenstudios.org/visit/ https://www.somervilleopenstudios.org/visit/
- hedberg10 6y agoAre they supposed to live off of their art? Who says that ever happened in history, or that should it be the norm? Are we supposed to distribute all earnings in the arts by force? How do we measure who gets how much? You need to realise that most artists never made a living with their art. If they did, they had a rich sponsor who simply liked their art. If rich people don't do that anymore: Tough luck. Maybe the rich people are at fault, but maybe the artists are crap? Don't even get me started with the state and 'Somebody ought to do something!'isms.
- jxcl 6y ago> I feel like the art world has a very weird “winner take all” mentality. I agree strongly with this. I'm lucky enough to have a good job in software and I enjoy it enough to keep me happy, but I've also had serious art hobbies in the past. I spent many years studying photography but never felt like I got to the point where I could impact somebody's life with it. I occasionally took portraits that people liked, but most of my time was spent doing landscapes. Everyone is so oversaturated with photographs and because of the internet it's basically impossible as a hobbyist to make your work stand out. I started studying music in Dec 2019, which happened to be kind serendipitous because I had something to work on at home in the pandemic (there are only so many ways you can arrange eggs or glasses on your window sill to practice still life photography). It struck me that with music, the barrier to have an impact on someone is much lower than with photography. With photography the cost of reproduction is essentially so low that people who are interested in it can see hundreds or thousands of photos through instagram in a day, and there's not a strong concept of the "original" piece. With music, the live performance aspect of music is impossible to reproduce, so it's much more valuable to people, and even simple songs with simple melodies can have a strong effect (I made my grandmother cry by singing "Georgian Song" by Bulat Okudzhava over Zoom, I had never made anyone cry through art before). Kind of off topic but this is something I've been thinking about a lot.
- underseacables 6y agoAs much as I think NFT is a bit of a crackpot idea, i’m extremely happy that she was able to do this. Now let’s get Bad News Brian an NFT!
- iudqnolq 6y agoHe was involved in selling it (see TFA)
- falcolas 6y agoTo quote a famous circus master†: "There's a sucker born every minute." And these NFT sales prove it. † No, the attribution can't be proven, but it's good enough for government work.