19 ms·

The NFT market bubble has popped?

171 points by dantondwa 5y ago

midasuni 5y ago
The NFT market is for money laundering, how can it “pop”
- monocasa 5y ago
  The laundering market realizes that a public record is antithetical to some of their goals?
- powerapple 5y ago
  This has supported my trust in bitcoin from the very beginning. Why do you need NFT for money laundering when you can use cryptocurrency to achieve the same directly?
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Because maybe someone has find ways to counter this type of money laundering so they need to find new ways
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    How do you launder money with bitcoin? With NFTs it's easy, you can just buy some ugly jpg for 1 m, then sell it to your shell company for 10 m.
    - fuzzylama 5y ago
      I presume the tax man is aware of this kind of schemes
      - Grustaf 5y ago
        Sure, but in some countries capital gains are tax free.
    - powerapple 5y ago
      Can you make an ugly jpg for 0 cent and sell it to your shell company for 10 m? save the first million. Previously you can send money to mining company for machines, farm bitcoins and then sell machines back to mining company. I am not sure how easy it is now.
      - Grustaf 5y ago
        It would probably look better if you are not the person making it in the first place, and you need to make it look like you're paying a market price for it.
dinamic 5y ago
Even if it turns out to be a loss for the majority of players, I am still happy for the creators that got a chance to monetize their work. I think Beeple truly deserves the fortune he made.
josalhor 5y ago
The bubble has popped, but these graphs show that we are still at January-February levels of bubble. I am not sure if the market has fully collapsed (Unfortunately?).
- instance 5y ago
  Yea, for all we know it could be a temporary correction, just to shoot up further next month. I think it's too early to speak of a 'collapse'.
- csomar 5y ago
  One thing I learned trading and navigating crypto markets, is that a $0 price type of collapse is not possible with a scarce token. If Bitcoin goes to 0, then anyone can buy all the possibly available bitcoins and then decide what the price will be later on. This makes it impossible for the price to reach 0 unless the protocol is hacked. A 90-95% decline from the height could safely be considered a total collapse. Some people who got in early will still remain in the green after a total collapse.
  - antupis 5y ago
    If bitcoin price goes 0 then there is no mining rewards and doofus with laptop can do 51% attack so coin is basically worthless.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    > then decide what the price will be later on The price is not something anyone can just "decide". If the price goes to 0 it's because nobody wants bitcoins. When that is the case, you can't just buy up bitcoins and "decide" that they cost 1 m. Well you could, but nobody would suddenly pay that much.
vesinisa 5y ago
I am hardly surprised. While Bitcoin maybe had theoretical uses as a currency a decade ago, the NFT hype never made any sense whatsoever to begin with.
- jaggirs 5y ago
  It makes no less sense than a painting. If you accept that an original painting has more value than a perfectly good copy, whilst being undistinguishable for anyone except a few experts, you should realize NFT's have the exact same arrangement, except 'originality' is determined by the blockchain instead of an expert.
  - arrow7000 5y ago
    Except that when you own a painting you actually own the physical painting. Not a key to a link to a URL of the file.
  - vesinisa 5y ago
    Well yes, exactly. The original painting has value exactly because it is not a copy. And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? At the end of the day "ownership" mostly has any meaning within the legal system. NFTs seem to create something akin to a shadow copyright but which makes no sense. Oh well, maybe I am just a simpleton.
    - Fern_Blossom 5y ago
      >And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? No, no, no. It's worse than you think. An NFT is more like a plastic cup with Pikachu printed on it. You don't own the rights to Pikachu. You just bought a cup with his face on it. With NFTs, there is no contract to own the actual "thing". Just simply the piece of "merch" (the NFT) with the likeness associated with it. Except, a plastic cup still has value to drink from or hold your toothbrushes.
      - almostkorean 5y ago
powerapple 5y ago
One thing I have noticed when listening to the interviews of NFT companies is that, when describing NFT is the future, the arguments from these founders are examples of people/artists made money by selling NFT online. It has become more and more a theme for cryptocurrency technology has well: the reason you should be in is that other people have made money rather than the benefit of the technology itself. It is not a good sign.
- tiborsaas 5y ago
  Lots of people got "into the internet" because others have made money on it and not for the technology (html, tcp/ip, dns...) Yes, crypto is mostly focused on financial apps, so they are harder to understand than "send me 140 chars and we make a timeline of it".
  - eitland 5y ago
    All IMO: To be honest, that example is also the weirdest one to actually break through, and together with Snapchat the ones who took it farthest into almost unusable and still made bank. (Yo, and I think a number of other tried even further down that street but has failed AFAIK.)
  - simias 5y ago
    Imagine if Google Search achieved success not by providing a search engine but by publishing a whitepaper outlining how PageRank would eventually work, then selling $GOOG tokens to let people speculate on the hype (but not actually entitle them to anything regarding the company, so it's like venture capitalism, but worse). Then nothing happens for a decade or so, and then Google finally publishes a first version of their engine that takes 30s to search among a couple hundred websites. Effectively unusable, but hey, it's the early day! Bullish! I also disagree that cryptocurrencies are "hard to understand", it's only hard because their promoters feel the need to obfuscate with technobabble how dumb and ineffective 99% of proposed blockchain solutions are. It's hard to understand because there's nothing to understand.
    - 5y ago
shoto_io 5y ago
I am not sure. These charts don’t say a whole lot in my opinion. Sure, if you compare snapshots then there is less activity than say a couple of weeks earlier at the peak. But YoY comparison looks solid for example. I don’t think this is a proper and nuanced analysis.
trhway 5y ago
the sale of invisible sculpture just 2 days ago happened using paper certificate instead of NFT. Pity. It would have been match made in heaven. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/1002018211/italian-artist-sells-invisible-sculpture-for-real-money https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/1002018211/italian-artist-sel...
rorykoehler 5y ago
That was quick. Rubbish like this will kill crypto. So many grifters in crypto.
henvic 5y ago
99% of this cryptocurrency market is a joke (https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/ https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/). I'm tired of seeing this. Now we've NFT and an antivirus which has a miner embedded. lol
fighterpilot 5y ago
I could've drawn a similar looking graph in 2021-04-01 and arrived at the same conclusion on that basis ... and I would've been wrong.
Bombthecat 5y ago
Earth2 makes millions right now i think... It's sad
maxehmookau 5y ago
"Dumb idea is worth no money." Cool headline.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
These cycles are getting faster: 1. I read a post on HN extolling a new use of some technology. I understand how it works but don't get why. I do not jump on the bandwagon. 2. I read about the same technology but not on HN - maybe an online newspaper. I recognise there is an upcurve. Maybe I should have jumped when I read it on HN. 3. Beeple makes a fortune. My son and I enjoy watching him on corridor crew. I think I still don't know why but it can't be that bad. I do not jump on the bandwagon. 4. I realise I want to know the why makes sense. I play with some tech. I still know how but not why. I do not jump on the bandwagon. 5. The bubble bursts. I retro-think my inaction into foresight - I am glad I did not jump on the bandwagon. But, just maybe, perhaps why is less important than try.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  your inaction was perfectly fine. There's always a few lucky people who benefit off these things, millions don't and you don't see them. It's like becoming a TikTok star. One guy creates a meme, gets ten milion views, lives in a mansion in California. Millions of kids think they can do the same thing and drop out of school. Not worth it. I remember reading a blog post by a Wall Street banker talking about the pre-2008 culture. He said that it was common for people to get promoted because they made money, even if they didn't know why. Justifying bad decisions based on lucky outcomes retroactively isn't a culture you want to emulate.
  - caractacus 5y ago
    "Millions of kids think they can do the same thing and drop out of school." They do? Is this what you think is happening to millions of kids?
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      "According to a Harris Poll/Lego survey covering the United States, Britain, and China, 29% of children aged eight to 12 want to be a “YouTuber.” That’s three times as many as those who want to be astronauts. Other polls suggest an even higher percentage of teenagers aspire to fame and fortune via YouTube or another social media platform. An eye-grabbing news report out this month suggested a whopping 54% of Americans aged 13 to 38 would become an “influencer” given the chance, with 12% already considering themselves influencers." There's been an entire industry of so called "content houses" popping up. Okay maybe not literally millions are dropping out of school but it has become a real thing with a non-trivial amount of teenagers and 20-somethings ditching careers for what is basically entertainment gigs. https://www.fastcompany.com/90432765/why-do-kids-want-to-be-influencers https://www.fastcompany.com/90432765/why-do-kids-want-to-be-...
andrefuchs 5y ago
One reasons could be that Ethereum gas fees for minting a piece are extremely high at the moment. Tezos ($xtz) based platforms such as https://www.hicetnunc.xyz https://www.hicetnunc.xyz are thriving. The fees are next to nothing - especially compared to current alternatives.
- iSnow 5y ago
  Gas on ETH is super low right now, around 20Gwei which translates into a $1 fee for a send and maybe $5 for minting an NFT. Tezos on the other hand is a complete ghost town, it has absolutely no traction - and I say this as a soon to be ex XTZ holder.
  - andrefuchs 5y ago
    Interesting, please share your sources.
    - iSnow 5y ago
      1) https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/ the first defi dapp not on ETH is BTC Lightning on rank #42. 2) https://debank.com/ranking/locked_value https://debank.com/ranking/locked_value something like 75% is on ETH, 95% or so on ETH + BSC (centralized ETH clone) + MATIC (ETH sidechain). The only chain that's not directly or indirectly tied to ETH is FTM. 3) onchain-volume, https://blockchair.com/compare https://blockchair.com/compare and https://tzstats.com/ https://tzstats.com/ ETH transacted $20.6bn over the last 24h, XTZ 10.8 XTZ * $3.8 = $41.5m. It's not even close, it's a couple orders of magnitude away.
habosa 5y ago
NFTs are dumb however some of the NFT markets have one cool thing that I hope sticks around: the artist gets a cut of all future sales. If you sell your NFT art for $10 and then someone resells it for $1M, you will get some percentage of the $1M. We've all heard the stories of "collector buys 10 Jackson Pollock's for $10 in the 70s, sells the collection for $100M today". Wouldn't it be nice if the artist could benefit from that belated appreciation? Like most other things on the blockchain you don't really need the blockchain to do this, however this is one case where it's actually much simpler to implement the concept using a blockchain and smart contracts rather than any traditional method I'm aware of.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  Interestingly the artist retains copyright - the buyer gets the physical goods. Much like DVDs So pollock (or his estate or whatever) owns the copyright to the sold painting and so gets paid when you buy a postcard etc.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    This is exactly zero change from regular artwork. If I sell a piece of art, the copyright is still mine. You can sign it away, of course, but otherwise they have to get permission to do anything with the image other than display and store it (and the stuff that goes along with this).
    - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
      Yes, that's what I hoped i was saying :-) - what surprised me is that if someone pays 100M for a painting of sunflowers they are just getting pasteboard and oils - if they want to publish a picture of their purchase they get to pay again ! Just did not expect that
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  The traditional method is to just write that stipulation into a normal legal contract. That's already the payment model for some types of art, most notably actors getting a forever cut of backend profit on films. This tends to lead to some creative accounting whereby profit is impossible, but it's still in the contract already. No need for the contract to be on a blockchain. Nothing was stopping Jackson Pollack from writing a stipulation into the sales contracts for this painting that he gets a cut of all future resales. The only possible advantage of a blockchain here is if you don't trust the law, since the technology itself enforces a smart contract and doesn't rely upon recourse to a legal system. The downside is you have no recourse to a legal system, so if some owner of a digital good sells it off-chain (you give me cash, I give you possession of the wallet), there isn't much you can do.
deleted 5y ago
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m00dy 5y ago
I think it is too early to call it bubble. NFT transactions are low due to crypto market is down for a month or so.
domid 5y ago
Bubbles are not always the end. Actually quite the opposite. It's just the beginning. I'd give about 1-2 years for the NFT market to rebound. As the technology matures so will the supply. Demand will follow. It took about 3 years for Bitcoin to surpass Bitcoin 2017 bubble price levels. It took about 6.8 years for prices to rebound to dot-com bubble price levels.
- bhandziuk 5y ago
  Well when the housing bubble popped people stopped living in homes so I don't know if you're right.
gizmo 5y ago
This mania might have one last leg up, but that's it. The main thing to remember with markets that have ponzi characteristics is that there are tons of latecomers and few early adopters. While the early adopters might HODL in the face of a 70% downturn, the late adopters won't. They FOMOd in because they couldn't stand seeing their friends make easy money any longer. They don't have conviction because the only reason they're in is because they didn't want to miss out. This doesn't just apply to NFTs but to everything from crypto to meme stocks (AMC, GME, BBBY, EXPR), to SPACS and to ESG stocks, to shipping and commodities, and to leveraged or speculative ETFs. When this bubble pops many assets will be priced way below their actual value. This overreaction won't make any sense on the way down just like it hasn't made any sense on the way up. For this it doesn't even matter if NFTs provide real value and are here to stay. It doesn't matter whether a market behaves like a ponzi because it's fraud or because it just got too much social media coverage. The only thing that matters is whether a large enough percentage of the market consists of latecomers who will panic sell. If so, any bad news and POP!
- phist_mcgee 5y ago
  Just a little correction. NFTs, and crypto in general are critiqued as ponzis, but they are more accurately described as pyramid schemes, whereby early adopters rake in the lion's share of profits. Ponzis are where later investor money is used to pay out early investor money in a fraudulent never ending cycle.
  - gizmo 5y ago
    I think pyramid scheme would be a better description if people had different incentives depending on when they got in. With a pyramid scheme people who invite many others personally benefit, and those who join but don't invite others don't gain anything. Think multi-level marketing.
    - phist_mcgee 5y ago
      I mean NFTs fit that bill perfectly. Incentives for the late comers are to buy continually more dubious tokens that are produced by the initial round of creators. Those buyers then create a new market of lower tier creators who create even more valueless creations, and so the cycle continues. Crypto without NFTs have no creators and instead relies on the network effect of public interest to raise the value of their initial purchase. In this way, it's more akin to inventing a product and selling it on to another person and promising them that it will be worth more if they do the same.
qwertox 5y ago
That was a barely noticeable bubble. Was it even a market? Just because a tweet and a song got sold, and others sold some art, doesn't mean it was a real market. It was a popular trend which ceased to interest people. Like fidget spinners. It will probably become trendy again, once Bitcoin hits the 80's, if it ever will.
kharak 5y ago
I personally rather like the idea of NFTs. NFTs could become gamechangers, in the literal meaning of the word. The project Enjin for instances focuses on NFTs in the gaming world. One selling point is, that you might be able to collect items in one game and transfer it to another. Collect a rare trophy in Fortnite and show it off in your Steam VR Home, the trophies uniqueness and legitimacy verifiable by everyone. Of course, achieving this is easier said than done, but an appealing vision for the future of gaming. Also, it has historically been difficult for digital artists to get paid well, considering that copying their work is easy. I'm all for changing that. Yes, the image can still be copied, but ownership is it's own thing and some people are willing to pay for it.
- roytries 5y ago
  I don't understand how NFTs or blockchain in general helps in any way for this, or many other examples of this. All an NFT is is an encrypted hyperlink in the blockchain. The hyperlink points to a resource on someone's server. I think people forget that the NFT doesn't store the real thing. All an NFT is is basically an encrypted DNS server with some ownership data attached to it. Right now you could showcase your Fortnite trophy in SteamVR IFF Valve and EPIC decided to integrate this. Using regular boring techniques. Blockchain doesn't make this easier in any way. All Valve could do is get what trophies you own from the blockchain. But they'd still have to integrate with that particular blockchain and with the systems from EPIC that host the actual thing. Having a regular database/account system would be way more efficient and easy to use tbh. For example I can already showcase my Tweets on LinkedIn due to regular boring integration. Data from two different companies shared by establishing that I am the owner of both things via a regular old token. Data transferred via an API.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fnord77 5y ago
    > All an NFT is is an encrypted hyperlink in the blockchain. So if someone moves urls around on the server or if the company goes bust, that link is dead.
cryptica 5y ago
There are some legitimate use cases for NFTs but art is not one of them. The best use case I can think of is a kind of DNS domain name system. The domain name is an NFT; it's unique and it provides value as it can be integrated with various systems. The intrinsic value of crypto and NFT is in software integrations.
- flir 5y ago
  You could put DNS in a distributed database (a la blockchain), and there's a benefit there (although no more than insisting all DNS updates are signed, I think). I can't see what additional benefit NFT would offer over that?
  - cryptica 5y ago
    Just a few points I could come up with off the top of my head: - Users could buy and trade domain names using cryptocurrency tokens within the same system without relying on centralized payment gateways. - No need to rely on a central authority like ICANN to decide who can control what gTLDs. - Could make way for entirely new security models for TLS certificates; no need to trust certificate authorities. Certificates could be signed using blockchain private keys associated with a specific domain. - The whole system would be self-contained and all domain purchases would be publicly auditable on-chain; every domain would be paid for using tokens which represent real value, thus preventing misappropriation and spam. - Different DNS blockchains could compete for relevance/adoption to be integrated with different browser makers; this would encourage decentralization in the browser space. - Easy path to monetization; imagine how much demand would be created for underlying tokens if each user paid tokens every time they wanted to change the IP address which a domain name points to. This kind of DAO would be profitable by design. You could earn profit just by holding the token.
    - benhurmarcel 5y ago
      Websites would also lose their domain if the admin loses the private key, or it gets stolen. There would be no authority to return control to the rightful owner. I don't think most web actors would be ready to accept that massive drawback.
mattdesl 5y ago
Stats here fail to track OpenSea, Rarible, Nifty Gateway (three of the largest NFT platforms) and also alt/side chains like Tezos (with Hicetnunc which has recently overtaken Eth platforms in daily activity). Though likely the headline still stands - the bubble has popped and weekly sales are down to “only” a few dozen million USD per week. ie: we may start to see how this space will look beyond the hype/fad.
Yenrabbit 5y ago
Ignoring the hype, there are plenty of artists having fun selling work on platforms like hicetnunc for not very much and spending most of their proceeds buying other art. I joined and it's great fun trading pieces, coming up with ideas and seeing if anyone likes them, getting inspired by what other artists are doing etc etc etc. I feel like these small art playgrounds where artists can sell limited editions of their work will stick around whatever happens to the big $$$ hype train side of things.
- jonnyscholes 5y ago
  This is my experience. Hicentnunc (and the tezos community at large) is the closest I've felt to 00s internet culture/content which got me hooked on programming. Although perhaps paradoxically, I suspect the barrier to entry is part of this. Full disclosure: I hold a small amount of tezos.
  - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
    00s internet culture/content I hear everybody talking about it but I don't really get what is? Do you mean more of a feeling of companionship like in an IRC or Group?
    - paulcole 5y ago
      Somehow the peak of the internet always happened just when the person making the proclamation was getting into the internet. it’s just like how SNL was awesome when I was 16 and has been downhill ever since — and my dad says the exact same thing about when he was 16.
      - jonnyscholes 5y ago
        Fair point. I'd be the first to admit I have rose tinted glasses about those early years! And also the first to grumble at those who came later...
    - jonnyscholes 5y ago
madjin 5y ago
The crypto market is cooling down from its peak, but data about the NFT market shows that it's still doing very well. For Ethereum based NFTs there's been ~13M in sales in the past 7 days. Sources: - https://nonfungible.com/market/history https://nonfungible.com/market/history - http://cryptoslam.io/ http://cryptoslam.io/ Similar story to Bitcoin, transactions were the first use-case. Later came smart contracts which expanded the number of various applications that can be developed with blockchain. Collecting art was the first big use-case. More individuals and companies are focused on providing long-term value through utility. One example is NFTs that can unlock access such as someones time, places real or virtual, and communities in a similar way to Discords for patreon members. The art aspect is also evolving into more gamedev themes like artist designed NFTs for digi-physical fashion, avatars, pets, skins, etc. More virtual worlds will compose these blockchain artifacts together, adding more context to them such as: Audio NFTs becoming background music, text NFTs becoming stories and scripts, 3D NFTs can become props, set environments, avatar NFTs become characters and NPCs, and wearable NFTs getting distributed through achievements. All that said, I'm excited for some pullback because it reminds builders to tune out the noise and stay focused on building.
jokoon 5y ago
Was working with a guy to start a card game, it ended, he had other project on NFT. I wonder if I should share this with him. It's weird how easy it is to sell any cool sounding tech to laymen, even if laymen understand the tech a little. Why isn't everybody able to draw a simple pro/con list to have a minimum of skepticism? Is it because it's marginally better than having a more normal salesman job, to be a nurse or to stay unemployed? Tech is often like a tulip bubble. Businessmen go into the tulip market because as long as people like tulips, there is money to be made, so it's always money lost when you miss a trend. I wish there was some rulebook on how to spot trends that will be short-lived.
- paulgb 5y ago
  > I wish there was some rulebook on how to spot trends that will be short-lived. It's not exactly a rulebook, but if you read enough of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, there are some patterns that recur over and over. It was written 180 years ago, but it's amazing how little the psychology behind manias has changed. In particular, a good golden rule is to not follow people into an investment that you don't understand because you are blinded by greed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...
erulabs 5y ago
The overwhelmingly negative attitude towards technology on HN lately is upsetting and nauseating. If you don’t like NFTs, don’t buy them (I don’t). If you don’t like some startups product, don’t sign up. In the Boom thread there are people suggesting it’s fraudulent that they’ve taken longer than originally suggested to build supersonic aircraft. I’d very much like to know who elected the naysayers. There are tons and tons and tons of bad ideas all the time. The vast majority of businesses fail and ideas fall by the wayside. This forum used to be a place to celebrate risky business ideas and long shots. I couldn’t care less about the $ amount of NFTs sold today versus last month at the peak - in the end something that didn’t exist now does and clearly it is being used by some people - so congratulations to them and let’s find something we -are- excited about instead of every thread being “what a scam” for every attempt at a new use of technology. If a handful of video game developers use this for game-collectible interchange, awesome! Sounds useful. I don’t care about the vicious judgements of others any more than I want to read about why Facebook was a stupid idea in 2006.
- officialjunk 5y ago
  agree. i suspect the dollar amounts involved in NFT's is causing some sort of envy or anger amongst those that do not understand why.
  - officialjunk 5y ago
    if the dollar amounts were all less than $1 do you think there would be as much hate?
- foobiekr 5y ago
  I challenge the idea that the negativity is about “technology.” The negativity appears to be about bogus businesses built on hype, fraud, exploitation, rigged demos, completely fictional timelines, and bogus business models that have come to dominate what we call the tech industry. Fraud is actually more common in “tech” than it has ever been. It has huge repercussions for everything from start ups to large companies and, with NFTs, toxic financial products exploiting people in the same way that the dotcom and subprime eras did. You don’t get to opt out of this. I have relatives who now want to get “in on NFTs.” Our industry has real ethical problems with tons of external impact.
gpsx 5y ago
I'd like to add that being a bubble doesn't mean the object of the bubble is bad. Take the dot com bubble - some of those dot coms are doing pretty well now, like amazon.com, google.com, facebook.com and news.ycombinator.com.

171 points by dantondwa 5y ago

midasuni 5y ago

The NFT market is for money laundering, how can it “pop”

monocasa 5y ago
The laundering market realizes that a public record is antithetical to some of their goals?
powerapple 5y ago
This has supported my trust in bitcoin from the very beginning. Why do you need NFT for money laundering when you can use cryptocurrency to achieve the same directly?
- hulitu 5y ago
  Because maybe someone has find ways to counter this type of money laundering so they need to find new ways
- Grustaf 5y ago
  How do you launder money with bitcoin? With NFTs it's easy, you can just buy some ugly jpg for 1 m, then sell it to your shell company for 10 m.
  - fuzzylama 5y ago
    I presume the tax man is aware of this kind of schemes
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      Sure, but in some countries capital gains are tax free.
  - powerapple 5y ago
    Can you make an ugly jpg for 0 cent and sell it to your shell company for 10 m? save the first million. Previously you can send money to mining company for machines, farm bitcoins and then sell machines back to mining company. I am not sure how easy it is now.
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      It would probably look better if you are not the person making it in the first place, and you need to make it look like you're paying a market price for it.

dinamic 5y ago

Even if it turns out to be a loss for the majority of players, I am still happy for the creators that got a chance to monetize their work. I think Beeple truly deserves the fortune he made.

josalhor 5y ago

The bubble has popped, but these graphs show that we are still at January-February levels of bubble. I am not sure if the market has fully collapsed (Unfortunately?).

instance 5y ago
Yea, for all we know it could be a temporary correction, just to shoot up further next month. I think it's too early to speak of a 'collapse'.
csomar 5y ago
One thing I learned trading and navigating crypto markets, is that a $0 price type of collapse is not possible with a scarce token. If Bitcoin goes to 0, then anyone can buy all the possibly available bitcoins and then decide what the price will be later on. This makes it impossible for the price to reach 0 unless the protocol is hacked. A 90-95% decline from the height could safely be considered a total collapse. Some people who got in early will still remain in the green after a total collapse.
- antupis 5y ago
  If bitcoin price goes 0 then there is no mining rewards and doofus with laptop can do 51% attack so coin is basically worthless.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  > then decide what the price will be later on The price is not something anyone can just "decide". If the price goes to 0 it's because nobody wants bitcoins. When that is the case, you can't just buy up bitcoins and "decide" that they cost 1 m. Well you could, but nobody would suddenly pay that much.

vesinisa 5y ago

I am hardly surprised. While Bitcoin maybe had theoretical uses as a currency a decade ago, the NFT hype never made any sense whatsoever to begin with.

jaggirs 5y ago
It makes no less sense than a painting. If you accept that an original painting has more value than a perfectly good copy, whilst being undistinguishable for anyone except a few experts, you should realize NFT's have the exact same arrangement, except 'originality' is determined by the blockchain instead of an expert.
- arrow7000 5y ago
  Except that when you own a painting you actually own the physical painting. Not a key to a link to a URL of the file.
- vesinisa 5y ago
  Well yes, exactly. The original painting has value exactly because it is not a copy. And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? At the end of the day "ownership" mostly has any meaning within the legal system. NFTs seem to create something akin to a shadow copyright but which makes no sense. Oh well, maybe I am just a simpleton.
  - Fern_Blossom 5y ago
    >And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? No, no, no. It's worse than you think. An NFT is more like a plastic cup with Pikachu printed on it. You don't own the rights to Pikachu. You just bought a cup with his face on it. With NFTs, there is no contract to own the actual "thing". Just simply the piece of "merch" (the NFT) with the likeness associated with it. Except, a plastic cup still has value to drink from or hold your toothbrushes.
    - almostkorean 5y ago

powerapple 5y ago

One thing I have noticed when listening to the interviews of NFT companies is that, when describing NFT is the future, the arguments from these founders are examples of people/artists made money by selling NFT online. It has become more and more a theme for cryptocurrency technology has well: the reason you should be in is that other people have made money rather than the benefit of the technology itself. It is not a good sign.

tiborsaas 5y ago
Lots of people got "into the internet" because others have made money on it and not for the technology (html, tcp/ip, dns...) Yes, crypto is mostly focused on financial apps, so they are harder to understand than "send me 140 chars and we make a timeline of it".
- eitland 5y ago
  All IMO: To be honest, that example is also the weirdest one to actually break through, and together with Snapchat the ones who took it farthest into almost unusable and still made bank. (Yo, and I think a number of other tried even further down that street but has failed AFAIK.)
- simias 5y ago
  Imagine if Google Search achieved success not by providing a search engine but by publishing a whitepaper outlining how PageRank would eventually work, then selling $GOOG tokens to let people speculate on the hype (but not actually entitle them to anything regarding the company, so it's like venture capitalism, but worse). Then nothing happens for a decade or so, and then Google finally publishes a first version of their engine that takes 30s to search among a couple hundred websites. Effectively unusable, but hey, it's the early day! Bullish! I also disagree that cryptocurrencies are "hard to understand", it's only hard because their promoters feel the need to obfuscate with technobabble how dumb and ineffective 99% of proposed blockchain solutions are. It's hard to understand because there's nothing to understand.
  - 5y ago

shoto_io 5y ago

I am not sure. These charts don’t say a whole lot in my opinion. Sure, if you compare snapshots then there is less activity than say a couple of weeks earlier at the peak. But YoY comparison looks solid for example. I don’t think this is a proper and nuanced analysis.

trhway 5y ago

the sale of invisible sculpture just 2 days ago happened using paper certificate instead of NFT. Pity. It would have been match made in heaven. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/1002018211/italian-artist-sells-invisible-sculpture-for-real-money https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/1002018211/italian-artist-sel...

rorykoehler 5y ago

That was quick. Rubbish like this will kill crypto. So many grifters in crypto.

henvic 5y ago

99% of this cryptocurrency market is a joke (https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/ https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/). I'm tired of seeing this. Now we've NFT and an antivirus which has a miner embedded. lol

fighterpilot 5y ago

I could've drawn a similar looking graph in 2021-04-01 and arrived at the same conclusion on that basis ... and I would've been wrong.

Bombthecat 5y ago

Earth2 makes millions right now i think... It's sad

maxehmookau 5y ago

"Dumb idea is worth no money." Cool headline.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

These cycles are getting faster: 1. I read a post on HN extolling a new use of some technology. I understand how it works but don't get why. I do not jump on the bandwagon. 2. I read about the same technology but not on HN - maybe an online newspaper. I recognise there is an upcurve. Maybe I should have jumped when I read it on HN. 3. Beeple makes a fortune. My son and I enjoy watching him on corridor crew. I think I still don't know why but it can't be that bad. I do not jump on the bandwagon. 4. I realise I want to know the why makes sense. I play with some tech. I still know how but not why. I do not jump on the bandwagon. 5. The bubble bursts. I retro-think my inaction into foresight - I am glad I did not jump on the bandwagon. But, just maybe, perhaps why is less important than try.

Barrin92 5y ago
your inaction was perfectly fine. There's always a few lucky people who benefit off these things, millions don't and you don't see them. It's like becoming a TikTok star. One guy creates a meme, gets ten milion views, lives in a mansion in California. Millions of kids think they can do the same thing and drop out of school. Not worth it. I remember reading a blog post by a Wall Street banker talking about the pre-2008 culture. He said that it was common for people to get promoted because they made money, even if they didn't know why. Justifying bad decisions based on lucky outcomes retroactively isn't a culture you want to emulate.
- caractacus 5y ago
  "Millions of kids think they can do the same thing and drop out of school." They do? Is this what you think is happening to millions of kids?
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    "According to a Harris Poll/Lego survey covering the United States, Britain, and China, 29% of children aged eight to 12 want to be a “YouTuber.” That’s three times as many as those who want to be astronauts. Other polls suggest an even higher percentage of teenagers aspire to fame and fortune via YouTube or another social media platform. An eye-grabbing news report out this month suggested a whopping 54% of Americans aged 13 to 38 would become an “influencer” given the chance, with 12% already considering themselves influencers." There's been an entire industry of so called "content houses" popping up. Okay maybe not literally millions are dropping out of school but it has become a real thing with a non-trivial amount of teenagers and 20-somethings ditching careers for what is basically entertainment gigs. https://www.fastcompany.com/90432765/why-do-kids-want-to-be-influencers https://www.fastcompany.com/90432765/why-do-kids-want-to-be-...

andrefuchs 5y ago

One reasons could be that Ethereum gas fees for minting a piece are extremely high at the moment. Tezos ($xtz) based platforms such as https://www.hicetnunc.xyz https://www.hicetnunc.xyz are thriving. The fees are next to nothing - especially compared to current alternatives.

iSnow 5y ago
Gas on ETH is super low right now, around 20Gwei which translates into a $1 fee for a send and maybe $5 for minting an NFT. Tezos on the other hand is a complete ghost town, it has absolutely no traction - and I say this as a soon to be ex XTZ holder.
- andrefuchs 5y ago
  Interesting, please share your sources.
  - iSnow 5y ago
    1) https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/ the first defi dapp not on ETH is BTC Lightning on rank #42. 2) https://debank.com/ranking/locked_value https://debank.com/ranking/locked_value something like 75% is on ETH, 95% or so on ETH + BSC (centralized ETH clone) + MATIC (ETH sidechain). The only chain that's not directly or indirectly tied to ETH is FTM. 3) onchain-volume, https://blockchair.com/compare https://blockchair.com/compare and https://tzstats.com/ https://tzstats.com/ ETH transacted $20.6bn over the last 24h, XTZ 10.8 XTZ * $3.8 = $41.5m. It's not even close, it's a couple orders of magnitude away.

habosa 5y ago

NFTs are dumb however some of the NFT markets have one cool thing that I hope sticks around: the artist gets a cut of all future sales. If you sell your NFT art for $10 and then someone resells it for $1M, you will get some percentage of the $1M. We've all heard the stories of "collector buys 10 Jackson Pollock's for $10 in the 70s, sells the collection for $100M today". Wouldn't it be nice if the artist could benefit from that belated appreciation? Like most other things on the blockchain you don't really need the blockchain to do this, however this is one case where it's actually much simpler to implement the concept using a blockchain and smart contracts rather than any traditional method I'm aware of.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
Interestingly the artist retains copyright - the buyer gets the physical goods. Much like DVDs So pollock (or his estate or whatever) owns the copyright to the sold painting and so gets paid when you buy a postcard etc.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  This is exactly zero change from regular artwork. If I sell a piece of art, the copyright is still mine. You can sign it away, of course, but otherwise they have to get permission to do anything with the image other than display and store it (and the stuff that goes along with this).
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    Yes, that's what I hoped i was saying :-) - what surprised me is that if someone pays 100M for a painting of sunflowers they are just getting pasteboard and oils - if they want to publish a picture of their purchase they get to pay again ! Just did not expect that
nonameiguess 5y ago
The traditional method is to just write that stipulation into a normal legal contract. That's already the payment model for some types of art, most notably actors getting a forever cut of backend profit on films. This tends to lead to some creative accounting whereby profit is impossible, but it's still in the contract already. No need for the contract to be on a blockchain. Nothing was stopping Jackson Pollack from writing a stipulation into the sales contracts for this painting that he gets a cut of all future resales. The only possible advantage of a blockchain here is if you don't trust the law, since the technology itself enforces a smart contract and doesn't rely upon recourse to a legal system. The downside is you have no recourse to a legal system, so if some owner of a digital good sells it off-chain (you give me cash, I give you possession of the wallet), there isn't much you can do.

deleted 5y ago

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m00dy 5y ago

I think it is too early to call it bubble. NFT transactions are low due to crypto market is down for a month or so.

domid 5y ago

Bubbles are not always the end. Actually quite the opposite. It's just the beginning. I'd give about 1-2 years for the NFT market to rebound. As the technology matures so will the supply. Demand will follow. It took about 3 years for Bitcoin to surpass Bitcoin 2017 bubble price levels. It took about 6.8 years for prices to rebound to dot-com bubble price levels.

bhandziuk 5y ago
Well when the housing bubble popped people stopped living in homes so I don't know if you're right.

gizmo 5y ago

This mania might have one last leg up, but that's it. The main thing to remember with markets that have ponzi characteristics is that there are tons of latecomers and few early adopters. While the early adopters might HODL in the face of a 70% downturn, the late adopters won't. They FOMOd in because they couldn't stand seeing their friends make easy money any longer. They don't have conviction because the only reason they're in is because they didn't want to miss out. This doesn't just apply to NFTs but to everything from crypto to meme stocks (AMC, GME, BBBY, EXPR), to SPACS and to ESG stocks, to shipping and commodities, and to leveraged or speculative ETFs. When this bubble pops many assets will be priced way below their actual value. This overreaction won't make any sense on the way down just like it hasn't made any sense on the way up. For this it doesn't even matter if NFTs provide real value and are here to stay. It doesn't matter whether a market behaves like a ponzi because it's fraud or because it just got too much social media coverage. The only thing that matters is whether a large enough percentage of the market consists of latecomers who will panic sell. If so, any bad news and POP!

phist_mcgee 5y ago
Just a little correction. NFTs, and crypto in general are critiqued as ponzis, but they are more accurately described as pyramid schemes, whereby early adopters rake in the lion's share of profits. Ponzis are where later investor money is used to pay out early investor money in a fraudulent never ending cycle.
- gizmo 5y ago
  I think pyramid scheme would be a better description if people had different incentives depending on when they got in. With a pyramid scheme people who invite many others personally benefit, and those who join but don't invite others don't gain anything. Think multi-level marketing.
  - phist_mcgee 5y ago
    I mean NFTs fit that bill perfectly. Incentives for the late comers are to buy continually more dubious tokens that are produced by the initial round of creators. Those buyers then create a new market of lower tier creators who create even more valueless creations, and so the cycle continues. Crypto without NFTs have no creators and instead relies on the network effect of public interest to raise the value of their initial purchase. In this way, it's more akin to inventing a product and selling it on to another person and promising them that it will be worth more if they do the same.

qwertox 5y ago

That was a barely noticeable bubble. Was it even a market? Just because a tweet and a song got sold, and others sold some art, doesn't mean it was a real market. It was a popular trend which ceased to interest people. Like fidget spinners. It will probably become trendy again, once Bitcoin hits the 80's, if it ever will.

kharak 5y ago

I personally rather like the idea of NFTs. NFTs could become gamechangers, in the literal meaning of the word. The project Enjin for instances focuses on NFTs in the gaming world. One selling point is, that you might be able to collect items in one game and transfer it to another. Collect a rare trophy in Fortnite and show it off in your Steam VR Home, the trophies uniqueness and legitimacy verifiable by everyone. Of course, achieving this is easier said than done, but an appealing vision for the future of gaming. Also, it has historically been difficult for digital artists to get paid well, considering that copying their work is easy. I'm all for changing that. Yes, the image can still be copied, but ownership is it's own thing and some people are willing to pay for it.

roytries 5y ago
I don't understand how NFTs or blockchain in general helps in any way for this, or many other examples of this. All an NFT is is an encrypted hyperlink in the blockchain. The hyperlink points to a resource on someone's server. I think people forget that the NFT doesn't store the real thing. All an NFT is is basically an encrypted DNS server with some ownership data attached to it. Right now you could showcase your Fortnite trophy in SteamVR IFF Valve and EPIC decided to integrate this. Using regular boring techniques. Blockchain doesn't make this easier in any way. All Valve could do is get what trophies you own from the blockchain. But they'd still have to integrate with that particular blockchain and with the systems from EPIC that host the actual thing. Having a regular database/account system would be way more efficient and easy to use tbh. For example I can already showcase my Tweets on LinkedIn due to regular boring integration. Data from two different companies shared by establishing that I am the owner of both things via a regular old token. Data transferred via an API.
- deleted 5y ago
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- fnord77 5y ago
  > All an NFT is is an encrypted hyperlink in the blockchain. So if someone moves urls around on the server or if the company goes bust, that link is dead.

cryptica 5y ago

There are some legitimate use cases for NFTs but art is not one of them. The best use case I can think of is a kind of DNS domain name system. The domain name is an NFT; it's unique and it provides value as it can be integrated with various systems. The intrinsic value of crypto and NFT is in software integrations.

flir 5y ago
You could put DNS in a distributed database (a la blockchain), and there's a benefit there (although no more than insisting all DNS updates are signed, I think). I can't see what additional benefit NFT would offer over that?
- cryptica 5y ago
  Just a few points I could come up with off the top of my head: - Users could buy and trade domain names using cryptocurrency tokens within the same system without relying on centralized payment gateways. - No need to rely on a central authority like ICANN to decide who can control what gTLDs. - Could make way for entirely new security models for TLS certificates; no need to trust certificate authorities. Certificates could be signed using blockchain private keys associated with a specific domain. - The whole system would be self-contained and all domain purchases would be publicly auditable on-chain; every domain would be paid for using tokens which represent real value, thus preventing misappropriation and spam. - Different DNS blockchains could compete for relevance/adoption to be integrated with different browser makers; this would encourage decentralization in the browser space. - Easy path to monetization; imagine how much demand would be created for underlying tokens if each user paid tokens every time they wanted to change the IP address which a domain name points to. This kind of DAO would be profitable by design. You could earn profit just by holding the token.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    Websites would also lose their domain if the admin loses the private key, or it gets stolen. There would be no authority to return control to the rightful owner. I don't think most web actors would be ready to accept that massive drawback.

mattdesl 5y ago

Stats here fail to track OpenSea, Rarible, Nifty Gateway (three of the largest NFT platforms) and also alt/side chains like Tezos (with Hicetnunc which has recently overtaken Eth platforms in daily activity). Though likely the headline still stands - the bubble has popped and weekly sales are down to “only” a few dozen million USD per week. ie: we may start to see how this space will look beyond the hype/fad.

Yenrabbit 5y ago

Ignoring the hype, there are plenty of artists having fun selling work on platforms like hicetnunc for not very much and spending most of their proceeds buying other art. I joined and it's great fun trading pieces, coming up with ideas and seeing if anyone likes them, getting inspired by what other artists are doing etc etc etc. I feel like these small art playgrounds where artists can sell limited editions of their work will stick around whatever happens to the big $$$ hype train side of things.

jonnyscholes 5y ago
This is my experience. Hicentnunc (and the tezos community at large) is the closest I've felt to 00s internet culture/content which got me hooked on programming. Although perhaps paradoxically, I suspect the barrier to entry is part of this. Full disclosure: I hold a small amount of tezos.
- DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
  00s internet culture/content I hear everybody talking about it but I don't really get what is? Do you mean more of a feeling of companionship like in an IRC or Group?
  - paulcole 5y ago
    Somehow the peak of the internet always happened just when the person making the proclamation was getting into the internet. it’s just like how SNL was awesome when I was 16 and has been downhill ever since — and my dad says the exact same thing about when he was 16.
    - jonnyscholes 5y ago
      Fair point. I'd be the first to admit I have rose tinted glasses about those early years! And also the first to grumble at those who came later...
  - jonnyscholes 5y ago

madjin 5y ago

The crypto market is cooling down from its peak, but data about the NFT market shows that it's still doing very well. For Ethereum based NFTs there's been ~13M in sales in the past 7 days. Sources: - https://nonfungible.com/market/history https://nonfungible.com/market/history - http://cryptoslam.io/ http://cryptoslam.io/ Similar story to Bitcoin, transactions were the first use-case. Later came smart contracts which expanded the number of various applications that can be developed with blockchain. Collecting art was the first big use-case. More individuals and companies are focused on providing long-term value through utility. One example is NFTs that can unlock access such as someones time, places real or virtual, and communities in a similar way to Discords for patreon members. The art aspect is also evolving into more gamedev themes like artist designed NFTs for digi-physical fashion, avatars, pets, skins, etc. More virtual worlds will compose these blockchain artifacts together, adding more context to them such as: Audio NFTs becoming background music, text NFTs becoming stories and scripts, 3D NFTs can become props, set environments, avatar NFTs become characters and NPCs, and wearable NFTs getting distributed through achievements. All that said, I'm excited for some pullback because it reminds builders to tune out the noise and stay focused on building.

jokoon 5y ago

Was working with a guy to start a card game, it ended, he had other project on NFT. I wonder if I should share this with him. It's weird how easy it is to sell any cool sounding tech to laymen, even if laymen understand the tech a little. Why isn't everybody able to draw a simple pro/con list to have a minimum of skepticism? Is it because it's marginally better than having a more normal salesman job, to be a nurse or to stay unemployed? Tech is often like a tulip bubble. Businessmen go into the tulip market because as long as people like tulips, there is money to be made, so it's always money lost when you miss a trend. I wish there was some rulebook on how to spot trends that will be short-lived.

paulgb 5y ago
> I wish there was some rulebook on how to spot trends that will be short-lived. It's not exactly a rulebook, but if you read enough of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, there are some patterns that recur over and over. It was written 180 years ago, but it's amazing how little the psychology behind manias has changed. In particular, a good golden rule is to not follow people into an investment that you don't understand because you are blinded by greed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...

erulabs 5y ago

The overwhelmingly negative attitude towards technology on HN lately is upsetting and nauseating. If you don’t like NFTs, don’t buy them (I don’t). If you don’t like some startups product, don’t sign up. In the Boom thread there are people suggesting it’s fraudulent that they’ve taken longer than originally suggested to build supersonic aircraft. I’d very much like to know who elected the naysayers. There are tons and tons and tons of bad ideas all the time. The vast majority of businesses fail and ideas fall by the wayside. This forum used to be a place to celebrate risky business ideas and long shots. I couldn’t care less about the $ amount of NFTs sold today versus last month at the peak - in the end something that didn’t exist now does and clearly it is being used by some people - so congratulations to them and let’s find something we -are- excited about instead of every thread being “what a scam” for every attempt at a new use of technology. If a handful of video game developers use this for game-collectible interchange, awesome! Sounds useful. I don’t care about the vicious judgements of others any more than I want to read about why Facebook was a stupid idea in 2006.

officialjunk 5y ago
agree. i suspect the dollar amounts involved in NFT's is causing some sort of envy or anger amongst those that do not understand why.
- officialjunk 5y ago
  if the dollar amounts were all less than $1 do you think there would be as much hate?
foobiekr 5y ago
I challenge the idea that the negativity is about “technology.” The negativity appears to be about bogus businesses built on hype, fraud, exploitation, rigged demos, completely fictional timelines, and bogus business models that have come to dominate what we call the tech industry. Fraud is actually more common in “tech” than it has ever been. It has huge repercussions for everything from start ups to large companies and, with NFTs, toxic financial products exploiting people in the same way that the dotcom and subprime eras did. You don’t get to opt out of this. I have relatives who now want to get “in on NFTs.” Our industry has real ethical problems with tons of external impact.

gpsx 5y ago

I'd like to add that being a bubble doesn't mean the object of the bubble is bad. Take the dot com bubble - some of those dot coms are doing pretty well now, like amazon.com, google.com, facebook.com and news.ycombinator.com.