5 ms·

Has NFT's ever been more than another novel crypto bet? (I am super curious as to what percentage of NFT purchases were existing crypt-millionaires vs. collect

by nness 5y ago

Has NFT's ever been more than another novel crypto bet? (I am super curious as to what percentage of NFT purchases were existing crypt-millionaires vs. collectors or even independent investors)

fullshark 5y ago
It's also possibly a cool new way to launder money.
52-6F-62 5y ago
No less or more than baseball or hockey cards are? Which makes this no surprise https://toppsmlb.com/ https://toppsmlb.com/ Poor 8 year old me really thought that Brendan Shanahan rookie card would mean something someday.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  My comic books I've been keeping around since the 90s are feeling insulted. At least with those I can still read them if I decide to break the seal. A NFT doesn't offer that.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    I definitely think comic books fall into a higher order category.
  - furyofantares 5y ago
    > At least with those I can still read them if I decide to break the seal. Are there also digital versions available? I'd be surprised if a noticeable percentage of the value of your comic books is that you can read them. It seems like it's essentially 0% to me -- almost as baseless as an NFT, and makes me think some sort of functionality isn't actually needed for lots of people to agree that something is valuable for a long time.
    - ethagnawl 5y ago
      > I'd be surprised if a noticeable percentage of the value of your comic books is that you can read them. Value in whose eyes, though? The commenter seemed to be stating that the utility provided by being able to read the comics is valuable _to them_. There are also a number of other uses for a physical comic book that provide "value": you could frame individual pages, use the book as kindling, etc. You can't do any of those things with a NFT.
      - furyofantares 5y ago
        > You can't do any of those things with a NFT. Some quick googling, apologies if I'm wrong, says this comic book is worth 3.2 million dollars: https://viewcomics.me/action-comics-1938/issue-1/full https://viewcomics.me/action-comics-1938/issue-1/full And yet it would seem I can read it right there on the internet for free, and can surely get framed prints of individual pages much cheaper than 3.2 million dollars, and I can get kindling much cheaper than 3.2 million dollars. You can point at those things as properties it has that an NFT doesn't. But those things aren't what's making it worth 3.2 million dollars It's worth 3.2 million dollars because someone trusts that it's worth 3.2 million dollars to other people. Value like this is an exercise in group trust that has had to build up over time. It's not actually a property of the functionality of the object
        SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        The object and guarantee of uniqueness are one and the same, there's no required group trust. I have the comic, I own the comic. The comic is unique and the rareness and desirability of the comic assigns it value. The NFT is divorced from the thing it owns, but somehow the NFT is the thing that assigns ownership and value. A perfect copy of "Charlie bit my finger" can be replicated trivially nearly instantly. There is no value there. The NFT is the thing that carries the value in that situation because the video being collected isn't rare, unique, or special.
    - Noos 5y ago
      The problem is the difference between a collector's market and a speculators market. A collector assigns value because you can read it or because of legitimate rarity at the time or other personal issues. A speculator just hitches on to "first appearance of!" issues of popular characters and slabs them up to resell. Like for example, something like First Comics's Warp is incredibly valuable to me, because it's a comics adaptation/spin-off of an old science fiction stage play that doesn't seem to even exist any more. (By Stuart Gordon of Re-animator fame, no less.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp! It's not the popular first appearance of a Marvel character we've seen for 50 years, but it's much more of a historical rarity imo. There's a lot of things which are of value to collectors less than speculators; something like trying to collect a lot of Carl Banks's Disney books simply because of the sheer quality of them for example. Or loving independent comics of the 90s and trying to track down the beginnings of the furry movement; Albedo, Hepcats, Omaha the Cat Dancer, etc. There are whole teams that are just ignored by the speculators; Wally Wood's DNagents for example. It's just the speculators market is just actually trying to flip really common comics that are evergreen. Those really have little value to them; stuff like Spiderman's first symbiote costume appearance wasn't really that earth shattering a story. Secret Wars was kind of a lame crossover for its time and i doubt would even be considered one of the great crossovers. That's why its main interests are mostly forgotten, like the Beyonder or Molecule Man. So yes, some of the value is in reading the comic itself. It's just the market is weird and never reflects it. Did you know the first video game tie in comic dates back to the Atari age, with DC's release of Atari Force? And it actually was a serious, decent SF comic? Yet you could probably find it in a store's dollar bins, while a spiderman or punisher apperance that was really common at the time is considered valuable even if all the story does is introduce something kind of commonplace or unspectacular. Sorry this is one of my passion things, I'll get back to my usual growly self soon.
- adventured 5y ago
  At least you can hold an autographed baseball or baseball card, for example, it's a tangible thing that a baseball player took the time to autograph. The NFT cards with fake / digital signatures are particularly pathetic. Or the way a physical card is designed, the way it looks in real lighting, the way its material properties exist and interact in physical space. There are qualities to that, and the manufacturing process involved, that you can never replicate with NFT collectibles. The same is true with physical vs digital art. Art hanging on the wall can have a majestic quality when it dances with lighting; digital art is flat garbage by comparison in that respect (even when it's really good digital art; it's bound to a screen in most cases). Manufacturing a nice physical collectible card to a high quality specification is dramatically more difficult than spitting out NFT cards by the zillions; quality control is a huge challenge in collectible cards. There's a scarcity effect generated in physical collectibles like cards, in regards to quality of manufacturing (damage, corners, centering, errors, etc), that doesn't exist in NFTs (unless you intentionally fake that, which would be something beyond stupid). There are many aspects of physical vs NFT collectibles, where the NFTs will never be able to compete, not under any circumstances. And there are almost no benefits that an NFT has over a physical collectible, with the supposed simplicity of digital storage & transacting being the primary (which also has an obvious, huge risk / downside associated with it simultaneously).
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    Oh I agree, but let’s not kid ourselves—the market around them is the same in abstract. For all the physical properties of a material thing we might admire, someone else might admire an NFT for the lack of those properties and inclusion of others. There might be no more further reconciling than that. People will like what they like, they’ll pursue what they pursue, and sometimes they will enjoy their share of delusions. At least it keeps life interesting.
rixrax 5y ago
At least some are people who want to make quick $$$ and have missed out getting in to the cryptos early on. My sample size is exactly three, but one friend and two co-workers have been putting their savings to NFTs and been rather vocal at that. Preaching the ingenuity of them. And how they are going to explode in value in few years time. As far as I can tell, profit is their only motive. Who knows. Maybe they will. Maybe not. But at least I’ve tried to remind my friend that it is a highly speculative asset. And that she should not put in more money than she is ready to lose. All or most of it.
sleepybrett 5y ago
In the art spaces am watching, they think/thought so. They are/were wrong, but they think/thought so.

by nness 5y ago

Has NFT's ever been more than another novel crypto bet? (I am super curious as to what percentage of NFT purchases were existing crypt-millionaires vs. collectors or even independent investors)

fullshark 5y ago

It's also possibly a cool new way to launder money.

52-6F-62 5y ago

No less or more than baseball or hockey cards are? Which makes this no surprise https://toppsmlb.com/ https://toppsmlb.com/ Poor 8 year old me really thought that Brendan Shanahan rookie card would mean something someday.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
My comic books I've been keeping around since the 90s are feeling insulted. At least with those I can still read them if I decide to break the seal. A NFT doesn't offer that.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  I definitely think comic books fall into a higher order category.
- furyofantares 5y ago
  > At least with those I can still read them if I decide to break the seal. Are there also digital versions available? I'd be surprised if a noticeable percentage of the value of your comic books is that you can read them. It seems like it's essentially 0% to me -- almost as baseless as an NFT, and makes me think some sort of functionality isn't actually needed for lots of people to agree that something is valuable for a long time.
  - ethagnawl 5y ago
    > I'd be surprised if a noticeable percentage of the value of your comic books is that you can read them. Value in whose eyes, though? The commenter seemed to be stating that the utility provided by being able to read the comics is valuable _to them_. There are also a number of other uses for a physical comic book that provide "value": you could frame individual pages, use the book as kindling, etc. You can't do any of those things with a NFT.
    - furyofantares 5y ago
      > You can't do any of those things with a NFT. Some quick googling, apologies if I'm wrong, says this comic book is worth 3.2 million dollars: https://viewcomics.me/action-comics-1938/issue-1/full https://viewcomics.me/action-comics-1938/issue-1/full And yet it would seem I can read it right there on the internet for free, and can surely get framed prints of individual pages much cheaper than 3.2 million dollars, and I can get kindling much cheaper than 3.2 million dollars. You can point at those things as properties it has that an NFT doesn't. But those things aren't what's making it worth 3.2 million dollars It's worth 3.2 million dollars because someone trusts that it's worth 3.2 million dollars to other people. Value like this is an exercise in group trust that has had to build up over time. It's not actually a property of the functionality of the object
      - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        The object and guarantee of uniqueness are one and the same, there's no required group trust. I have the comic, I own the comic. The comic is unique and the rareness and desirability of the comic assigns it value. The NFT is divorced from the thing it owns, but somehow the NFT is the thing that assigns ownership and value. A perfect copy of "Charlie bit my finger" can be replicated trivially nearly instantly. There is no value there. The NFT is the thing that carries the value in that situation because the video being collected isn't rare, unique, or special.
  - Noos 5y ago
    The problem is the difference between a collector's market and a speculators market. A collector assigns value because you can read it or because of legitimate rarity at the time or other personal issues. A speculator just hitches on to "first appearance of!" issues of popular characters and slabs them up to resell. Like for example, something like First Comics's Warp is incredibly valuable to me, because it's a comics adaptation/spin-off of an old science fiction stage play that doesn't seem to even exist any more. (By Stuart Gordon of Re-animator fame, no less.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp! It's not the popular first appearance of a Marvel character we've seen for 50 years, but it's much more of a historical rarity imo. There's a lot of things which are of value to collectors less than speculators; something like trying to collect a lot of Carl Banks's Disney books simply because of the sheer quality of them for example. Or loving independent comics of the 90s and trying to track down the beginnings of the furry movement; Albedo, Hepcats, Omaha the Cat Dancer, etc. There are whole teams that are just ignored by the speculators; Wally Wood's DNagents for example. It's just the speculators market is just actually trying to flip really common comics that are evergreen. Those really have little value to them; stuff like Spiderman's first symbiote costume appearance wasn't really that earth shattering a story. Secret Wars was kind of a lame crossover for its time and i doubt would even be considered one of the great crossovers. That's why its main interests are mostly forgotten, like the Beyonder or Molecule Man. So yes, some of the value is in reading the comic itself. It's just the market is weird and never reflects it. Did you know the first video game tie in comic dates back to the Atari age, with DC's release of Atari Force? And it actually was a serious, decent SF comic? Yet you could probably find it in a store's dollar bins, while a spiderman or punisher apperance that was really common at the time is considered valuable even if all the story does is introduce something kind of commonplace or unspectacular. Sorry this is one of my passion things, I'll get back to my usual growly self soon.
adventured 5y ago
At least you can hold an autographed baseball or baseball card, for example, it's a tangible thing that a baseball player took the time to autograph. The NFT cards with fake / digital signatures are particularly pathetic. Or the way a physical card is designed, the way it looks in real lighting, the way its material properties exist and interact in physical space. There are qualities to that, and the manufacturing process involved, that you can never replicate with NFT collectibles. The same is true with physical vs digital art. Art hanging on the wall can have a majestic quality when it dances with lighting; digital art is flat garbage by comparison in that respect (even when it's really good digital art; it's bound to a screen in most cases). Manufacturing a nice physical collectible card to a high quality specification is dramatically more difficult than spitting out NFT cards by the zillions; quality control is a huge challenge in collectible cards. There's a scarcity effect generated in physical collectibles like cards, in regards to quality of manufacturing (damage, corners, centering, errors, etc), that doesn't exist in NFTs (unless you intentionally fake that, which would be something beyond stupid). There are many aspects of physical vs NFT collectibles, where the NFTs will never be able to compete, not under any circumstances. And there are almost no benefits that an NFT has over a physical collectible, with the supposed simplicity of digital storage & transacting being the primary (which also has an obvious, huge risk / downside associated with it simultaneously).
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  Oh I agree, but let’s not kid ourselves—the market around them is the same in abstract. For all the physical properties of a material thing we might admire, someone else might admire an NFT for the lack of those properties and inclusion of others. There might be no more further reconciling than that. People will like what they like, they’ll pursue what they pursue, and sometimes they will enjoy their share of delusions. At least it keeps life interesting.

rixrax 5y ago

At least some are people who want to make quick $$$ and have missed out getting in to the cryptos early on. My sample size is exactly three, but one friend and two co-workers have been putting their savings to NFTs and been rather vocal at that. Preaching the ingenuity of them. And how they are going to explode in value in few years time. As far as I can tell, profit is their only motive. Who knows. Maybe they will. Maybe not. But at least I’ve tried to remind my friend that it is a highly speculative asset. And that she should not put in more money than she is ready to lose. All or most of it.

sleepybrett 5y ago

In the art spaces am watching, they think/thought so. They are/were wrong, but they think/thought so.