7 ms·

Fake Banksy NFT sold through artist's website for £244k

73 points by boffinism 5y ago

nostrademons 5y ago
Plot twist: it actually was a real Banksy NFT which the artist's PR team is now denying as a way to create a bizarre piece of performance art. The actual artwork is the press cycle that follows this, which is supposed to make you think about what authenticity really means in artwork and what gives a piece of art value. It's the kind of thing Banksy would do.
- matthewaveryusa 5y ago
  I would be disappointed if this weren't the case.
  - ISL 5y ago
    It is also the kind of thing an artist who makes physical art would do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >the artist's PR team Funny how someone who "no one knows who he is" has a PR team, is able to run auctions, put exhibitions in museums, send and receive money, etc... Only a numbnut would believe those things could happen "anonymously".
  - Nicksil 5y ago
    >"no one knows who he is" Except that's not been the case. There have always been some people who know who Banksy is.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      Yeah ... and that's my point.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        Your point is based on the false premise that literally no one is supposed to know his identity. In reality, the claim is not that literally no one knows his identity, but rather that his identity has not been publicly confirmed. Most likely there are quite a few people who know his identity, like his art agents, financial and legal representation, friends, etc.
      - pc86 5y ago
        I don't think anybody has ever suggested that literally nobody except Banksy knows who Banksy is. It's pretty obvious there would need to be at least a handful of people who know, since almost the beginning.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Funny how someone who "no one knows who he is" has a PR team, is able to run auctions, put exhibitions in museums, send and receive money, etc... Isn't having a PR team exactly how he manages that? He has agents to do it for him instead of doing it himself, preserving his anonymity.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      Yeah, what I don't like is the hypocrisy of that and the authorities who play along. (S)he plays the "oh but you can't find me ;)" card every time it needs to escape prosecution ... yet makes use of the same legal system when it goes on its favor. (i.e. tries to trademark its art, sues others who reproduce it [1]). Good thing the EU doesn't play along. As for me, I just dislike charlatans, disregarding of how famous they may be. 1: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/17/banksy-trademark-risk-street-artist-loses-legal-battle-flower-thrower-graffiti https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/17/banksy-...
      - atatatat 5y ago
        Charlatan! Do tell how.
  - midev 5y ago
    > Only a numbnut would believe those things can happen "anonymously". I think you might be taking it too literally... Obviously some people know who he is... It's within the general public and media that he has remained anonymous... It's weird insulting people when you're not correct about what they believe.
- colordrops 5y ago
  It's absolutely intentional, just like the self-destructing art he sold before.
- NathanKP 5y ago
  First thought I had as well. Ironically selling an NFT with a faked provenance as a statement on the essential meaningless of NFT's sounds like a quintessentially Banksy type of statement piece
Fern_Blossom 5y ago
I still think Banksy is not a real "person". It's just a team of marketers who started a prank or dare and it turned into this internationally beloved money printing scam. Because, you know, a thumbs up and spray painting a wall equals feeding a poor kid a bowl of rice everyday. "We're so anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalism, now give us money for this art".
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Could banksy be multiple people? Probably not but sure its possible. It's way off the mark to say he's just "spray painting a wall" though.
- matthewaveryusa 5y ago
  Before Banksy became incredibly popular he made a name for himself in the graf scene. I remember Banksy from the mid 2000s and he was just another cool artist doing interesting things with stencils. For me he was in the same category as France's space invaders, or the guys in Spain (gemeos?) making giant paintings of odd-looking humans. Sometime in the early 2010s Banksy ramped up publicity stunts, and at that point I think Banksy became a collective of artists. Long story short I think Banksy was a person, but probably not anymore.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    Why do you think Banksy is not an individual anymore? Many top artists run workshops, in which other people physically fabricate their works. Take Jeff Koons, for example. But few would claim that Jeff Koons is no longer an individual.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  I mean even if the art is one person the numerous legally registered companies such as, BANKSY LIMITED, THE ART OF BANKSY LONDON LIMITED, etc. are corporations with directors that you can easily look up. The listed directors almost certainly aren't Banksy. Banksy is literally a company with marketing, accounts, PR, and management. They are constantly looking for the next viral opportunity and they are big on branding.
seph-reed 5y ago
NFT's really confuse me. Take the Mona Lisa for example: if the Louvre were ever to make their own NFT (perhaps with some embedded proof it was them creating it), wouldn't the "stolen" one suddenly lose all value? I get NFTs from the perspective of "proof that you were first person able to claim a thing because you made it," and that having value. But claiming other peoples stuff seems like it's just going to correct itself.
- octopaulus 5y ago
  You're thinking too hard, nfts will never take as much effort as the old millennia painters put in
- smt88 5y ago
  NFTs can't embed proof that they were created by anyone. That's the core problem with all crypto: it can prove on-chain, digital events, but it can't prove anything in the real world. I can prove you owned an NFT and that I own it now, but I can't prove anything about that NFT's connection to the real, human world. Similarly, I can make a smart contract that says you have to give me 50% of your income, but I can't enforce it outside of the chain that the contract was deployed on. If someone pays you with a different currency, the contract immediately fails to enforce itself.
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    >That's the core problem with all crypto: it can prove on-chain, digital events, but it can't prove anything in the real world. This is really the core problem with the cryptocurrency space. The whole "iT'S tRUSsLeSs" claim is complete nonsense as soon as you try to attach it to any meatspace system. And you need that bridge to the offline world to solve interesting problems.
  - seph-reed 5y ago
    > NFTs can't embed proof that they were created by anyone NFT's aren inherent proof, but they can embed proof (if it exists). If I took a photo of an idable, signed and noterized document stating that "the owner of X NFT is the owner of Y real item," then made that photo into an NFT, that would be embedding proof.
smt88 5y ago
The irony is that there's no actual difference between a fake NFT (token pointed to a URL) and a real one (token pointed to the same URL). In this case, the authenticity seems to be tied to whether the artist said this is real or not. I wouldn't be surprised if this were a performance art stunt designed to show how unbelievably gullible NFT buyers are.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  > In this case, the authenticity seems to be tied to whether the artist said this is real or not. It's the case for a lot of collectible objects. They need to be authenticated in some way. NFTs are mostly the same thing. An item that some people are willing to pay money for (either for speculation or emotional attachement) but otherwise worthless.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > The irony is that there's no actual difference between a fake NFT (token pointed to a URL) and a real one (token pointed to the same URL). I'm not sure what you mean. The difference is precisely the same as the difference between a real Picasso painting and a skilled counterfeit of a Picasso painting.
  - croes 5y ago
    I don't think so because you don't buy the painting but just the token that points to the painting. Everybody could sell it without having the picture or the rights. It could even be the correct URL. It's like selling the real world address of the Mona Lisa.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      The question is whether the claim "this NFT was issued by Bob" is true. There could be other NFTs issued by Bob, or other NFTs issued by other people, but those are other questions that aren't relevant to this question. This is simply a factual claim that is either true or false.
rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
NFTs are trash. I get a feeling that a lot of people are falling for the same clonecoin scam we saw the early days of Bitcoin. You are a complete sucker if you buy into this. I say this as a deep Bitcoiner who believes that all value on the planet will eventually be measured in BTC. I've seen a thousand chains launched and fail, taking everyones stored value with them. Digital things like coins are not valuable because its on a blockchain. They are not valuable because custody can be traced. Anyone can publish NFTs, and anyone can publish EVM tokens. There is no scarcity, there is no legal binding, there is only grift and scams. Bitcoin derives its value from the difficulty in producing new coins, and the fixed emission. Are we at peak stupid?
- etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  But is there something fundamental about Bitcoin that makes it unlikely to be usurped by something better? I'm seeing a lot of blind confidence in your comment.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    There isn't. But if I owned any, I'd sure want to convince you that there was, and I feel like that will cloud any responses you get.
    - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
      Well, when one does have skin in the game, it is easy to believe (and want to convince). I would argue that there is something very special about Bitcoin. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate The problem is that everyone is always looking for the next get rich quick scheme. Bitcoin was never this, it is a not get poor slowly scheme.
      - paulgb 5y ago
        The problem I have with the hash rate as an indicator of anything long-term is that it's artificially subsidized in the present from a diminishing pool of reserve Bitcoin (or inflation, if you prefer to think of it that way). Currently to the tune of about 98-99% of the total block reward[1]. For all the talk of Bitcoin being a long-term asset, there's little evidence that the incentive system can work (i.e. fend off a 51% attack) in its terminal state, or even a couple decades from now when the block reward is ~97% lower than today. [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.html#3y https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.h...
spywaregorilla 5y ago
> He says he was first alerted to the auction by an anonymous person in his community on the social network Discord. > The man, who describes himself as a professional NFT collector, entered a bid around 90% higher than others. > The buyer suspects the person who alerted him and others to the Banksy NFT sale may have been the hacker themselves. His first mistake was considering himself a professional NFT collector.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  I read “NFT Collector” as “Money Launderer” so things make more sense in that respect.
david422 5y ago
Does the general public even know what NFT's are? Much less someone with £244k to drop on one? I feel like this is some bizarro world where this is all code for money laundering or something that I'm not privy to.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  It has to be. I've seen so many people making huge sums of money selling NFTs for machine-generated "art". What value does this provide to anyone? Who is buying this? What are they getting out of it? This entire thing feels like a practical joke to me.
  - pornel 5y ago
    Nobody is paying millions for hashes of JSON files of URLs of cliparts of pet rocks. You've seen money laundering and grifters "selling" NFTs to themselves to pump yet another crypto pump and dump.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Even highly technical people promoting NFTs don’t seem to understand what they really are (or decide to lie or obfuscate the truth) and seem to attribute them some mythical properties that makes no sense. I’m personally convinced it’s mostly used to launder money.
  - kexx 5y ago
    I would not be surprised if this wasn't the goal of design in the first place
  - RealityVoid 5y ago
    As is the case with other kinds of art.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Does the general public even know what NFT's are? Been featured in the mainstream evening TV news, radio news, newspapers where I live.
emadabdulrahim 5y ago
I can't help but think all those $100k+ NTFs purchases are either money laundering or dumb money spent on dumb things.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  I can't think of anything else they could be, honestly. If it's not money laundering, it's dumb. There's no such thing as a smart NFT purchase.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  NFTs are certainly what I would use to pay for a shipment of cocaine. The real business is being the technical middle man for creating and auctioning NFTs. I assume the cartel would just call you up, and you'd come up with an image concept, start press releasing about it, you'd either manufacture or hire an artist to take credit for it, and afterwards take 20% off the top for costs and profit. Reminds me of when torrent sites used to sell desktop wallpapers. ----- edit: That may be the advantage of NFTs as compared to physical art. To launder money with art, you need to create an entire literature, get galleries to buy into it, and run a few fixed auctions on other pieces by an artist in order to make the price seem plausible. With NFTs you can just claim that whoever is questioning them doesn't understand them, and vaguely point at past NFT auctions in general as a proof.
  - ivirshup 5y ago
    Do you really want to have your cocaine purchase in a permanent distributed ledger though? Seems like it could come up again in court.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I think a huge portion of these are opportunistic and semi-fraudulent (in concept, if not in law). Person A and B are friends. A makes a bunch of NFTs. Person B agrees to buy NFT_1 for BIG_SUM. They settle "off books" for the payment... really what happens is Person A agrees NFT_2 is worth BIG_SUM and swap. Person A now sells NFT_3 to public, and tries to convince public its worth BIG_SUM++ since other pieces sold for BIG_SUM in past. Person A: Profit off NFT_3 sale Person B: Profit by selling NFT_1 in open market for BIG_SUM++.
yodsanklai 5y ago
NFTs started to make sense to me after I watched this video about modern art: the $150000 banana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8sB25IL4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8sB25IL4o There's really not much to NFTs. Everything is in the name. Non Fungible Token. They can have value because they can be linked to an owner (unlike the air, or the moon) and are non fungible (unlike a grain of sand). Some do have value because people think they can make a profit selling them to someone else. It's very similar to modern art. It's just an old idea that blockchain guys have been reusing, for lack of better application for their platforms. To me, the excitment around such a silly concepts says a lot about the state of blockchain applications...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mef 5y ago
archive.org snapshot of purportedly hacked page on banksy's site: https://web.archive.org/web/20210831085223/https://banksy.co.uk/nft.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210831085223/https://banksy.co...
lvass 5y ago
It's disheartening to see so many negatives comments about NFTs in general here but none tackling the real underlying issue with these seemingly "dumb" transactions. NFTs, as concept or protocol like ERC-721, are not completely useless as many state. They're in fact being used right now, for example, to represent LP positions in the novel uniswap v3. The seemingly stupidity of news like these is a direct consequence of news market economy and how easy it is to abuse. Take this (probably common) scheme for example: 1)Have a lot of money in crypto 2)Create a NFT or partner with someone 3)Buy your NFT and have news outlets report it 4)Sell the NFT for more than you paid in commissions It's completely unreasonable to fault the NFT concept for this. It's all about how news outlets are prone to spread information that is completely irrelevant (and arguably misleading) like someone sending money to himself or an accomplice with the goal of making it into the news.

73 points by boffinism 5y ago

Plot twist: it actually was a real Banksy NFT which the artist's PR team is now denying as a way to create a bizarre piece of performance art. The actual artwork is the press cycle that follows this, which is supposed to make you think about what authenticity really means in artwork and what gives a piece of art value. It's the kind of thing Banksy would do.

matthewaveryusa 5y ago
I would be disappointed if this weren't the case.
- ISL 5y ago
  It is also the kind of thing an artist who makes physical art would do.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
moralestapia 5y ago
>the artist's PR team Funny how someone who "no one knows who he is" has a PR team, is able to run auctions, put exhibitions in museums, send and receive money, etc... Only a numbnut would believe those things could happen "anonymously".
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >"no one knows who he is" Except that's not been the case. There have always been some people who know who Banksy is.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    Yeah ... and that's my point.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Your point is based on the false premise that literally no one is supposed to know his identity. In reality, the claim is not that literally no one knows his identity, but rather that his identity has not been publicly confirmed. Most likely there are quite a few people who know his identity, like his art agents, financial and legal representation, friends, etc.
    - pc86 5y ago
      I don't think anybody has ever suggested that literally nobody except Banksy knows who Banksy is. It's pretty obvious there would need to be at least a handful of people who know, since almost the beginning.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Funny how someone who "no one knows who he is" has a PR team, is able to run auctions, put exhibitions in museums, send and receive money, etc... Isn't having a PR team exactly how he manages that? He has agents to do it for him instead of doing it himself, preserving his anonymity.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    Yeah, what I don't like is the hypocrisy of that and the authorities who play along. (S)he plays the "oh but you can't find me ;)" card every time it needs to escape prosecution ... yet makes use of the same legal system when it goes on its favor. (i.e. tries to trademark its art, sues others who reproduce it [1]). Good thing the EU doesn't play along. As for me, I just dislike charlatans, disregarding of how famous they may be. 1: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/17/banksy-trademark-risk-street-artist-loses-legal-battle-flower-thrower-graffiti https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/17/banksy-...
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Charlatan! Do tell how.
- midev 5y ago
  > Only a numbnut would believe those things can happen "anonymously". I think you might be taking it too literally... Obviously some people know who he is... It's within the general public and media that he has remained anonymous... It's weird insulting people when you're not correct about what they believe.
colordrops 5y ago
It's absolutely intentional, just like the self-destructing art he sold before.
NathanKP 5y ago
First thought I had as well. Ironically selling an NFT with a faked provenance as a statement on the essential meaningless of NFT's sounds like a quintessentially Banksy type of statement piece

Fern_Blossom 5y ago

I still think Banksy is not a real "person". It's just a team of marketers who started a prank or dare and it turned into this internationally beloved money printing scam. Because, you know, a thumbs up and spray painting a wall equals feeding a poor kid a bowl of rice everyday. "We're so anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalism, now give us money for this art".

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Could banksy be multiple people? Probably not but sure its possible. It's way off the mark to say he's just "spray painting a wall" though.
matthewaveryusa 5y ago
Before Banksy became incredibly popular he made a name for himself in the graf scene. I remember Banksy from the mid 2000s and he was just another cool artist doing interesting things with stencils. For me he was in the same category as France's space invaders, or the guys in Spain (gemeos?) making giant paintings of odd-looking humans. Sometime in the early 2010s Banksy ramped up publicity stunts, and at that point I think Banksy became a collective of artists. Long story short I think Banksy was a person, but probably not anymore.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  Why do you think Banksy is not an individual anymore? Many top artists run workshops, in which other people physically fabricate their works. Take Jeff Koons, for example. But few would claim that Jeff Koons is no longer an individual.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
I mean even if the art is one person the numerous legally registered companies such as, BANKSY LIMITED, THE ART OF BANKSY LONDON LIMITED, etc. are corporations with directors that you can easily look up. The listed directors almost certainly aren't Banksy. Banksy is literally a company with marketing, accounts, PR, and management. They are constantly looking for the next viral opportunity and they are big on branding.

seph-reed 5y ago

NFT's really confuse me. Take the Mona Lisa for example: if the Louvre were ever to make their own NFT (perhaps with some embedded proof it was them creating it), wouldn't the "stolen" one suddenly lose all value? I get NFTs from the perspective of "proof that you were first person able to claim a thing because you made it," and that having value. But claiming other peoples stuff seems like it's just going to correct itself.

octopaulus 5y ago
You're thinking too hard, nfts will never take as much effort as the old millennia painters put in
smt88 5y ago
NFTs can't embed proof that they were created by anyone. That's the core problem with all crypto: it can prove on-chain, digital events, but it can't prove anything in the real world. I can prove you owned an NFT and that I own it now, but I can't prove anything about that NFT's connection to the real, human world. Similarly, I can make a smart contract that says you have to give me 50% of your income, but I can't enforce it outside of the chain that the contract was deployed on. If someone pays you with a different currency, the contract immediately fails to enforce itself.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  >That's the core problem with all crypto: it can prove on-chain, digital events, but it can't prove anything in the real world. This is really the core problem with the cryptocurrency space. The whole "iT'S tRUSsLeSs" claim is complete nonsense as soon as you try to attach it to any meatspace system. And you need that bridge to the offline world to solve interesting problems.
- seph-reed 5y ago
  > NFTs can't embed proof that they were created by anyone NFT's aren inherent proof, but they can embed proof (if it exists). If I took a photo of an idable, signed and noterized document stating that "the owner of X NFT is the owner of Y real item," then made that photo into an NFT, that would be embedding proof.

smt88 5y ago

The irony is that there's no actual difference between a fake NFT (token pointed to a URL) and a real one (token pointed to the same URL). In this case, the authenticity seems to be tied to whether the artist said this is real or not. I wouldn't be surprised if this were a performance art stunt designed to show how unbelievably gullible NFT buyers are.

yodsanklai 5y ago
> In this case, the authenticity seems to be tied to whether the artist said this is real or not. It's the case for a lot of collectible objects. They need to be authenticated in some way. NFTs are mostly the same thing. An item that some people are willing to pay money for (either for speculation or emotional attachement) but otherwise worthless.
tshaddox 5y ago
> The irony is that there's no actual difference between a fake NFT (token pointed to a URL) and a real one (token pointed to the same URL). I'm not sure what you mean. The difference is precisely the same as the difference between a real Picasso painting and a skilled counterfeit of a Picasso painting.
- croes 5y ago
  I don't think so because you don't buy the painting but just the token that points to the painting. Everybody could sell it without having the picture or the rights. It could even be the correct URL. It's like selling the real world address of the Mona Lisa.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    The question is whether the claim "this NFT was issued by Bob" is true. There could be other NFTs issued by Bob, or other NFTs issued by other people, but those are other questions that aren't relevant to this question. This is simply a factual claim that is either true or false.

rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago

NFTs are trash. I get a feeling that a lot of people are falling for the same clonecoin scam we saw the early days of Bitcoin. You are a complete sucker if you buy into this. I say this as a deep Bitcoiner who believes that all value on the planet will eventually be measured in BTC. I've seen a thousand chains launched and fail, taking everyones stored value with them. Digital things like coins are not valuable because its on a blockchain. They are not valuable because custody can be traced. Anyone can publish NFTs, and anyone can publish EVM tokens. There is no scarcity, there is no legal binding, there is only grift and scams. Bitcoin derives its value from the difficulty in producing new coins, and the fixed emission. Are we at peak stupid?

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
But is there something fundamental about Bitcoin that makes it unlikely to be usurped by something better? I'm seeing a lot of blind confidence in your comment.
- paulgb 5y ago
  There isn't. But if I owned any, I'd sure want to convince you that there was, and I feel like that will cloud any responses you get.
  - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
    Well, when one does have skin in the game, it is easy to believe (and want to convince). I would argue that there is something very special about Bitcoin. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate The problem is that everyone is always looking for the next get rich quick scheme. Bitcoin was never this, it is a not get poor slowly scheme.
    - paulgb 5y ago
      The problem I have with the hash rate as an indicator of anything long-term is that it's artificially subsidized in the present from a diminishing pool of reserve Bitcoin (or inflation, if you prefer to think of it that way). Currently to the tune of about 98-99% of the total block reward[1]. For all the talk of Bitcoin being a long-term asset, there's little evidence that the incentive system can work (i.e. fend off a 51% attack) in its terminal state, or even a couple decades from now when the block reward is ~97% lower than today. [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.html#3y https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.h...

spywaregorilla 5y ago

> He says he was first alerted to the auction by an anonymous person in his community on the social network Discord. > The man, who describes himself as a professional NFT collector, entered a bid around 90% higher than others. > The buyer suspects the person who alerted him and others to the Banksy NFT sale may have been the hacker themselves. His first mistake was considering himself a professional NFT collector.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I read “NFT Collector” as “Money Launderer” so things make more sense in that respect.

david422 5y ago

Does the general public even know what NFT's are? Much less someone with £244k to drop on one? I feel like this is some bizarro world where this is all code for money laundering or something that I'm not privy to.

Kaze404 5y ago
It has to be. I've seen so many people making huge sums of money selling NFTs for machine-generated "art". What value does this provide to anyone? Who is buying this? What are they getting out of it? This entire thing feels like a practical joke to me.
- pornel 5y ago
  Nobody is paying millions for hashes of JSON files of URLs of cliparts of pet rocks. You've seen money laundering and grifters "selling" NFTs to themselves to pump yet another crypto pump and dump.
dgellow 5y ago
Even highly technical people promoting NFTs don’t seem to understand what they really are (or decide to lie or obfuscate the truth) and seem to attribute them some mythical properties that makes no sense. I’m personally convinced it’s mostly used to launder money.
- kexx 5y ago
  I would not be surprised if this wasn't the goal of design in the first place
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  As is the case with other kinds of art.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Does the general public even know what NFT's are? Been featured in the mainstream evening TV news, radio news, newspapers where I live.

emadabdulrahim 5y ago

I can't help but think all those $100k+ NTFs purchases are either money laundering or dumb money spent on dumb things.

jaywalk 5y ago
I can't think of anything else they could be, honestly. If it's not money laundering, it's dumb. There's no such thing as a smart NFT purchase.
pessimizer 5y ago
NFTs are certainly what I would use to pay for a shipment of cocaine. The real business is being the technical middle man for creating and auctioning NFTs. I assume the cartel would just call you up, and you'd come up with an image concept, start press releasing about it, you'd either manufacture or hire an artist to take credit for it, and afterwards take 20% off the top for costs and profit. Reminds me of when torrent sites used to sell desktop wallpapers. ----- edit: That may be the advantage of NFTs as compared to physical art. To launder money with art, you need to create an entire literature, get galleries to buy into it, and run a few fixed auctions on other pieces by an artist in order to make the price seem plausible. With NFTs you can just claim that whoever is questioning them doesn't understand them, and vaguely point at past NFT auctions in general as a proof.
- ivirshup 5y ago
  Do you really want to have your cocaine purchase in a permanent distributed ledger though? Seems like it could come up again in court.
vineyardmike 5y ago
I think a huge portion of these are opportunistic and semi-fraudulent (in concept, if not in law). Person A and B are friends. A makes a bunch of NFTs. Person B agrees to buy NFT_1 for BIG_SUM. They settle "off books" for the payment... really what happens is Person A agrees NFT_2 is worth BIG_SUM and swap. Person A now sells NFT_3 to public, and tries to convince public its worth BIG_SUM++ since other pieces sold for BIG_SUM in past. Person A: Profit off NFT_3 sale Person B: Profit by selling NFT_1 in open market for BIG_SUM++.

yodsanklai 5y ago

NFTs started to make sense to me after I watched this video about modern art: the $150000 banana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8sB25IL4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8sB25IL4o There's really not much to NFTs. Everything is in the name. Non Fungible Token. They can have value because they can be linked to an owner (unlike the air, or the moon) and are non fungible (unlike a grain of sand). Some do have value because people think they can make a profit selling them to someone else. It's very similar to modern art. It's just an old idea that blockchain guys have been reusing, for lack of better application for their platforms. To me, the excitment around such a silly concepts says a lot about the state of blockchain applications...

deleted 5y ago

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mef 5y ago

archive.org snapshot of purportedly hacked page on banksy's site: https://web.archive.org/web/20210831085223/https://banksy.co.uk/nft.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210831085223/https://banksy.co...

lvass 5y ago

It's disheartening to see so many negatives comments about NFTs in general here but none tackling the real underlying issue with these seemingly "dumb" transactions. NFTs, as concept or protocol like ERC-721, are not completely useless as many state. They're in fact being used right now, for example, to represent LP positions in the novel uniswap v3. The seemingly stupidity of news like these is a direct consequence of news market economy and how easy it is to abuse. Take this (probably common) scheme for example: 1)Have a lot of money in crypto 2)Create a NFT or partner with someone 3)Buy your NFT and have news outlets report it 4)Sell the NFT for more than you paid in commissions It's completely unreasonable to fault the NFT concept for this. It's all about how news outlets are prone to spread information that is completely irrelevant (and arguably misleading) like someone sending money to himself or an accomplice with the goal of making it into the news.