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Are NFTs Status Symbols?
- artfulhippo 5y agoInteresting piece by W. David Marx that situates NFTs within the category of Status Symbols. Marx is among the most lucid watchers of culture with a focus on Japan, where fashion and futurism converged decades ago.
- hermitcrab 5y agoIf you tell me you have spent thousands on an NFT, then I will assume you are an idiot. And I'm sure lots of other feel the same way. So not a great status symbol.
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- xx511134bz 5y agoIts an interesting piece, people just reading the comments or commenting on NFTs in general are missing out. >>[Status symbols] also need alibis, plausible excuses for ownership other than the intentional acquisition of status symbols ... The best alibi for NFTs is that they are an investment ... to cunningly flip later. So when the market becomes saturated and the ability to flip (aka the alibi) is gone, will the market collapse?
- hermitcrab 5y agoBubbles keep growing until they run out of suckers. Those who get out before the bubble bursts might make a lot of money. Everyone else will lose the lot. It happened with the South Sea Bubble, Tulipmania, Bernie Madoff, Onecoin and any number of other bubbles/scams. Isaac Newton, one of the smartest men who ever lived, lost loads of money in the South Sea Bubble.
- hermitcrab 5y agoIncidentally that "you" was intended generic. I wasn't referring to anyone in particular!
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- smoldesu 5y agoNot really. I'd argue that a true status symbol commands the respect of any person in it's presence, whereas any sufficently educated person will look at your 77" OLED NFT display case and scoff before walking away.
- c22 5y agoI think this definition needlessly dilutes the term. Personally, I hold no extra respect for you if you're rocking a gucci handbag, wearing a rolex, or if you crap on a gold commode. The people who buy these things don't do it to impress me though, they're hoping to show off to their peers who do value such displays.
- XCSme 5y agoYes, but an NFT is not like owning a Rolex, it's like owning the "first photo taken" of that Rolex.
- pram 5y ago"But NFTs communities host individuals of both low- and high-status positions, making them fundamentally different from country clubs or VIP lounges. Anyone can join, if they have the money." Actually it's not fundamentally different at all!
- bhickey 5y agoNo. They're just another crypto pog designed to fleece dumb money with the hope that no one goes to jail for securities fraud.
- k__ 5y agoIsn't fungibility only one of many aspects of a token? They can be totally differnt besides their fungibility.
- jcpham2 5y agoGotta catch em all
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Taylor_OD 5y agoHas anyones status been raised by owning a specific NFT (outside of the NFT ecosystem)? No. Maybe they could sell it for an amount of money that raises their status elsewhere but at this point in time the answer is no. Is owning a rare baseball card a status symbol?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoOwning a rare baseball card is a status symbol to rare baseball card collectors.
- XCSme 5y agoI don't understand baseball and never collected any type of cards, but I do get people who own a rare baseball card and see its value (limited production, has history behind it, it can only be lost, not multiplied). I don't see the status value of someone owning an $180k NFT more than that he indeed has $180k, money that will probably go down in value over time. Anyone can create an identical or improved NFT at any point, and its value can be the same of higher simply if someone pays that amount of money for it. I still see it as someone paying $180k for a common, non-original, useless rock, it doesn't mean that the value of that rock is now $180k.
- Taylor_OD 5y agoExactly. I said outside of the NFT community. Owning a rare baseball card meaning nothing to the average person. As does owning an nft.
- purple_ferret 5y agoSteph Curry 'bought' an NFT, made it his avatar, asked about getting into crypto, and then immediately announced he had a deal with FTX to be a sponsor/investor (coincidentally right after another FTX celebrity sponsor, Tom Brady, replied to his tweets about crypto). It wasn't purchased by Steph Curry on a whim as a status symbol. It was probably given to him as part of his roll out deal with FTX. It's nearly the same roll out move every other FTX celebrity sponsor has made, of which, there are now many. They get paid to act like they're interested. None of this is organic. It is all a sham.
- soco 5y agoThat, or somebody just laundered 180k bucks.
- colonelpopcorn 5y agoWhy not both?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- th5 5y agoI’m not so sure it’s complete bs. Ive worked with Steph on a dozen design projects through his brand. Typically I’m actually only interfacing with his team so I’ve only met him personally a few times and only for a few minutes. The last project I got to meet him again at the roll out. I pitched the idea of creating NFTs for his foundation to the guy running his foundation. The guy was totally interested. A few seconds later Steph walked by (and wasn’t being mobbed by everyone around) and the guy told Steph “this guys talking about NFTs” … Steph did a triple take and eyes wide and seemed genuinely juiced to talk about it. Moments later he got mobbed by kids for autographs and that was it. Not saying NFTs are not a sham, just that I was super surprised at how interested he seemed in the subject.
- chinathrow 5y ago> I pitched the idea of creating NFTs > Not saying NFTs are not a sham How do these two statements go hand in hand?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- RikNieu 5y ago"Anyone can join, if they have the money." Yep, status symbols. NFTs are just internet bling/flexing, like digital cold chains and chunky rings.
- tantalor 5y agoMoney and status are different.
- RikNieu 5y agoNot for everyone.
- ansible 5y agoIf you have money, you can buy status. If you have status, you can leverage that to get money. The two are not directly fungible, and work is needed to convert one to the other. But it is straightforward to obtain one for the other, in direct proportion to how much money or status you currently have. The real trick is to have enough money and status, and cleverly use both to simultaneously get more of both.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoYeah, it definitely is a status symbol. A negative one.
- hermitsings 5y agoFool's gold. Like literally.
- rvz 5y agono. They are digital certificates congratulating you for paying a higher price for a digital thing that has no utility other than being a diamond handed bag holder. They know it is a scam, since that the only winners are the celebrities, influencers, meme creators. The collectors who keep buying NFTs however, have to wait and find another fool willing to buy it off of them for even higher.
- robbedpeter 5y agoIt's a Jeff Foxworthy and tulips craze mash-up. You bought a mutable token in a poorly thought out "investment" scheme based on hipsters shilling nonsense? Here's your sign.
- Wolfenstein98k 5y agoOf course they are. You're only buying one thing: artificial scarcity.
- tiku 5y agoFabricated demand, Person A purchases NFT_1, Person A as Person B buys NFT_1 from Person A. Person C thinks NFT_1 is worth at least what Person A paid for it and buys it, hoping to make a profit.
- hermitcrab 5y agoIf you have cash to burn and want a 'status' symbol, why not build a school or a clinic in a developing country? Get your name plaque put on it. Much better bragging rights than an NFT. $10k - $20k to http://thejunipertrust.org http://thejunipertrust.org should do it.
- webscout 5y agoWhat the F happened to folks like Alexis Ohanian or Kevin Rose? Their Twitter stream screams bored, rich signalling.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoI never see any discussion about the actual art behind the NFTs. When classic art pieces are sold as NFTs, someone else often still owns the actual art. NFT discussion is 100% about the price. The art is a convenient sideshow. In fact, most of the hyper NFTs seem to come from series of generic artwork with variations in the 1000s or 10,000s. The goal isn’t to produce good art, it’s to produce a massive quantity of low-effort or algorithmically generated pieces so they can be sold and traded in volume. I have feeling that everyone in and out of NFT communities are fully aware that this isn’t about the art at all. It’s about hype and trading and profit. The art just happens to be an excuse to mint new tokens now that the crypto coin market has been flooded with 1000s of altcoins for a decade.
- criddell 5y agoI might have the details wrong, but isn't there a mechanism so that the original artist can get some portion of the proceeds every time an NFT is sold?
- iskander 5y agoMany market places have an optional royalty to send a percent back to the artist on every sale.
- iskander 5y agoI think non-crypto coverage of NFTs conflates a few different categories. There's a lot of stuff for sale on more niche venues like Hit et Nunc that's really just art made in a classically recognizable way; people don't flip there very effectively and seem to buy based on their own aesthetics. There's also generative art, most prominently Art Blocks, which has a very active collector community but has more recently entered into a speculative bubble because some pieces pull in high prices. And then there's avatar NFT projects (e.g. Pudgy Penguins), which I think what you're mostly talking about.
- agd 5y agoYes they are. I don't see it as a problem though. People also spend fortunes on designer handbags which have little intrinsic value. Personally, I wouldn't waste my money on this stuff, but I don't get the anger. Perhaps people feel upset that others are making significant money from this and it doesn't feel 'fair'?
- coldpie 5y ago> Personally, I wouldn't waste my money on this stuff, but I don't get the anger. Encouraging the crypto scams means we're going backwards on climate change at a time when we need to be sprinting forward. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
- agd 5y agoAFAIK, the main blockchains used for NFT trading are either already POS or moving to POS. If you care about climate change, this doesn't feel like a particularly high leverage area to focus on.
- coldpie 5y agoI don't know that anyone is spending any significant focus on shutting down NFTs, just explaining why they make me angry, since you asked.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI get angry when I see people spending a fortune on worthless crap (NFTs, designer handbags, watches that don't actually tell the time very well) when other people are living in poverty. Wouldn't it be better to spend some of that money on helping other people, rather than some ridiculous bauble that only impresses shallow people?
- pradn 5y agoI think, culturally, NFT boosters are close to multi-level marketers in coolness. I can't imagine them being actual status symbols, except for the way those who were able to make a quick buck are able to parlay that money into conventional status, such as it is.
- miah_ 5y agoIts simply a way to make some money off a generation that didn't grow up with napster. Yes. I would download a car.
- apples_oranges 5y agoI know this is kind of arrogant, but to me the whole NFT debate, whether it's good or not, is a "hand me the popcorn" thing, partly, because I think the answer is entirely obvious
- nikk1 5y agoFor those of you trashing NFTs, have you ever bought one? If not, I suggest picking something up on a drop from Nifty Gateway. Of course, research the artist first. I also check out the artist's Twitter page and Discord server to make sure they have a solid community established already.
- KaiserPro 5y agobut why would I want one? it doesn't denote ownership, I don't get the original thing, at best its a "print" at worse its a scam.
- nikk1 5y agoWhy would you want a stock in Amazon? Why would you want a Bitcoin? Why would you want to own a Picasso painting? I don't understand how an NFT is different from any of these things. You use your private key to verify ownership. In the digital world, this is the closet you can get to having the "original thing". You can disagree with this, but it doesnt matter because obviously the NFT market believes in this. Some NFTs just sit there, the same way an original piece of art will just hang on a wall. However, some NFTs can have 'utility'. For example, owning one can qualify you to buy a piece that is exclusive to collectors of a particular artist. The artist can also verify holders and send out physical products. Some artists are using profits to re-invest in larger scale NFT projects as well, like virtual worlds and games.
- goatsi 5y agoThat only matters if you are buying the NFT for the purpose of speculation. Otherwise just find some art you like. Twitter followers are between $5-30 per thousand, and Discord server members look to be around $70-80 per thousand. People pulling crypto scams will frequently fake popularity, back in the ICO days it was standard to have a telegram channel filled with 20-30 thousand bots.
- emerged 5y agoI think if it exactly the same as replacing your hair with surgically implanted gold chains.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoThey're a status symbol, and the symbol is being gullible, or maybe having considerable disposable income. It's fine, though, it brings back money into the economy. Not much different from extracting huge sums for champagne with a few milligrams of gold sheet, or jeweled smartphones. The only difference is that they're buying an imaginary luxury object.
- iskander 5y agoThe article is a good read but the comments here are below what I remember being the quality standards of news.yc; has this place declined?