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Why not? If people are willing to throw away money on glorified text files, might as well cash in on it. Any useful functionality of NFTs can be achieved using

Why not? If people are willing to throw away money on glorified text files, might as well cash in on it. Any useful functionality of NFTs can be achieved using public key cryptography or digital signatures, but we're not gonna get rich with that attitude.

lvs 5y ago
Might as well have no ethical boundaries of any kind!
SavantIdiot 5y ago
It's a scam. Mental illness, susceptibility to certain messaging, or even lack of intelligence can make people easy targets to be exploited by financial scams. Some believe they have the right to not be pillaged, because a society looks out for its weakest. Some believe: too bad, let 'em crash-n-burn and grind em into haggis when they fall. That's life. The question is: do we want to let the cons prey on the weak in our society? I'm sure it'll never possible to stamp out all the possible ways to exploit people, but I think it wouldn't hurt to help protect people who aren't hip to the con. I waffle about this issue. For example, when I see people throwing their life savings at a rich Prosperity Gospel preacher (google that shit, it is totally bonkers and elderly fall for it!) I fall into group #1, but when I see people gobbling up Kardashian NFTs, I fall into group #2. Tough call...
- fleddr 5y ago
  NFTs are neither a scam or a con. Words have meaning. An NFT has a clearly listed price. Pay that price and you will own it. And you will get exactly what you paid for. That's not a scam. Nobody robbed you of your money, you willingly gave it, and you got the listed product, and not something else entirely. A scenario that I would consider scammy is an NFT that is minted without permission from the original artist.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    > And you will get exactly what you paid for. What are they getting though? It's like saying when you spend $1,000 for a beanie baby (or a cabbage patch kid if you're older) you got something of transient value driven by cultural hype. On its face, yes you are right: you got a doll for a lot of money, or a token for a lot of money. But you weren't buying a doll, you were buying hype whipped up by con men that it will be worth more to another person who is conned. Dolls aren't worth thousands of dollars unless a critical mass agrees they are. Its the Austrian economic theory why diamonds are worth more than water, when water is necessary for life and diamonds are just shiny rocks. I consider that a scam too. You are correct that words do matter. We need to call these what they are: scams and cons. I think perhaps you are trying to partition a scam or a con into a "bait and switch", that is also a scam/con, at the expense of everything else. That's what it sounds like to me.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      Well, clearly you apply the word "scam" very generously. You apply it to anything involving hype, so in that sense you might consider fashion a scam too. Or pretty much anything involving marketing. The famous art work consisting of a banana duck-taped to a wall, is that a scam? I consider the value of that work zero, somebody else might consider it worth a million USD. Yet I see no scam, just a subjective valuation. A subjective valuation isn't equal to a scam. We could go back and forth on the definition of a scam, but in a context of regulation it does matter.

lvs 5y ago

Might as well have no ethical boundaries of any kind!

SavantIdiot 5y ago

It's a scam. Mental illness, susceptibility to certain messaging, or even lack of intelligence can make people easy targets to be exploited by financial scams. Some believe they have the right to not be pillaged, because a society looks out for its weakest. Some believe: too bad, let 'em crash-n-burn and grind em into haggis when they fall. That's life. The question is: do we want to let the cons prey on the weak in our society? I'm sure it'll never possible to stamp out all the possible ways to exploit people, but I think it wouldn't hurt to help protect people who aren't hip to the con. I waffle about this issue. For example, when I see people throwing their life savings at a rich Prosperity Gospel preacher (google that shit, it is totally bonkers and elderly fall for it!) I fall into group #1, but when I see people gobbling up Kardashian NFTs, I fall into group #2. Tough call...

fleddr 5y ago
NFTs are neither a scam or a con. Words have meaning. An NFT has a clearly listed price. Pay that price and you will own it. And you will get exactly what you paid for. That's not a scam. Nobody robbed you of your money, you willingly gave it, and you got the listed product, and not something else entirely. A scenario that I would consider scammy is an NFT that is minted without permission from the original artist.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  > And you will get exactly what you paid for. What are they getting though? It's like saying when you spend $1,000 for a beanie baby (or a cabbage patch kid if you're older) you got something of transient value driven by cultural hype. On its face, yes you are right: you got a doll for a lot of money, or a token for a lot of money. But you weren't buying a doll, you were buying hype whipped up by con men that it will be worth more to another person who is conned. Dolls aren't worth thousands of dollars unless a critical mass agrees they are. Its the Austrian economic theory why diamonds are worth more than water, when water is necessary for life and diamonds are just shiny rocks. I consider that a scam too. You are correct that words do matter. We need to call these what they are: scams and cons. I think perhaps you are trying to partition a scam or a con into a "bait and switch", that is also a scam/con, at the expense of everything else. That's what it sounds like to me.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Well, clearly you apply the word "scam" very generously. You apply it to anything involving hype, so in that sense you might consider fashion a scam too. Or pretty much anything involving marketing. The famous art work consisting of a banana duck-taped to a wall, is that a scam? I consider the value of that work zero, somebody else might consider it worth a million USD. Yet I see no scam, just a subjective valuation. A subjective valuation isn't equal to a scam. We could go back and forth on the definition of a scam, but in a context of regulation it does matter.