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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

by 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.

by fleddr 5y ago

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.