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> In addition to the fact that the very idea of NFTs is a scam An NFT is just a digital certificate stored on a blockchain. It's certainly not a scam and has p

> In addition to the fact that the very idea of NFTs is a scam An NFT is just a digital certificate stored on a blockchain. It's certainly not a scam and has perfectly legit uses. For a variety of reasons, everything related to blockchain is ridiculously overhyped. What should be boring accounting technology is suddenly a pop culture fad, and that birthed thousands of get-rich-quick schemes. It's a flaw in human behavior though, not a problem with NFTs or cryptocurrencies.

elevenoh 5y ago
Truth. But hey, many have seen their friends have success in crypto while they've remained on the sidelines.. and they don't like it. They'll defame blockchain & nfts to no end rather than attempt to seek understanding. Intermediary-less digital ownership is incredibly powerful & will only grow in usage & utility by open-source evolving nature, perhaps exponentially.
- Azsy 5y ago
  I think you're getting the FOMO the wrong way around. Im pretty sure an average HN reader understands a lot more about NFT then the average NFT owner. Bitcoin was technically interesting. Whatever your stance on all the negatives in the real world, everybody agrees its elegant in theory. It combined problems to create a solution. That's what real innovation looks like. NFT's as 'investments' are a scam. Claiming Git commit hashes as property is not valuable, innovative, or game-changing. From the bottom to the top of the pyramid its people who are salty they didn't make more money in 'crypto' and are afraid of missing out twice in their lives.
  - elevenoh 5y ago
    An nft can map to anything. This mapping is up to the implementer. I can show an nft that represents a role, access to an event, a cross-game asset, as a property title, as a binding contract, rights to use intellectual property etc.
SahAssar 5y ago
> An NFT is just a digital certificate stored on a blockchain. It's certainly not a scam and has perfectly legit uses. In theory, yes. > It's a flaw in human behavior though, not a problem with NFTs or cryptocurrencies. If you find another lifeform besides humans to market NFTs and cryptocurrencies to I'll buy this argument.
- calibas 5y ago
  It's a digital certificate that is already being used to represent ownership of things like artworks. Not a theory, an active reality where they already serve a useful purpose. Just because scammers jumped all over it, and even if most NFTs are scams, that does nothing to overwrite the fact that there's a useful technology here, albeit with a niche purpose. The problem is that people are using the hype to scam, that's human behavior, not an issue with NFTs themselves, which are just boring certificates.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Can you name some NFT ecosystems that use them to represent ownership of artwork in a meaningful, useful way, and not just as resellable bragging rights? I know it's possible, but I haven't seen any.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    I think blockchains are interesting in theory. I think that the underlying assumption about trust and reliability are interesting. But I still have not seen any use-case for them that makes more sense than what they replace in a real world use-case. For NFT's this is even worse, because they not only claim to be magic internet money, they also (often) claim to represent a real world object or artwork, so you basically have two overvalued markets reinforcing one another. An NFT does not represent a ownership over anything more than the NFT itself unless it also comes with legal and/or physical possession of the thing it supposedly represents. If it comes with legal or physical possession then the NFT is not the core of the transaction, is it? In theory an NFT is just anything on a blockchain that cannot be equally substituted. In practice it is a way to hype and scam.

elevenoh 5y ago

Truth. But hey, many have seen their friends have success in crypto while they've remained on the sidelines.. and they don't like it. They'll defame blockchain & nfts to no end rather than attempt to seek understanding. Intermediary-less digital ownership is incredibly powerful & will only grow in usage & utility by open-source evolving nature, perhaps exponentially.

Azsy 5y ago
I think you're getting the FOMO the wrong way around. Im pretty sure an average HN reader understands a lot more about NFT then the average NFT owner. Bitcoin was technically interesting. Whatever your stance on all the negatives in the real world, everybody agrees its elegant in theory. It combined problems to create a solution. That's what real innovation looks like. NFT's as 'investments' are a scam. Claiming Git commit hashes as property is not valuable, innovative, or game-changing. From the bottom to the top of the pyramid its people who are salty they didn't make more money in 'crypto' and are afraid of missing out twice in their lives.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  An nft can map to anything. This mapping is up to the implementer. I can show an nft that represents a role, access to an event, a cross-game asset, as a property title, as a binding contract, rights to use intellectual property etc.

SahAssar 5y ago

> An NFT is just a digital certificate stored on a blockchain. It's certainly not a scam and has perfectly legit uses. In theory, yes. > It's a flaw in human behavior though, not a problem with NFTs or cryptocurrencies. If you find another lifeform besides humans to market NFTs and cryptocurrencies to I'll buy this argument.

calibas 5y ago
It's a digital certificate that is already being used to represent ownership of things like artworks. Not a theory, an active reality where they already serve a useful purpose. Just because scammers jumped all over it, and even if most NFTs are scams, that does nothing to overwrite the fact that there's a useful technology here, albeit with a niche purpose. The problem is that people are using the hype to scam, that's human behavior, not an issue with NFTs themselves, which are just boring certificates.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Can you name some NFT ecosystems that use them to represent ownership of artwork in a meaningful, useful way, and not just as resellable bragging rights? I know it's possible, but I haven't seen any.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  I think blockchains are interesting in theory. I think that the underlying assumption about trust and reliability are interesting. But I still have not seen any use-case for them that makes more sense than what they replace in a real world use-case. For NFT's this is even worse, because they not only claim to be magic internet money, they also (often) claim to represent a real world object or artwork, so you basically have two overvalued markets reinforcing one another. An NFT does not represent a ownership over anything more than the NFT itself unless it also comes with legal and/or physical possession of the thing it supposedly represents. If it comes with legal or physical possession then the NFT is not the core of the transaction, is it? In theory an NFT is just anything on a blockchain that cannot be equally substituted. In practice it is a way to hype and scam.