5 ms·

> Yes, you can screenshot the Mona Lisa or print out a signed Mickey Mantle rookie card, but it's not the same thing is it? Obviously not, because those are ta

by cr1895 5y ago

> Yes, you can screenshot the Mona Lisa or print out a signed Mickey Mantle rookie card, but it's not the same thing is it? Obviously not, because those are tangible things. That’s not a valid comparison.

dcolkitt 5y ago
But you're not paying for the tangibility. Digital image replication is near perfect. You could have a tangible copy of the Mona Lisa that is physically indistinguishable from the real one. The reason people pay millions for artworks is because of the intangible provenance. If the value was the tangible, then tangible digital replications would sell for the same value as the original.
- notkaiho 5y ago
  but a digital image is not tangible, i.e. something you can have displayed, in a physical frame, in meatspace.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    Half of my Twitter feed is profile pics of NFTs being displayed prominently. In a pre-digital pre-social media world you’re right. But in the modern world where people spend more time socializing online than in meatspace, digital goods become easier to display than physical ones. I think a lot of HN doesn’t get this because they don’t spend much time on social media. But for someone like Steph Curry, putting an ape in his profile pic gets a lot more exposure than a Van Gogh on his living room wall.
    - BEEdwards 5y ago
      >Half of my Twitter feed is profile pics of NFTs being displayed prominently. And I could in 30 seconds, find the most expensive nft, copy the image and use that as my profile picture...
      - IntelMiner 5y ago
        The part that still baffles me is that if you did that, the NFT community would just say "oh well that's not the REAL owner!" and pretend you don't exist Similarly if you "stole" the blockchain receipt of an actual NFT, therefore gaining "ownership" of it, the NFT community would simply pretend the person you stole it from was still the "real" owner, despite having zero "verifiable" status to it, beyond having possibly tweeted it before you did I have to use a lot of quotes because even in a hypothetical there's so many variables that applying real world properties to just make my head hurt
        chrisco255 5y ago
        You can't steal a blockchain receipt. Here's a challenge for you: go right click a CryptoPunk and save it, or use this NFTBay to torrent the JPEG yourself. Then try and sell it.
      - dcolkitt 5y ago
        And in a day or two, you could find the most expensive old Dutch master sold at Sotheby's and have a perfect digital replication. Nobody would stop you from hanging it out up in your living room, or even announcing to everyone on social media that it's the original and you're the owner. Nobody would need to, because everyone in the art collecting community would recognize this as super cringe. People purchase art for social status. What you're describing is the opposite of social status.
        notkaiho 5y ago
        I still don't see how a digital copy can have the same brush texture as those of Dutch masters
- mythz 5y ago
  Which is running the same scam as buying a Star [1], except it's done on a blockchain selling to greater fools who are being promised of untold riches that will come their way from buying a row in a database containing a link to a CDN [1] https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795674696597506 https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795674696597506
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    No it’s a lot more like the market for luxury goods. Why does a Chanel purse sell for substantially more than a similar quality leather bag from a generic manufacturer? Because of the intangible status market of the Chanel brand. If the Chanel logo combined with artificial scarcity turns a $1000 bag into a $6000 purse, why would we not expect the Chanel logo with the same artificial scarcity to turn a $0 JPEG into a $1000 JPEG?
    - mythz 5y ago
      > No it’s a lot more like the market for luxury goods. Yep exactly like that, except there's no luxury good, not even a receipt of a luxury good, just a ticket to the directions of an online store that's hosting the same bag of pixels that's given out to everyone who ever cared to come across the same public directions with their browser. There's no respect to be earned from a public digital trail admitting you've traded real money for a link to a fake clout badge.
      - dcolkitt 5y ago
        > There's no respect to be earned from a public digital trail admitting you've traded real money for a link to a fake clout badge. Except there clearly is. At the point where many of the world's most famous athletes, musicians and actors have prominently displayed NFTs that they purchased, then there clearly is real social status associated with them. You can debate about whether that's unfair, or stupid, or just a fad. But it's pretty clearly undeniable that NFTs today are an indisputable social status market to a not insignificant fraction of the population. The fact that you find that you think it shouldn't be that way doesn't change the way things are.
- cr1895 5y ago
  >You could have a tangible copy of the Mona Lisa that is physically indistinguishable from the real one. It certainly would not be. It might look very very similar, but in no way indistinguishable to the degree that one digital file is literally the same as a copy of itself.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    Top forgeries are so similar that it often takes a team of experts independently examining a piece until the fake is detected. Are you seriously trying to claim that the reason the original Mona Lisa has value (vis-a-vis a high quality forgery) is because of the minute tangible composition of the paint? I’m sorry, but no. It’s clearly the intangible provenance. Otherwise forgeries wouldn’t fall in value when detected, because after all nothing has changed about their tangible composition.
    - cr1895 5y ago
      >Top forgeries are so similar that it often takes a team of experts independently examining a piece until the fake is detected. And even if it might be difficult to tell apart, it isn't literally the same thing. >Are you seriously trying to claim that the reason the original Mona Lisa has value (vis-a-vis a high quality forgery) is because of the minute tangible composition of the paint? I'm not sure how you concluded that is what I said. I never made any statement as to why it is valued the way that it is.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    >one digital file is literally the same as a copy of itself. That's the problem NFT's seek to solve ;). You may not think it's a problem, but a lot of people on the production side of digital artwork do.
baseballMan 5y ago
I'm not an NFT fan by any stretch of the imagination but you can buy a reproduction of the Mona Lisa or a fake Mickey Mantle card. https://www.amazon.com/DECORARTS-Leonardo-Davinci-Classic-Reproductions/dp/B01LRDG42G https://www.amazon.com/DECORARTS-Leonardo-Davinci-Classic-Re... Obviously, the real mona lisa or the mickey mantle card has value because they were painted by famous artists, or signed by a famous baseball player... But at the end of the day they only have value because someone says they have value.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  But the thing is, I get the historical significance of the Mona Lisa and Mickey Mantle. I don’t need an appraiser or something to know why they have value. The value proposition of these Bored Apes is a lot less clear, and acting like “we all just play the game in our everyday lives already” is kind of hiding the ball.
  - The-Bus 5y ago
    There's also only one Mona Lisa. Copies and images of it are just that.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    I have thousands of baseball cards stored away from when I was a kid. I remember pouring over the monthly appraisals published in Beckett magazine. I haven't checked in years. The cards could be worth thousands for all I know. It actually doesn't make any logical sense that baseball cards have value. They are stock photos printed on card stock. They sold for pennies. I don't own the rights to the image. I can't even play any sort of interesting game with them in the same way I could with Magic the Gathering cards or Pokemon cards. I simply own the card and can resell it to other people and try to assemble interesting collections and discuss with other collectors. There really is no other utility other than that. Bored Ape Yacht Club has memed itself into relevance, as indicated by your casual mention of their brand. They are digital collectibles but they also have become a true club in the sense that there are exclusive events both in real life and in the metaverse that BAYC holders get access to. They also have gaming franchises in the works. And I imagine if U.S. securities laws weren't so draconian, they would probably arrange profit sharing among holders for proceeds from merchandising the franchise. But for now, ownership of a BAYC grants you ownership of a meme. That's not an insult, by the way, quite the contrary. Human culture is memes all the way down.

by cr1895 5y ago

dcolkitt 5y ago

But you're not paying for the tangibility. Digital image replication is near perfect. You could have a tangible copy of the Mona Lisa that is physically indistinguishable from the real one. The reason people pay millions for artworks is because of the intangible provenance. If the value was the tangible, then tangible digital replications would sell for the same value as the original.

notkaiho 5y ago
but a digital image is not tangible, i.e. something you can have displayed, in a physical frame, in meatspace.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Half of my Twitter feed is profile pics of NFTs being displayed prominently. In a pre-digital pre-social media world you’re right. But in the modern world where people spend more time socializing online than in meatspace, digital goods become easier to display than physical ones. I think a lot of HN doesn’t get this because they don’t spend much time on social media. But for someone like Steph Curry, putting an ape in his profile pic gets a lot more exposure than a Van Gogh on his living room wall.
  - BEEdwards 5y ago
    >Half of my Twitter feed is profile pics of NFTs being displayed prominently. And I could in 30 seconds, find the most expensive nft, copy the image and use that as my profile picture...
    - IntelMiner 5y ago
      The part that still baffles me is that if you did that, the NFT community would just say "oh well that's not the REAL owner!" and pretend you don't exist Similarly if you "stole" the blockchain receipt of an actual NFT, therefore gaining "ownership" of it, the NFT community would simply pretend the person you stole it from was still the "real" owner, despite having zero "verifiable" status to it, beyond having possibly tweeted it before you did I have to use a lot of quotes because even in a hypothetical there's so many variables that applying real world properties to just make my head hurt
      - chrisco255 5y ago
        You can't steal a blockchain receipt. Here's a challenge for you: go right click a CryptoPunk and save it, or use this NFTBay to torrent the JPEG yourself. Then try and sell it.
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      And in a day or two, you could find the most expensive old Dutch master sold at Sotheby's and have a perfect digital replication. Nobody would stop you from hanging it out up in your living room, or even announcing to everyone on social media that it's the original and you're the owner. Nobody would need to, because everyone in the art collecting community would recognize this as super cringe. People purchase art for social status. What you're describing is the opposite of social status.
      - notkaiho 5y ago
        I still don't see how a digital copy can have the same brush texture as those of Dutch masters
mythz 5y ago
Which is running the same scam as buying a Star [1], except it's done on a blockchain selling to greater fools who are being promised of untold riches that will come their way from buying a row in a database containing a link to a CDN [1] https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795674696597506 https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795674696597506
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  No it’s a lot more like the market for luxury goods. Why does a Chanel purse sell for substantially more than a similar quality leather bag from a generic manufacturer? Because of the intangible status market of the Chanel brand. If the Chanel logo combined with artificial scarcity turns a $1000 bag into a $6000 purse, why would we not expect the Chanel logo with the same artificial scarcity to turn a $0 JPEG into a $1000 JPEG?
  - mythz 5y ago
    > No it’s a lot more like the market for luxury goods. Yep exactly like that, except there's no luxury good, not even a receipt of a luxury good, just a ticket to the directions of an online store that's hosting the same bag of pixels that's given out to everyone who ever cared to come across the same public directions with their browser. There's no respect to be earned from a public digital trail admitting you've traded real money for a link to a fake clout badge.
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      > There's no respect to be earned from a public digital trail admitting you've traded real money for a link to a fake clout badge. Except there clearly is. At the point where many of the world's most famous athletes, musicians and actors have prominently displayed NFTs that they purchased, then there clearly is real social status associated with them. You can debate about whether that's unfair, or stupid, or just a fad. But it's pretty clearly undeniable that NFTs today are an indisputable social status market to a not insignificant fraction of the population. The fact that you find that you think it shouldn't be that way doesn't change the way things are.
cr1895 5y ago
>You could have a tangible copy of the Mona Lisa that is physically indistinguishable from the real one. It certainly would not be. It might look very very similar, but in no way indistinguishable to the degree that one digital file is literally the same as a copy of itself.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Top forgeries are so similar that it often takes a team of experts independently examining a piece until the fake is detected. Are you seriously trying to claim that the reason the original Mona Lisa has value (vis-a-vis a high quality forgery) is because of the minute tangible composition of the paint? I’m sorry, but no. It’s clearly the intangible provenance. Otherwise forgeries wouldn’t fall in value when detected, because after all nothing has changed about their tangible composition.
  - cr1895 5y ago
    >Top forgeries are so similar that it often takes a team of experts independently examining a piece until the fake is detected. And even if it might be difficult to tell apart, it isn't literally the same thing. >Are you seriously trying to claim that the reason the original Mona Lisa has value (vis-a-vis a high quality forgery) is because of the minute tangible composition of the paint? I'm not sure how you concluded that is what I said. I never made any statement as to why it is valued the way that it is.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  >one digital file is literally the same as a copy of itself. That's the problem NFT's seek to solve ;). You may not think it's a problem, but a lot of people on the production side of digital artwork do.

baseballMan 5y ago

I'm not an NFT fan by any stretch of the imagination but you can buy a reproduction of the Mona Lisa or a fake Mickey Mantle card. https://www.amazon.com/DECORARTS-Leonardo-Davinci-Classic-Reproductions/dp/B01LRDG42G https://www.amazon.com/DECORARTS-Leonardo-Davinci-Classic-Re... Obviously, the real mona lisa or the mickey mantle card has value because they were painted by famous artists, or signed by a famous baseball player... But at the end of the day they only have value because someone says they have value.

Uehreka 5y ago
But the thing is, I get the historical significance of the Mona Lisa and Mickey Mantle. I don’t need an appraiser or something to know why they have value. The value proposition of these Bored Apes is a lot less clear, and acting like “we all just play the game in our everyday lives already” is kind of hiding the ball.
- The-Bus 5y ago
  There's also only one Mona Lisa. Copies and images of it are just that.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  I have thousands of baseball cards stored away from when I was a kid. I remember pouring over the monthly appraisals published in Beckett magazine. I haven't checked in years. The cards could be worth thousands for all I know. It actually doesn't make any logical sense that baseball cards have value. They are stock photos printed on card stock. They sold for pennies. I don't own the rights to the image. I can't even play any sort of interesting game with them in the same way I could with Magic the Gathering cards or Pokemon cards. I simply own the card and can resell it to other people and try to assemble interesting collections and discuss with other collectors. There really is no other utility other than that. Bored Ape Yacht Club has memed itself into relevance, as indicated by your casual mention of their brand. They are digital collectibles but they also have become a true club in the sense that there are exclusive events both in real life and in the metaverse that BAYC holders get access to. They also have gaming franchises in the works. And I imagine if U.S. securities laws weren't so draconian, they would probably arrange profit sharing among holders for proceeds from merchandising the franchise. But for now, ownership of a BAYC grants you ownership of a meme. That's not an insult, by the way, quite the contrary. Human culture is memes all the way down.