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> The verifiable timestamp and record of account associated with a wallet address (public key) that is known to be associated with the artist that produced the

> The verifiable timestamp and record of account associated with a wallet address (public key) that is known to be associated with the artist that produced the work is the same as establishing physical provenance for a unique item. Not really. In your Mona Lisa example, an NFT would be more like a blockchain based ticket to the Louvre that has a link to a Mona Lisa JPEG. That’s the mismatch in NFT discussions: The believers have been convinced that the NFT is the artwork, but everyone else looks at the NFT and sees a link to a JPEG with no actual rights, possession, or ownership of the artwork. NFTs aren’t the artwork. They’re a fancy crypto receipt that says “I paid X amount to someone and we agreed that transaction had a link to this specific JPEG”. You can technically go into the blockchain and confirm that your receipt was the first, but there’s nothing stopping anyone else from making another NFT of the Mona Lisa and selling it. The blockchain itself can’t even verify that the Louvre sold you the original Mona Lisa NFT, you have to rely on 3rd-party news articles and such to confirm the address was truly associated with the Louvre. We’re already seeing scams where fraudulent NFTs are being produced that claim to be authorized by legal owners of the artwork but are actually just scammers selling NFTs of someone else’s artwork. But the funny part is that discovering these frauds has zero impact on the blockchain because the NFT was already minted and owned and you can’t undo that. We just have to look off-chain to websites to tell us what these tokens are supposed to be thought of, ignoring the actual blockchain NFT contents and trusting the non-blockchain NFT sources. They might be valuable to other members of the NFT believers group in the same way that rare baseball cards are valuable to other baseball card collectors, but the rest of us just aren’t interested in trading digital baseball cards of JPEGs. There’s also a huge problem with wash trading: Someone can make their NFT or NFT collection look arbitrarily valuable by trading it between multiple wallets they own. From the outside it looks like the NFT is “sold” for huge amounts of money, but really it’s just someone moving their own money and NFTs around on the blockchain. In the real art world this is much less practical because someone would be paying huge tax bills and auction fees on each sale. With blockchain, someone can simply wash trade with themselves across wallets and nobody would ever know. NFT values are definitely being pumped up by this scam because it’s too obvious and easy to ignore.

theshadowknows 5y ago
That makes a lot of sense, and thanks for the detailed answers. The age old "this isn't for you" is applicable here...I don't see the value personally, but I understand the motivation behind it..sort of like how I don't mind streaming music vs "owning" a digital copy of it as .mp3 or whatever.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  > the age old “this isn’t for you” is applicable here I disagree. When people are going around calling this a revolution that will change the fabric of society, they can’t just revert to “maybe it’s just not for you” when they have trouble explaining it or defending it. Either this is revolutionary or it’s a niche thing, but it can’t be both.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    But doesn't every revolution start out with a niche of early adopters that see the potential in something where everyone else just sees the clunky first prototype? Bitcoin in the early days may not have been for you, but if your retirement fund starts holding an amount of crypto it will become 'for you' then. The Tesla Model 3 is for a lot more people than the model S, and so on. Why would a revolution need to be 'for everyone' during the growth-hacking days?
    - pketh 5y ago
      > Either this is revolutionary or it’s a niche thing, but it can’t be both. My reading of this is that it's describing something at a single point of time. So to use your example, the Tesla S was niche, _then_ the 3 evolved the idea to become revolutionary. Some niches eventually become revolutionary, but they're not both niche and revolutionary at the same time.
    - Uehreka 5y ago
      I’m pretty sure almost everyone who buys a Model 3 thinks that a Model S is “for them”, they just can’t afford it. When the Model S came out, it was clear what it would be good for, and all that needed to change was to get the price down and the scale up. And if someone was like “What’s the big deal with the Tesla Model S?” I could say things like “This car runs on electricity, so it will help reduce our carbon footprint. It’s also really fast, really quiet, has more storage space than other cars, has better software than other cars.” and the person asking the question would have an answer. What I wouldn’t do is say “Whatever, when this is the only kind of car you can buy, you’ll understand.” Which is the answer I get a lot when I ask questions about crypto and NFTs.

theshadowknows 5y ago

That makes a lot of sense, and thanks for the detailed answers. The age old "this isn't for you" is applicable here...I don't see the value personally, but I understand the motivation behind it..sort of like how I don't mind streaming music vs "owning" a digital copy of it as .mp3 or whatever.

Uehreka 5y ago
> the age old “this isn’t for you” is applicable here I disagree. When people are going around calling this a revolution that will change the fabric of society, they can’t just revert to “maybe it’s just not for you” when they have trouble explaining it or defending it. Either this is revolutionary or it’s a niche thing, but it can’t be both.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  But doesn't every revolution start out with a niche of early adopters that see the potential in something where everyone else just sees the clunky first prototype? Bitcoin in the early days may not have been for you, but if your retirement fund starts holding an amount of crypto it will become 'for you' then. The Tesla Model 3 is for a lot more people than the model S, and so on. Why would a revolution need to be 'for everyone' during the growth-hacking days?
  - pketh 5y ago
    > Either this is revolutionary or it’s a niche thing, but it can’t be both. My reading of this is that it's describing something at a single point of time. So to use your example, the Tesla S was niche, _then_ the 3 evolved the idea to become revolutionary. Some niches eventually become revolutionary, but they're not both niche and revolutionary at the same time.
  - Uehreka 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure almost everyone who buys a Model 3 thinks that a Model S is “for them”, they just can’t afford it. When the Model S came out, it was clear what it would be good for, and all that needed to change was to get the price down and the scale up. And if someone was like “What’s the big deal with the Tesla Model S?” I could say things like “This car runs on electricity, so it will help reduce our carbon footprint. It’s also really fast, really quiet, has more storage space than other cars, has better software than other cars.” and the person asking the question would have an answer. What I wouldn’t do is say “Whatever, when this is the only kind of car you can buy, you’ll understand.” Which is the answer I get a lot when I ask questions about crypto and NFTs.