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It created a market for something. I don’t think it was art though. Unless you consider the whole concept to be some kind of performance art.

by spzb 5y ago

kranke155 5y ago
You can consider whatever you like but eventually it will cross into reality denial. It’s a marketplace for digitally watermarked digital art. Being anti-crypto like this is similar to being an anti-vaxxer for tech. You’re analysing everything through an ideological reality-confirmation bias instead of acting like a scientist and looking for the truth. You don’t want something to be true because you don’t like mRNA/Bill Gates or Bitcoin/Libertarians are at its origin. Instead you should face the truth that this is a marketplace for digital art and that it works. Far simpler than concocting wild theories about 5G or NFTs being performance art. It just works, it’s real and people are using it. Saying “NFTs have no value” is like saying “Bitcoin is not money”. It has been the equivalent of money for 10 years now, so when are you going to give it up?
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I was very skeptical of ICOs a few years ago, and they now disappeared. Is was like a permissionless stock exchange. Is any of them still worth something?
  - kranke155 5y ago
    The ICOs were mostly trash. That was obvious. But yes, Ethereum is still around that was ICO. Polkadot. Algorand. Lots of serious projects with interesting solutions. You’re clearly out of the loop so. Just do more research. There are still ICOs for instance there are auctions happening right now on Polkadot.
  - TrevorAustin 5y ago
    ICOs disappeared because the SEC stepped into what had been a kind of legal gray area and said “Lol, no. All of this is illegal.” They didn’t really go away on their own.
    - smt88 5y ago
      > ICOs disappeared because the SEC stepped into what had been a kind of legal gray area and said “Lol, no. All of this is illegal.” This demonstrates that the blockchain promises of decentralization and avoidance of government is generally impossible in countries with functioning governments.
      - Lambent_Cactus 5y ago
        Oh yeah, a proper great power could snuff out Bitcoin, to say nothing of the smaller coins, if they put their mind to it. If there's a real non-bubble use case, it will have to be around making a bad but much less expensive version of something that's already possible offline, but that requires lots of lawyers to set up.
      - e-clinton 5y ago
        I’d argue that the US government has done a great job at leaving crypto alone. SEC jumped on ICOs because they were scamming people left and right making promises that made the tokens securities.
  - herval 5y ago
    ICOs still happen though - there’s coins getting launched almost every day. They just went the DEX route, and for some reason the SEC isn’t as active stopping them as in 2017. But they didn’t go away.
- devest8or 5y ago
  > It has been the equivalent of money for 10 years now Can I buy my groceries with it? I haven't seen an option to pay my rent, either. What about my water bill? I wouldn't exactly say it's the equivalent of money.
  - smt88 5y ago
    It's also deflationary, which means you'd be stupid to spend it as money if you had an inflationary asset (like, you know, actual money) to spend instead.
    - kranke155 5y ago
      Depends on the crypto asset.
  - berberous 5y ago
    Yes — there are debit cards that will deduct from your crypto balance. These were traditionally not so helpful since crypto is volatile and each transaction incurred a capital gain/loss, but new cards can be backed by stable coins like USDC. Also, can you pay your rent with Euros? Does that make it not money? That’s not a very principled definition.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Also, can you pay your rent with Euros? Uh, yes? I mean, assuming the rent is for a place somewhere in the Eurozone, I imagine that's usually preferred.
  - e-clinton 5y ago
    I can’t do any of those things with Euros here in the states… does it make the Euro not money? Go down the equator and it’s an official currency
- goblin89 5y ago
  It’s wishful thinking that NFTs solve any real problem. For one, “digital watermarking” (if you can call it that) is useless without DRM. They do provide another mechanism for signaling riches, so cryptocurrency holders, who tangibly profit from the inflow of money into the pyramid, are understandably all over them.
  - kranke155 5y ago
    It’s wishful thinking to think that NFTs haven’t solved a problem considering tens of thousands of artists are using it and it’s changed a significant amount of lives in the space. It’s getting to the point where saying “NFTs don’t work” is like saying “ebooks aren’t real books”. It’s just a philosophical position that ignores reality.
    - goblin89 5y ago
      Token enthusiasts benefit from this because it promotes the cryptocurrency ecosystem in general, so they throw coins at average artists in the hopes of initiating them into the pyramid. Artists make a quick buck, cryptocurrency holders see valuations rise. It’s a symbiosis that is useless to everyone else outside of that circlejerk.
- smt88 5y ago
  > It’s a marketplace for digitally watermarked digital art. I think you deeply misunderstand how NFTs work, as most people seem to. They're not digitally watermarked. The only thing you buy with an NFT is the watermark itself (so to speak). It's very similar to buying a trading card of a certain work of art. There is no ownership involved (digital or otherwise). You just get your "name" on a list of "owners" that is public and non-editable. Among the problems with NFTs is that you can copy the art bit-for-bit. It's not like the Mona Lisa -- you can't take a real painting a copy molecules that are 300 years old. Worse, you can also just copy the list of "owners"! You have no way of knowing if you "own" the "official" NFT or not.
  - herval 5y ago
    You buy the right to sell that digital piece - others can copy as they please, but only the owner of the NFT can sell/transfer/destroy it (depending on the contract, of course). So it’s closer to a “deed” to a digital asset than a “watermark”. Digital art has always been copyable bit for bit, and that property will likely never change. You can’t compare it to a physical painting, and saying clonability invalidates something as art would also invalidate music, video, and any other fork of digital content. You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from.
    - smt88 5y ago
      > You buy the right to sell that digital piece - others can copy as they please, but only the owner of the NFT can sell/transfer/destroy it (depending on the contract, of course). You can copy the digital piece and distribute it as much as you want. An NFT is just a record on a blockchain saying that [wallet address] is the current owner of [URL]. It has absolutely nothing to do with ownership. The creator of an NFT can legally create a contract saying "whoever the blockchain says owns [URL] is the owner of [piece of art]," but that is a minority of cases and it also depends on the legal system. Ownership relying on a legal system is not new and it doesn't require NFTs. > saying clonability invalidates something as art would also invalidate music, video, and any other fork of digital content I didn't say clonability invalidates something as art. I said clonability invalidates NFTs as a meaningful form of ownership in and of themselves. > You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from. You can sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. I can also sell it. That means there are two NFT ownership records for Mona Lisa. In fact, there can be infinite ownership records. The only way to tell that a certain ownership chain is the original is by checking timestamps, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether the original seller of the NFT is also the owner of the work of art.
- jrm4 5y ago
  Bitcoin is valuable, but it ain't close to "money," at least for now. Money is the thing you can use to facilitate transactions easily, and Bitcoin is absolutely not that. As for NFT's, sure - a lot of things have value to some people. Right now it appears as if NFT's are valuable for luring in suckers and enabling very stupid people to try to launder money. Now, will NFT's be widely valuable to a lot of people in the future? Perhaps, but it strikes me as far from a sure bet.
  - supah 5y ago
    Lightening network ?
    - jrm4 5y ago
      I'll believe it when it happens.
      - kranke155 5y ago
        It has already happened?
        supah 5y ago
        sure has, it’s already in full swing and nodes are growing. El Salvador is also using Algorand to build upon.
        jrm4 5y ago
        All of these things are pointed in the right direction; but again, I'll believe it when I see e.g. "For the first time, 10% (low number, right) of El Salvadoreans bought their groceries with Bitcoin this month."
  - kranke155 5y ago
    It’s a sure bet. It’s such a sure bet that I would bet on it.
- andreskytt 5y ago
  Claims like “it just works” appear to turn the tables on the anti-vax analogy. There is no need to believe the vaccines work, it can be demonstrated. Here, we are required to believe nft-s work. And they don’t. Given the amount of people selling things they don’t own and the amount of nft-s just being a url with a hash on a blockchain, a lot more has to be shown to claim “it just works”. NFTs are a way to digitally sign files (which has existed in mainstream for 20+ years) and then trade these signatures. Which has also been possible since day one. Also, copyrights have been a thing for a while along with transferring rights. So, in addition to “they just work” claim the claim of them being novel would need to be justified.
  - strogonoff 5y ago
    Adjacency with cryptocurrencies makes any claim about NFT fitness-for-purpose dubious, for practical purposes there is no distinguishing an honest opinion from an attempt to manipulate the public into increasing the USD value of some coins or tokens held by the author of said opinion.
    - kranke155 5y ago
      Who talked about crypto? Not me. Tezos which is widely used for NFTs has barely any price volatility (in comparison to the rest of the crypto market).
  - kranke155 5y ago
    It works because people are using it. Every problem you can list has a technical solution that is actively being worked on already.

It created a market for something. I don’t think it was art though. Unless you consider the whole concept to be some kind of performance art.

by spzb 5y ago

It created a market for something. I don’t think it was art though. Unless you consider the whole concept to be some kind of performance art.

kranke155 5y ago

You can consider whatever you like but eventually it will cross into reality denial. It’s a marketplace for digitally watermarked digital art. Being anti-crypto like this is similar to being an anti-vaxxer for tech. You’re analysing everything through an ideological reality-confirmation bias instead of acting like a scientist and looking for the truth. You don’t want something to be true because you don’t like mRNA/Bill Gates or Bitcoin/Libertarians are at its origin. Instead you should face the truth that this is a marketplace for digital art and that it works. Far simpler than concocting wild theories about 5G or NFTs being performance art. It just works, it’s real and people are using it. Saying “NFTs have no value” is like saying “Bitcoin is not money”. It has been the equivalent of money for 10 years now, so when are you going to give it up?

gus_massa 5y ago
I was very skeptical of ICOs a few years ago, and they now disappeared. Is was like a permissionless stock exchange. Is any of them still worth something?
- kranke155 5y ago
  The ICOs were mostly trash. That was obvious. But yes, Ethereum is still around that was ICO. Polkadot. Algorand. Lots of serious projects with interesting solutions. You’re clearly out of the loop so. Just do more research. There are still ICOs for instance there are auctions happening right now on Polkadot.
- TrevorAustin 5y ago
  ICOs disappeared because the SEC stepped into what had been a kind of legal gray area and said “Lol, no. All of this is illegal.” They didn’t really go away on their own.
  - smt88 5y ago
    > ICOs disappeared because the SEC stepped into what had been a kind of legal gray area and said “Lol, no. All of this is illegal.” This demonstrates that the blockchain promises of decentralization and avoidance of government is generally impossible in countries with functioning governments.
    - Lambent_Cactus 5y ago
      Oh yeah, a proper great power could snuff out Bitcoin, to say nothing of the smaller coins, if they put their mind to it. If there's a real non-bubble use case, it will have to be around making a bad but much less expensive version of something that's already possible offline, but that requires lots of lawyers to set up.
    - e-clinton 5y ago
      I’d argue that the US government has done a great job at leaving crypto alone. SEC jumped on ICOs because they were scamming people left and right making promises that made the tokens securities.
- herval 5y ago
  ICOs still happen though - there’s coins getting launched almost every day. They just went the DEX route, and for some reason the SEC isn’t as active stopping them as in 2017. But they didn’t go away.
devest8or 5y ago
> It has been the equivalent of money for 10 years now Can I buy my groceries with it? I haven't seen an option to pay my rent, either. What about my water bill? I wouldn't exactly say it's the equivalent of money.
- smt88 5y ago
  It's also deflationary, which means you'd be stupid to spend it as money if you had an inflationary asset (like, you know, actual money) to spend instead.
  - kranke155 5y ago
    Depends on the crypto asset.
- berberous 5y ago
  Yes — there are debit cards that will deduct from your crypto balance. These were traditionally not so helpful since crypto is volatile and each transaction incurred a capital gain/loss, but new cards can be backed by stable coins like USDC. Also, can you pay your rent with Euros? Does that make it not money? That’s not a very principled definition.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Also, can you pay your rent with Euros? Uh, yes? I mean, assuming the rent is for a place somewhere in the Eurozone, I imagine that's usually preferred.
- e-clinton 5y ago
  I can’t do any of those things with Euros here in the states… does it make the Euro not money? Go down the equator and it’s an official currency
goblin89 5y ago
It’s wishful thinking that NFTs solve any real problem. For one, “digital watermarking” (if you can call it that) is useless without DRM. They do provide another mechanism for signaling riches, so cryptocurrency holders, who tangibly profit from the inflow of money into the pyramid, are understandably all over them.
- kranke155 5y ago
  It’s wishful thinking to think that NFTs haven’t solved a problem considering tens of thousands of artists are using it and it’s changed a significant amount of lives in the space. It’s getting to the point where saying “NFTs don’t work” is like saying “ebooks aren’t real books”. It’s just a philosophical position that ignores reality.
  - goblin89 5y ago
    Token enthusiasts benefit from this because it promotes the cryptocurrency ecosystem in general, so they throw coins at average artists in the hopes of initiating them into the pyramid. Artists make a quick buck, cryptocurrency holders see valuations rise. It’s a symbiosis that is useless to everyone else outside of that circlejerk.
smt88 5y ago
> It’s a marketplace for digitally watermarked digital art. I think you deeply misunderstand how NFTs work, as most people seem to. They're not digitally watermarked. The only thing you buy with an NFT is the watermark itself (so to speak). It's very similar to buying a trading card of a certain work of art. There is no ownership involved (digital or otherwise). You just get your "name" on a list of "owners" that is public and non-editable. Among the problems with NFTs is that you can copy the art bit-for-bit. It's not like the Mona Lisa -- you can't take a real painting a copy molecules that are 300 years old. Worse, you can also just copy the list of "owners"! You have no way of knowing if you "own" the "official" NFT or not.
- herval 5y ago
  You buy the right to sell that digital piece - others can copy as they please, but only the owner of the NFT can sell/transfer/destroy it (depending on the contract, of course). So it’s closer to a “deed” to a digital asset than a “watermark”. Digital art has always been copyable bit for bit, and that property will likely never change. You can’t compare it to a physical painting, and saying clonability invalidates something as art would also invalidate music, video, and any other fork of digital content. You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from.
  - smt88 5y ago
    > You buy the right to sell that digital piece - others can copy as they please, but only the owner of the NFT can sell/transfer/destroy it (depending on the contract, of course). You can copy the digital piece and distribute it as much as you want. An NFT is just a record on a blockchain saying that [wallet address] is the current owner of [URL]. It has absolutely nothing to do with ownership. The creator of an NFT can legally create a contract saying "whoever the blockchain says owns [URL] is the owner of [piece of art]," but that is a minority of cases and it also depends on the legal system. Ownership relying on a legal system is not new and it doesn't require NFTs. > saying clonability invalidates something as art would also invalidate music, video, and any other fork of digital content I didn't say clonability invalidates something as art. I said clonability invalidates NFTs as a meaningful form of ownership in and of themselves. > You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from. You can sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. I can also sell it. That means there are two NFT ownership records for Mona Lisa. In fact, there can be infinite ownership records. The only way to tell that a certain ownership chain is the original is by checking timestamps, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether the original seller of the NFT is also the owner of the work of art.
jrm4 5y ago
Bitcoin is valuable, but it ain't close to "money," at least for now. Money is the thing you can use to facilitate transactions easily, and Bitcoin is absolutely not that. As for NFT's, sure - a lot of things have value to some people. Right now it appears as if NFT's are valuable for luring in suckers and enabling very stupid people to try to launder money. Now, will NFT's be widely valuable to a lot of people in the future? Perhaps, but it strikes me as far from a sure bet.
- supah 5y ago
  Lightening network ?
  - jrm4 5y ago
    I'll believe it when it happens.
    - kranke155 5y ago
      It has already happened?
      - supah 5y ago
        sure has, it’s already in full swing and nodes are growing. El Salvador is also using Algorand to build upon.
        jrm4 5y ago
        All of these things are pointed in the right direction; but again, I'll believe it when I see e.g. "For the first time, 10% (low number, right) of El Salvadoreans bought their groceries with Bitcoin this month."
- kranke155 5y ago
  It’s a sure bet. It’s such a sure bet that I would bet on it.
andreskytt 5y ago
Claims like “it just works” appear to turn the tables on the anti-vax analogy. There is no need to believe the vaccines work, it can be demonstrated. Here, we are required to believe nft-s work. And they don’t. Given the amount of people selling things they don’t own and the amount of nft-s just being a url with a hash on a blockchain, a lot more has to be shown to claim “it just works”. NFTs are a way to digitally sign files (which has existed in mainstream for 20+ years) and then trade these signatures. Which has also been possible since day one. Also, copyrights have been a thing for a while along with transferring rights. So, in addition to “they just work” claim the claim of them being novel would need to be justified.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  Adjacency with cryptocurrencies makes any claim about NFT fitness-for-purpose dubious, for practical purposes there is no distinguishing an honest opinion from an attempt to manipulate the public into increasing the USD value of some coins or tokens held by the author of said opinion.
  - kranke155 5y ago
    Who talked about crypto? Not me. Tezos which is widely used for NFTs has barely any price volatility (in comparison to the rest of the crypto market).
- kranke155 5y ago
  It works because people are using it. Every problem you can list has a technical solution that is actively being worked on already.