5 ms·

The Picasso is truly scarce. The NFT is artificially scarce.

anonymoushn 5y ago
idk there are 50,000 Picassos and only 100 stupid pictures of rocks from the first such collection of stupid pictures of rocks on ethereum
selestify 5y ago
That is only true at a superficial level. In terms of high-quality art, the Picasso is artificially scarce in the sense that there are reproductions so high-quality that only experts can tell the original apart from the reproduction. Clearly it's no longer the quality of the art that matters, because the reproduction visually looks just as appealing as the originally, but the provenance. There are only so many "original" Picassos because Picasso is dead, but if we consider artwork that looks just as good as Picasso's, then the scarcity is entirely artificial and caused by provenance. NFTs from a particular source will similarly become "truly" scarce once that source is dead. There may be a difference in degree, in how hard it is to recreate a physical work versus a digital one. But it is not a difference in kind.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  If you're buying a $100M painting like Guernica - you should probably be an expert...
  - selestify 5y ago
    No, because you're rich as hell and will hire an actual expert to validate the origin of the painting. Come on, you think art history experts are the ones actually buying these paintings, as opposed to rich folk with too much money?
    - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      You think just because you're rich you can't have any taste in art? Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. I don't think the majority of people buying $50M+ paintings are complete morons. Maybe they are.
      - selestify 5y ago
        When did I say the rich don't have taste in art? I said the rich won't know whether they bought an original or a fake, because the fakes are high quality enough to pass as the real thing to the untrained eye. The art is worth that much not because of the aesthetics qualities, but because of the provenance and the high-status signaling and bragging rights that come with said provenance. > Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. Case in point. That's why you hire an expert (or perhaps even a team of experts) to help you out.
        onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
        No - it's worth that much because of who painted it. There are shitty drafts of Guernica that Picasso did that sell for hundreds of thousands. There are infinitely better drawings that one could not sell for a single penny. The artist is what gives it value. It's truly scarce because only so much work came from that artist - who people are obsessed with. I will 100% grant that it's mostly about signaling and bragging rights. But NFTs are artificially scarce. Original work from Picasso is truly scarce.
        selestify 5y ago
        It's most definitely not worth as much as MBS paid for it now that it's known to be a reproduction. > But NFTs are artificially scarce. We're just going in circles now. Reread my previous response to why they're no more artificially scarce than Picassos.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > In terms of high-quality art, the Picasso is artificially scarce in the sense that there are reproductions so high-quality that only experts can tell the original apart from the reproduction. Except that those are also scarce because they take the labor of expert hands to make too. People actually would pay money for known forgeries because of it. Absent copyright law and a desire to fund the artist, no one would pay for digital art because copies are as close to free as makes no difference.
  - selestify 5y ago
    Sure, but we were talking about spending money on NFTs versus spend it on (original) Picassos. Now you're talking about spending money copying a Picasso versus (not) spending money copying the digital artwork that an NFT was minted for, which is distinct from the NFT itself and worth approximately zero, as you say.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      That's a distinction without a difference. I'm saying the forged art is valuable because there is a cost to produce it, and the JPG isn't because there effectively isn't a cost to produce it. The NFT took work to produce, sure, but it's just a number with some mathematical relationship to other numbers and means absolutely nothing without other systems agreeing that it means something. It creates work to be done where none needs to be done solely for the purpose of trying to fit a square peg (post-scarcity information) into a round hole (scarcity-based markets).
      - selestify 5y ago
        > That's a distinction without a difference. That's where you're mistaken. An NFT is distinct from the work that the NFT is tied to, which might not necessarily be digital. You can copy a Picasso, but no matter how good your copy is, you can't copy the "original" quality of a Picasso. That's all an NFT is, representing the "originaL" quality of something. The worth (or lack thereof) of copies is completely irrelevant.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tiborsaas 5y ago
But Picasso made his paintings artificially scarce too :) He even made two versions with the same title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Musicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Musicians
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Artists regularly paint similar pieces. And it's not clear if one of these was a draft. Although, from what I know of Picasso - I don't think one of these would've been a draft. It was probably just a similar piece. You can probably find a lot of pieces close to this similar that Picasso did.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    For example - just Google "Picasso The Kiss"
asdfsd234234444 5y ago
What does that even mean? You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. You can produce counterfeits of most "real world" items that are indistinguishable.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  It means that if I burn your original Picasso, you lose the money - even if you still have a piece of paper that says you own the original. This isn't difficult to understand.
- notahacker 5y ago
  > You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. I can't, but will happily pay anyone that can considerably more than the Ethereum gas fees involved in minting an NFT copy of something.
  - asdfsd234234444 5y ago
    Go wild: https://www.etsy.com/market/picasso_replica https://www.etsy.com/market/picasso_replica
    - notahacker 5y ago
      Not gonna lie, I can tell the difference...
      - asdfsd234234444 5y ago
        Go for a higher quality replica? https://www.marcalexanderart.com/reproductions/ https://www.marcalexanderart.com/reproductions/ "own a museum quality reproduction of a great master’s painting that is indistinguishable from the original"
        notahacker 5y ago
        Not gonna lie, I think an inauthentic art reproduction is going to set me back more than an minting an inauthentic claim to own a gif on a blockchain. It'll look better on my wall though, which is why I'd consider commissioning it. For related reasons, I suspect that whilst more people would flock to see the actual Sistine Chapel ceiling than one I commissioned for my living room, I'd still have an easier time wowing people with the living room artwork than a NFT with a gif, even if it was countersigned by the Vatican It's almost like the important bit of the provenance for appreciation is in having the actual physical original the actual artist worked on, not a certificate saying you sent some money to someone on an aftermarket and exactly the same gif everybody else has
berberous 5y ago
My friend has a real Picasso. It’s a lithograph print, one of maybe 30+ of that image. It’s worth maybe $5k only. How is that scarcity any truer than an NFT? Picasso could have printed as many as he wanted, and indeed, printed so many that the value today is not very high. In both cases, an artist merely places their “this is official” stamp on something that is effectively a copy, and limits the number of copies available based on the desired economics for their work. And the fact that the “official” version is worth more than a “fake”, is merely because humans value genuineness and provenance, even when the end product is indiscernibly different.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Your critique of lithographs is valid. And that's the reason you don't see many lithographs selling for millions of dollars. Still, the combined "wealth" of lithographs may very well be in the 10s if not 100s of billions.

idk there are 50,000 Picassos and only 100 stupid pictures of rocks from the first such collection of stupid pictures of rocks on ethereum

selestify 5y ago

That is only true at a superficial level. In terms of high-quality art, the Picasso is artificially scarce in the sense that there are reproductions so high-quality that only experts can tell the original apart from the reproduction. Clearly it's no longer the quality of the art that matters, because the reproduction visually looks just as appealing as the originally, but the provenance. There are only so many "original" Picassos because Picasso is dead, but if we consider artwork that looks just as good as Picasso's, then the scarcity is entirely artificial and caused by provenance. NFTs from a particular source will similarly become "truly" scarce once that source is dead. There may be a difference in degree, in how hard it is to recreate a physical work versus a digital one. But it is not a difference in kind.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
If you're buying a $100M painting like Guernica - you should probably be an expert...
- selestify 5y ago
  No, because you're rich as hell and will hire an actual expert to validate the origin of the painting. Come on, you think art history experts are the ones actually buying these paintings, as opposed to rich folk with too much money?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    You think just because you're rich you can't have any taste in art? Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. I don't think the majority of people buying $50M+ paintings are complete morons. Maybe they are.
    - selestify 5y ago
      When did I say the rich don't have taste in art? I said the rich won't know whether they bought an original or a fake, because the fakes are high quality enough to pass as the real thing to the untrained eye. The art is worth that much not because of the aesthetics qualities, but because of the provenance and the high-status signaling and bragging rights that come with said provenance. > Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. Case in point. That's why you hire an expert (or perhaps even a team of experts) to help you out.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
        No - it's worth that much because of who painted it. There are shitty drafts of Guernica that Picasso did that sell for hundreds of thousands. There are infinitely better drawings that one could not sell for a single penny. The artist is what gives it value. It's truly scarce because only so much work came from that artist - who people are obsessed with. I will 100% grant that it's mostly about signaling and bragging rights. But NFTs are artificially scarce. Original work from Picasso is truly scarce.
        selestify 5y ago
        It's most definitely not worth as much as MBS paid for it now that it's known to be a reproduction. > But NFTs are artificially scarce. We're just going in circles now. Reread my previous response to why they're no more artificially scarce than Picassos.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> In terms of high-quality art, the Picasso is artificially scarce in the sense that there are reproductions so high-quality that only experts can tell the original apart from the reproduction. Except that those are also scarce because they take the labor of expert hands to make too. People actually would pay money for known forgeries because of it. Absent copyright law and a desire to fund the artist, no one would pay for digital art because copies are as close to free as makes no difference.
- selestify 5y ago
  Sure, but we were talking about spending money on NFTs versus spend it on (original) Picassos. Now you're talking about spending money copying a Picasso versus (not) spending money copying the digital artwork that an NFT was minted for, which is distinct from the NFT itself and worth approximately zero, as you say.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    That's a distinction without a difference. I'm saying the forged art is valuable because there is a cost to produce it, and the JPG isn't because there effectively isn't a cost to produce it. The NFT took work to produce, sure, but it's just a number with some mathematical relationship to other numbers and means absolutely nothing without other systems agreeing that it means something. It creates work to be done where none needs to be done solely for the purpose of trying to fit a square peg (post-scarcity information) into a round hole (scarcity-based markets).
    - selestify 5y ago
      > That's a distinction without a difference. That's where you're mistaken. An NFT is distinct from the work that the NFT is tied to, which might not necessarily be digital. You can copy a Picasso, but no matter how good your copy is, you can't copy the "original" quality of a Picasso. That's all an NFT is, representing the "originaL" quality of something. The worth (or lack thereof) of copies is completely irrelevant.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tiborsaas 5y ago

But Picasso made his paintings artificially scarce too :) He even made two versions with the same title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Musicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Musicians

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Artists regularly paint similar pieces. And it's not clear if one of these was a draft. Although, from what I know of Picasso - I don't think one of these would've been a draft. It was probably just a similar piece. You can probably find a lot of pieces close to this similar that Picasso did.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  For example - just Google "Picasso The Kiss"

asdfsd234234444 5y ago

What does that even mean? You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. You can produce counterfeits of most "real world" items that are indistinguishable.

brandonmenc 5y ago
It means that if I burn your original Picasso, you lose the money - even if you still have a piece of paper that says you own the original. This isn't difficult to understand.
notahacker 5y ago
> You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. I can't, but will happily pay anyone that can considerably more than the Ethereum gas fees involved in minting an NFT copy of something.
- asdfsd234234444 5y ago
  Go wild: https://www.etsy.com/market/picasso_replica https://www.etsy.com/market/picasso_replica
  - notahacker 5y ago
    Not gonna lie, I can tell the difference...
    - asdfsd234234444 5y ago
      Go for a higher quality replica? https://www.marcalexanderart.com/reproductions/ https://www.marcalexanderart.com/reproductions/ "own a museum quality reproduction of a great master’s painting that is indistinguishable from the original"
      - notahacker 5y ago
        Not gonna lie, I think an inauthentic art reproduction is going to set me back more than an minting an inauthentic claim to own a gif on a blockchain. It'll look better on my wall though, which is why I'd consider commissioning it. For related reasons, I suspect that whilst more people would flock to see the actual Sistine Chapel ceiling than one I commissioned for my living room, I'd still have an easier time wowing people with the living room artwork than a NFT with a gif, even if it was countersigned by the Vatican It's almost like the important bit of the provenance for appreciation is in having the actual physical original the actual artist worked on, not a certificate saying you sent some money to someone on an aftermarket and exactly the same gif everybody else has

berberous 5y ago

My friend has a real Picasso. It’s a lithograph print, one of maybe 30+ of that image. It’s worth maybe $5k only. How is that scarcity any truer than an NFT? Picasso could have printed as many as he wanted, and indeed, printed so many that the value today is not very high. In both cases, an artist merely places their “this is official” stamp on something that is effectively a copy, and limits the number of copies available based on the desired economics for their work. And the fact that the “official” version is worth more than a “fake”, is merely because humans value genuineness and provenance, even when the end product is indiscernibly different.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Your critique of lithographs is valid. And that's the reason you don't see many lithographs selling for millions of dollars. Still, the combined "wealth" of lithographs may very well be in the 10s if not 100s of billions.