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I am flat out convinced that most people who buy into the NFT hype are gullibe at best, and a fraud at worst. If that offends anyone, I am sorry; it is probably

I am flat out convinced that most people who buy into the NFT hype are gullibe at best, and a fraud at worst. If that offends anyone, I am sorry; it is probably going to take a while for the NFT madness to blow over and uncover the true nature. This is coming from someone who made thousands of (NF)T trades back in 2017-2018! (with some bias of not earning a single cent on NFT's in 2020/2021).

cm2187 5y ago
I don't disagree but can't you say the same thing about expensive art in general? I mean is any painting really worth $100m? At one point it's not about the painting, it's about being able to splash a lot of money at something expensive when you already own everything other expensive thing you could splash money at. That's why I always thought comparing crypto to currency, financial investments or gold is the wrong analogy. To me it is more akin to the art market.
- emmo 5y ago
  But in this situation, you at least own a piece of art.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    Which value is in the eye of the beholder. Some people think they hold something valuable with a Klein Monochrome that my handyman could paint in a minute. Others enjoy the ownership of a few randomly generated bytes on a hard drive.
- boppo1 5y ago
  Art can be really incredible to behold in person (modern & contemporary less so imo, but I digress). There is some value there over and above monkey jpegs.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    And I am not saying it has no value. Just that it doesn't have $100m worth of value.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
One of the "examples" for NFT that I see most often repeated is the following: The usage of NFTs in games. Using them to let the player "own" their character customizations and ingame items in order to resell them and carry them over to other games. This is presented under the banner of decentralization with the result that no one could take away these ingame items from the buyer ever again. This example is a gross misreprentation of how game transactions and game assets work: 1. The only thing an NFT would enable is the ability to show that you own an item in a game. The only change is that the necessary bit sits on a blockchain instead of the server of the game company you bought it from. 2. Ingame assets need to be created by the developer of the game in order to be in the game...there is no inherent compatibility between two different games, especially if the games are from two different companies. And the NFT does not contain the asset itself, that is: The 3D model, its texture, its game logic attached to it (the things the asset is supposed to do). 3. Because of 1. and 2., the only authority over wether you get to use an ingame purchase is the game developer/publisher of the game in which you wish to use the asset. The fact that you can show your ownership does not change anything about that at all. If Company A decides to ignore your ownership bit (in the end you still play on their servers) they are free to do so at any point, the player does not have the slightest bit of additional "power". 4. If you show your ownership bit of an ingame asset that you bought from Company A to Company B, they have to build it into their game (model, textures, logic, basically copy these things from Company A) and give you the ability to use it. In order for this whole NFT dream to work as advertised Company B has to perform this work for free if you ever want to use it there. > I am flat out convinced that most people who buy into the NFT hype are gullibe at best, and a fraud at worst. The aspects I described above are immediately obvious if you remotely know how game development works. That is the reason I can only come the conclusion that the people pushing this NFT narrative are either really clueless about technology, very gullible, or intentionally trying to deceive others to inflate the prices of this scheme. In short: I agree.
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  > with the result that no one could take away these ingame items from the buyer ever again That is one result, the bigger picture is that the strategies centralized owners of those items use to make profits at the expense of each user would go away. You are correct that an issue exists between completely hard-coded ownership on the blockchain and subjective creation of items in a game, but perhaps ruminate over some roadblocks. If a 'set' of items represented by NFTs is valued by a large group of users, then developers which do not integrate those items fairly enough will suffer users. In this case it will not be the game developers controlling the items, it will be artists who sell the raw NFT which becomes integrated. This leads to all sorts of other little issues that aren't as fun to dunk on, but you should at least steel-man the concept. Furthermore, your example of cosmetic items is the weakest example. Items which offer in-game functionality first and foremost, and are released according to semi-predictable mechanisms are the stronger case. Just like Bitcoin prevents unwanted malicious activity from allowing forks, so to must the game(s) which use these items. I'm not convinced it's so impossible to have an open source game built around the items rather than the other way around. An extremely simple RPG is a MVP. Of course the visible community around NFT's today is completely ill-fitted for such a project, but like all things crypto on HackerNews, detractors often mistake the loudest sales-pitch for the best possible outcome. If you want to make a strong case against the merits of crypto, focus less on projects who spend their effort on marketing and more who spend their effort on development.

cm2187 5y ago

I don't disagree but can't you say the same thing about expensive art in general? I mean is any painting really worth $100m? At one point it's not about the painting, it's about being able to splash a lot of money at something expensive when you already own everything other expensive thing you could splash money at. That's why I always thought comparing crypto to currency, financial investments or gold is the wrong analogy. To me it is more akin to the art market.

emmo 5y ago
But in this situation, you at least own a piece of art.
- cm2187 5y ago
  Which value is in the eye of the beholder. Some people think they hold something valuable with a Klein Monochrome that my handyman could paint in a minute. Others enjoy the ownership of a few randomly generated bytes on a hard drive.
boppo1 5y ago
Art can be really incredible to behold in person (modern & contemporary less so imo, but I digress). There is some value there over and above monkey jpegs.
- cm2187 5y ago
  And I am not saying it has no value. Just that it doesn't have $100m worth of value.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago

One of the "examples" for NFT that I see most often repeated is the following: The usage of NFTs in games. Using them to let the player "own" their character customizations and ingame items in order to resell them and carry them over to other games. This is presented under the banner of decentralization with the result that no one could take away these ingame items from the buyer ever again. This example is a gross misreprentation of how game transactions and game assets work: 1. The only thing an NFT would enable is the ability to show that you own an item in a game. The only change is that the necessary bit sits on a blockchain instead of the server of the game company you bought it from. 2. Ingame assets need to be created by the developer of the game in order to be in the game...there is no inherent compatibility between two different games, especially if the games are from two different companies. And the NFT does not contain the asset itself, that is: The 3D model, its texture, its game logic attached to it (the things the asset is supposed to do). 3. Because of 1. and 2., the only authority over wether you get to use an ingame purchase is the game developer/publisher of the game in which you wish to use the asset. The fact that you can show your ownership does not change anything about that at all. If Company A decides to ignore your ownership bit (in the end you still play on their servers) they are free to do so at any point, the player does not have the slightest bit of additional "power". 4. If you show your ownership bit of an ingame asset that you bought from Company A to Company B, they have to build it into their game (model, textures, logic, basically copy these things from Company A) and give you the ability to use it. In order for this whole NFT dream to work as advertised Company B has to perform this work for free if you ever want to use it there. > I am flat out convinced that most people who buy into the NFT hype are gullibe at best, and a fraud at worst. The aspects I described above are immediately obvious if you remotely know how game development works. That is the reason I can only come the conclusion that the people pushing this NFT narrative are either really clueless about technology, very gullible, or intentionally trying to deceive others to inflate the prices of this scheme. In short: I agree.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
> with the result that no one could take away these ingame items from the buyer ever again That is one result, the bigger picture is that the strategies centralized owners of those items use to make profits at the expense of each user would go away. You are correct that an issue exists between completely hard-coded ownership on the blockchain and subjective creation of items in a game, but perhaps ruminate over some roadblocks. If a 'set' of items represented by NFTs is valued by a large group of users, then developers which do not integrate those items fairly enough will suffer users. In this case it will not be the game developers controlling the items, it will be artists who sell the raw NFT which becomes integrated. This leads to all sorts of other little issues that aren't as fun to dunk on, but you should at least steel-man the concept. Furthermore, your example of cosmetic items is the weakest example. Items which offer in-game functionality first and foremost, and are released according to semi-predictable mechanisms are the stronger case. Just like Bitcoin prevents unwanted malicious activity from allowing forks, so to must the game(s) which use these items. I'm not convinced it's so impossible to have an open source game built around the items rather than the other way around. An extremely simple RPG is a MVP. Of course the visible community around NFT's today is completely ill-fitted for such a project, but like all things crypto on HackerNews, detractors often mistake the loudest sales-pitch for the best possible outcome. If you want to make a strong case against the merits of crypto, focus less on projects who spend their effort on marketing and more who spend their effort on development.