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Of course trading in something which has no value other than being sold is just a pyramid game in disguise. In particular dog-shit has more intrinsic value tha

Of course trading in something which has no value other than being sold is just a pyramid game in disguise. In particular dog-shit has more intrinsic value than NFTs.

cwkoss 5y ago
Similarly, a non-zero portion of facebook or google or amazon's current market cap is worth less than dog-shit. Hard to say how big that proportion is.
- weatherlite 5y ago
  You are saying stocks have no value? That is on you to make the case because humanity disagrees...
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    I'm saying a double digit chunk of these companies' expenses and IP production is yielding no economic value: either through lack of product market fit or getting cancelled before they launch. These companies are dripping with untrimmed fat and lack of focus on serving customers via building dumb projects that never get used.
nightski 5y ago
Pretty much any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme. It doesn't really matter in the long run. Humans like these things because they attach value to them as irrational as it might be. No one is melting down their Rolex for base metals. Lol. Yet they can be an extremely sound investment.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It could be, but only if people buy them as an investment. Who here invested in pokemon cards 20 years ago?
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Even if someone did, I'd be super curious as to the actual return. The highest priced card sold at auction for a "you could just find it in a random pack of Pokemon cards" I could find was around $20k; all the higher priced ones were either due to printing errors (so -extremely- limited runs that you were unlikely to actually get ahold of just buying cards), or were special runs for special events (so also not something you could just buy). Given that, the decades now that Pokemon cards have been sold, the implications buy in would have (i.e., if you went all in on Pokemon cards as soon as they hit the market, you presumably are going all in on every big IP CCG as a potential investment path, or just as liable to pick losers as winners. Those Star Trek CCG cards haven't exactly held their worth), I'm pretty sure you're not coming out ahead even if you did.
- FerociousTimes 5y ago
  What sentimental value does one derive from owing NFT junk? Please note that I use the word owing very liberally here
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    The closest analog I could come up with something like a baseball card with an authenticated signature of the player. Yes you could copy the baseball card, and even the signature, but I have the original, and it's been authenticated by by a third party expert. In this case, the card is an image file and the third party is math (the smart contract that issued the token). Sentimental value is based on sentiment, so you probably shouldn't try to apply objective logic to something that is subjective to every person and expect useful results.
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      > In this case, the card is an image file and the third party is math (the smart contract that issued the token). There's no canonical block chain. So the same image can be resold on any number of blockchains and every buyer can claim to be the "owner" with the same legitimacy. Which is zero legitimacy. There's not even a meaningful way to verify the person selling an NFT had any rights to do so. With a signed baseball card if you have physical possession of it then you're the owner. You have exclusive control over access to the card. Even if the card's inflated value drops because no one is willing to buy it, you still have a physical card to enjoy.
      - nightski 5y ago
        Not if the blockchain ties back to the source / author. Maybe long after that author is dead and it has changed hands many times.
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        Sure there is. Anytime someone says "NFT", they are almost certainly referring to an ERC-721/777[1] token on Ethereum. What other blockchains support NFTs and have any kind of use? Re legitimacy: how do you prove that any piece of artwork for sale in the real world is legit (the seller isn't violating someone's copyright or selling something stolen)? With an NFT at least, there's no such thing as a fake bored ape; the contract address that defined those is known. You can copy the image, you can even mint it, but it will be a trivially differentiable from the original, since it will belong to a different contract. Valuation is irrelevant to this discussion. [1]: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc-721/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme They tend to follow that dynamic. NFTs look like the the Gen X / Millenials' beanie babies [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265821/us-nft-user-demographics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265821/us-nft-user-demo...
  - psanford 5y ago
    So much so that there are now multiple browser extensions that replace 'nft' with 'beanie baby' everywhere[0]. [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nft-to-beanie-baby/kdilaeeofaapckoenceajjhjoflmhgic https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nft-to-beanie-baby...
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Collectibles are never 'an extremely sound investment'. They sometimes are a lucky investment. There is no way to determine what collectibles are worth 'investing' in, they generate no cash flow, and they have a large carrying cost. Further, the market for purchase is extremely small; even if you manage to luck out in collecting something that appreciates in value, finding an actual buyer is itself hit or miss. Even with Rolexes, which you call out, every article I've seen talks about -specific models- of Rolex. Not all of them. And the reason for that is the scarcity; if you happen to buy a sufficiently rare model, that is sufficiently iconic when you want to sell, yeah, it'll be worth more, and provided you can find a buyer (the scarcity compared with demand likely means you can, but the market is inefficient; there is no obvious safe place to sell the watch that will get bids from any and all interested parties, unless it's so high value as to warrant a well known auction house) you can liquidate it at a higher value. But that's a lot of ifs.
  - nightski 5y ago
    I never said all collectables were an extremely sound investments, just Rolex. I agree not all Rolex watches either, obviously some due diligence would need to be performed. But yes, scarcity is precisely it. That is what NFTs are trying to bring to digital assets. Whether it will succeed or not is an outstanding question but I wouldn't straight up dismiss it altogether. Especially considering the sheer amount that has been spent on digital goods in video games which you would say have precisely zero value. Don't get me wrong, the space will be filled with scams just like real world collectables are (late night infomercials for coin collections right?)
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      "Due diligence" - except you can't. Did people in the 1950s know that Submariner watches were going to be a big gain? No. People bought them to wear. Why did Rolex watches persist and gain value, while Bulova watches did not? We can come up with reasons -now-, but in the 1950s you wouldn't know. Just like with the NFT of the first tweet, 'due diligence' for collectibles is just speculation because there is nothing to base it on. Most investments have cash flow of some sort you can evaluate. Not collectibles. The expected value of every collectible trends negative, since it's a physical thing subject to wear and tear, and most physical things depreciate. NFTs are worse than collectibles in that the scarcity isn't even of the thing; it's just an artificially created scarcity around "ownership" of an infinite thing. Unprovable ownership, no less. If you 'invest' in a Rolex, at the end of the day you have a nice watch. If you 'invest' in an NFT, at the end of the day you have a freely available graphic. In terms of digital goods in video games...yeah; companies have been selling digital goods for their games without NFTs for years. Not sure what NFTs are bringing there.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > Pretty much any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme. Collecting physical items is different than NFTs even if you want to collect things just to resell them. With an NFT you've just got a database entry saying you "own" a thing. You don't have any exclusive rights to it. If anyone else can view it they can save a copy and happily enjoy it forever. With a physical item you have possession of it and exclusive control over access to it. If you let me see it I can't make a copy of it to keep for myself. Even if you don't melt it down for its raw materials it retains some value due to just being a physical artifact that can be experienced. The blockchain entry is meaningless. There's no canonical blockchain. There's no enforcement around blockchain entries. It's got the same real world validity as a text file on your desktop that says you "own" the Mona Lisa.
- weatherlite 5y ago
  Rolex has a powerful brand for how many decades now? Not gonna Google it but probably at least 40 years. The chance people will suddenly decide Rolex sucks is very low. NFTs have a few decades to go I think before we can compare them to Rolex.
  - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
    What about Supreme? or Stone Island? or Common Projects? These brands have value because of the current culture. And they will not have much value once that culture shifts. People will spend money on status symbols and will continue to for a long time. NFT's (or something else like them) in a world with metaverses will likely become status symbols. Doesn't mean any individual aesthetic NFT has value but the general concept could survive and mirror the trends seen in (expensive) clothing brands. And the majority of people won't care and will think it's a complete waste of money.
    - weatherlite 5y ago
      Well you made me Google it Rolex was founded in 1905, that is quite a few culture shifts coming and going...we can safely call it durable. It's very possible NFTs will be the same we just don't know yet.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Yeah, but you can't generally re-sell a Rolex watch for a profit. There are some particular models for which you can, and probably a very old still-working watch will always have some kind of collectible value, but otherwise Rolexes are not really a collectible market.
throwawaycities 5y ago
> In particular dog-shit has more intrinsic value than NFTs. That’s a kind of weird thing to say. NFTs are uniquely identifiable, self-executing code, that conveys legal ownership to the holder of the NFT. NFTs can and often do represent ownership of an asset, sometimes the asset. That in and of itself gives NFTs tremendous amount of intrinsic value as a tool that represents title of ownership and can facilitate trust-less transfer of title/ownership. I think you are right NFTs in their current use case are most often, but not entirely, used to represent ownership of classes of assets that are meant to be transferred/sold, but intrinsically NFTs still value as a tool that can represent ownership of a give asset. In other words one might say dog-shit has more intrinsic value than a written contract, except that contracts can and often do create enforceable terms (though not always) thus giving contracts intrinsic value, as evidenced by contracts being one of the most successful tools in all of human history as part of the historic record as far back as the written record goes.
- JackFr 5y ago
  > NFTs are uniquely identifiable, self-executing code, that conveys legal ownership to the holder of the NFT. > NFTs can and often do represent ownership of an asset, sometimes the asset. > That in and of itself gives NFTs tremendous amount of intrinsic value as a tool that represents title of ownership and can facilitate trust-less transfer of title/ownership. That is a lot of word salad. Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority? My understanding is that the answer to that question is "No", invariably presented as "No, but..." Is my understanding wrong?
  - volkk 5y ago
    > Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority? I can use my imagination and predict a future where some form of the tech can be. But on a different note, traditional art doesn't need to be understood by any existing legal authority and people collect art. Although a lot of high value art is also used for money laundering. I just don't see a huge difference between the two in the creative category and at least NFTs have some interesting tech to them.

Of course trading in something which has no value other than being sold is just a pyramid game in disguise. In particular dog-shit has more intrinsic value than NFTs.

cwkoss 5y ago

Similarly, a non-zero portion of facebook or google or amazon's current market cap is worth less than dog-shit. Hard to say how big that proportion is.

weatherlite 5y ago
You are saying stocks have no value? That is on you to make the case because humanity disagrees...
- cwkoss 5y ago
  I'm saying a double digit chunk of these companies' expenses and IP production is yielding no economic value: either through lack of product market fit or getting cancelled before they launch. These companies are dripping with untrimmed fat and lack of focus on serving customers via building dumb projects that never get used.

nightski 5y ago

Pretty much any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme. It doesn't really matter in the long run. Humans like these things because they attach value to them as irrational as it might be. No one is melting down their Rolex for base metals. Lol. Yet they can be an extremely sound investment.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It could be, but only if people buy them as an investment. Who here invested in pokemon cards 20 years ago?
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Even if someone did, I'd be super curious as to the actual return. The highest priced card sold at auction for a "you could just find it in a random pack of Pokemon cards" I could find was around $20k; all the higher priced ones were either due to printing errors (so -extremely- limited runs that you were unlikely to actually get ahold of just buying cards), or were special runs for special events (so also not something you could just buy). Given that, the decades now that Pokemon cards have been sold, the implications buy in would have (i.e., if you went all in on Pokemon cards as soon as they hit the market, you presumably are going all in on every big IP CCG as a potential investment path, or just as liable to pick losers as winners. Those Star Trek CCG cards haven't exactly held their worth), I'm pretty sure you're not coming out ahead even if you did.
FerociousTimes 5y ago
What sentimental value does one derive from owing NFT junk? Please note that I use the word owing very liberally here
- Karunamon 5y ago
  The closest analog I could come up with something like a baseball card with an authenticated signature of the player. Yes you could copy the baseball card, and even the signature, but I have the original, and it's been authenticated by by a third party expert. In this case, the card is an image file and the third party is math (the smart contract that issued the token). Sentimental value is based on sentiment, so you probably shouldn't try to apply objective logic to something that is subjective to every person and expect useful results.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    > In this case, the card is an image file and the third party is math (the smart contract that issued the token). There's no canonical block chain. So the same image can be resold on any number of blockchains and every buyer can claim to be the "owner" with the same legitimacy. Which is zero legitimacy. There's not even a meaningful way to verify the person selling an NFT had any rights to do so. With a signed baseball card if you have physical possession of it then you're the owner. You have exclusive control over access to the card. Even if the card's inflated value drops because no one is willing to buy it, you still have a physical card to enjoy.
    - nightski 5y ago
      Not if the blockchain ties back to the source / author. Maybe long after that author is dead and it has changed hands many times.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Sure there is. Anytime someone says "NFT", they are almost certainly referring to an ERC-721/777[1] token on Ethereum. What other blockchains support NFTs and have any kind of use? Re legitimacy: how do you prove that any piece of artwork for sale in the real world is legit (the seller isn't violating someone's copyright or selling something stolen)? With an NFT at least, there's no such thing as a fake bored ape; the contract address that defined those is known. You can copy the image, you can even mint it, but it will be a trivially differentiable from the original, since it will belong to a different contract. Valuation is irrelevant to this discussion. [1]: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc-721/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc...
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme They tend to follow that dynamic. NFTs look like the the Gen X / Millenials' beanie babies [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265821/us-nft-user-demographics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265821/us-nft-user-demo...
- psanford 5y ago
  So much so that there are now multiple browser extensions that replace 'nft' with 'beanie baby' everywhere[0]. [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nft-to-beanie-baby/kdilaeeofaapckoenceajjhjoflmhgic https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nft-to-beanie-baby...
lostcolony 5y ago
Collectibles are never 'an extremely sound investment'. They sometimes are a lucky investment. There is no way to determine what collectibles are worth 'investing' in, they generate no cash flow, and they have a large carrying cost. Further, the market for purchase is extremely small; even if you manage to luck out in collecting something that appreciates in value, finding an actual buyer is itself hit or miss. Even with Rolexes, which you call out, every article I've seen talks about -specific models- of Rolex. Not all of them. And the reason for that is the scarcity; if you happen to buy a sufficiently rare model, that is sufficiently iconic when you want to sell, yeah, it'll be worth more, and provided you can find a buyer (the scarcity compared with demand likely means you can, but the market is inefficient; there is no obvious safe place to sell the watch that will get bids from any and all interested parties, unless it's so high value as to warrant a well known auction house) you can liquidate it at a higher value. But that's a lot of ifs.
- nightski 5y ago
  I never said all collectables were an extremely sound investments, just Rolex. I agree not all Rolex watches either, obviously some due diligence would need to be performed. But yes, scarcity is precisely it. That is what NFTs are trying to bring to digital assets. Whether it will succeed or not is an outstanding question but I wouldn't straight up dismiss it altogether. Especially considering the sheer amount that has been spent on digital goods in video games which you would say have precisely zero value. Don't get me wrong, the space will be filled with scams just like real world collectables are (late night infomercials for coin collections right?)
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    "Due diligence" - except you can't. Did people in the 1950s know that Submariner watches were going to be a big gain? No. People bought them to wear. Why did Rolex watches persist and gain value, while Bulova watches did not? We can come up with reasons -now-, but in the 1950s you wouldn't know. Just like with the NFT of the first tweet, 'due diligence' for collectibles is just speculation because there is nothing to base it on. Most investments have cash flow of some sort you can evaluate. Not collectibles. The expected value of every collectible trends negative, since it's a physical thing subject to wear and tear, and most physical things depreciate. NFTs are worse than collectibles in that the scarcity isn't even of the thing; it's just an artificially created scarcity around "ownership" of an infinite thing. Unprovable ownership, no less. If you 'invest' in a Rolex, at the end of the day you have a nice watch. If you 'invest' in an NFT, at the end of the day you have a freely available graphic. In terms of digital goods in video games...yeah; companies have been selling digital goods for their games without NFTs for years. Not sure what NFTs are bringing there.
giantrobot 5y ago
> Pretty much any collectible could be called a pyramid scheme. Collecting physical items is different than NFTs even if you want to collect things just to resell them. With an NFT you've just got a database entry saying you "own" a thing. You don't have any exclusive rights to it. If anyone else can view it they can save a copy and happily enjoy it forever. With a physical item you have possession of it and exclusive control over access to it. If you let me see it I can't make a copy of it to keep for myself. Even if you don't melt it down for its raw materials it retains some value due to just being a physical artifact that can be experienced. The blockchain entry is meaningless. There's no canonical blockchain. There's no enforcement around blockchain entries. It's got the same real world validity as a text file on your desktop that says you "own" the Mona Lisa.
weatherlite 5y ago
Rolex has a powerful brand for how many decades now? Not gonna Google it but probably at least 40 years. The chance people will suddenly decide Rolex sucks is very low. NFTs have a few decades to go I think before we can compare them to Rolex.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  What about Supreme? or Stone Island? or Common Projects? These brands have value because of the current culture. And they will not have much value once that culture shifts. People will spend money on status symbols and will continue to for a long time. NFT's (or something else like them) in a world with metaverses will likely become status symbols. Doesn't mean any individual aesthetic NFT has value but the general concept could survive and mirror the trends seen in (expensive) clothing brands. And the majority of people won't care and will think it's a complete waste of money.
  - weatherlite 5y ago
    Well you made me Google it Rolex was founded in 1905, that is quite a few culture shifts coming and going...we can safely call it durable. It's very possible NFTs will be the same we just don't know yet.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Yeah, but you can't generally re-sell a Rolex watch for a profit. There are some particular models for which you can, and probably a very old still-working watch will always have some kind of collectible value, but otherwise Rolexes are not really a collectible market.

throwawaycities 5y ago

> In particular dog-shit has more intrinsic value than NFTs. That’s a kind of weird thing to say. NFTs are uniquely identifiable, self-executing code, that conveys legal ownership to the holder of the NFT. NFTs can and often do represent ownership of an asset, sometimes the asset. That in and of itself gives NFTs tremendous amount of intrinsic value as a tool that represents title of ownership and can facilitate trust-less transfer of title/ownership. I think you are right NFTs in their current use case are most often, but not entirely, used to represent ownership of classes of assets that are meant to be transferred/sold, but intrinsically NFTs still value as a tool that can represent ownership of a give asset. In other words one might say dog-shit has more intrinsic value than a written contract, except that contracts can and often do create enforceable terms (though not always) thus giving contracts intrinsic value, as evidenced by contracts being one of the most successful tools in all of human history as part of the historic record as far back as the written record goes.

JackFr 5y ago
> NFTs are uniquely identifiable, self-executing code, that conveys legal ownership to the holder of the NFT. > NFTs can and often do represent ownership of an asset, sometimes the asset. > That in and of itself gives NFTs tremendous amount of intrinsic value as a tool that represents title of ownership and can facilitate trust-less transfer of title/ownership. That is a lot of word salad. Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority? My understanding is that the answer to that question is "No", invariably presented as "No, but..." Is my understanding wrong?
- volkk 5y ago
  > Does an NFT confer ownership to any real, personal or intellectual property as understood by any currently existing legal authority? I can use my imagination and predict a future where some form of the tech can be. But on a different note, traditional art doesn't need to be understood by any existing legal authority and people collect art. Although a lot of high value art is also used for money laundering. I just don't see a huge difference between the two in the creative category and at least NFTs have some interesting tech to them.