4 ms·

There is value, in that a generation of moderately wealthy idiots got convinced that monkey pictures are worth something. Like a cult brainwashing, they have

There is value, in that a generation of moderately wealthy idiots got convinced that monkey pictures are worth something. Like a cult brainwashing, they have attached their identities to those worthless pictures and now are trapped in greedy stupidity.

michaelt 4y ago
Weren't all those ape NFTs brought with monopoly money anyway? I mean, buying a $1M ape NFT with real money makes no sense - but if you were Sam Bankman-Fried and you had an unlimited supply of coins you knew to be worthless, you're just swapping something worthless for something maybe-worthless, which is much easier to explain.
- deltree7 4y ago
  No, when you bought an NFT for X Coins, at the same time you could have bought Y dollars. So, the NFT did really cost Y dollars and if it's trading at Z, you have lost Y-Z dollars
andirk 4y ago
NFTs are collectors items. It's as stupid as collecting anything, including fine art, photography, baseball cards, rocks. I'll admit it seems more strange because it's uninteresting, but claiming collecting is idiotic is pretty short-sighted. No, I don't collect that crap :)
- Yizahi 4y ago
  There is one "small" problem - NFTs are NOT in any way related to the items/files someone is collecting. And collecting NFTs is about as interesting as "collecting" numbers from the random number generator.
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    NFTs are probably the most interesting and legitimate use of these kinds of computer systems. For example, I could see a lot of value in specialized Yu-Gi-Oh projection card tables installed at game stores that only worked with officially issued NFT virtual cards. Players could rent out their virtual cards to other players and turn their purchases into assets. There are already companies in the MTGO space that rent out virtual cards but the whole trading system is (poorly) managed by Wizards of the Coast and lacks programmability. I think the biggest problem with crypto is that it was way overhyped for anything outside of having fun online. It's like meme stocks. It's fun to waste $50 playing some silly online game! It's not fun to waste $50k gambling on something that you think will change the global financial systems. I also think there's plenty of room for fungible tokens that represent ownership over digital content, eg, buying 4% of the rights to the future profits from the monetization of a digital video, as opposed to the patronage system of platforms like Twitch or Patreon. If we truly are reliving the existing financial system shouldn't we expect to reinvent a marketplace for intellectual property?
    - Yizahi 4y ago
      I have to repeat myself - your "YuGiOh virtual cards" are in no way related to the NFTs. Sure you can require buyer of a card to also buy NFT, you can even pretend that was a single transaction. But really NFT has zero function in this example, it provides zero value, and if you remove it from the system altogether - NOTHING will change. It's like saying that clapping with your hands at the gas station is somehow equivalent to the purchasing fuel. Sure, BP for example, can demand all fuel buyers to clap their hands once and claim that hand clap = fuel. But really it's just a dumb addition to the real transaction which does nothing. NFTs are such hand clap when buying digital (or real) objects. The only difference is that they are served with metric ton of technical and pseudo-technical jargon, to the point when even some people in IT are starting to have doubts. But then you think about NFTs again and the mist of bullshit dissipates leaving only bare facts.
      - williamcotton 4y ago
        If the projection system in the game store requires NFTs that were issued by the creators of Yu-Gi-Oh then you would need these virtual cards to participate, just like how you need virtual Magic cards in MTGO in order to participate, the difference being that in the former it would be some open standard where people could trade, sell, and lend as they see fit.
- dorkwood 4y ago
  I think the difference is that no one was trying to convince a generation of artists that baseball cards were the future of digital art, and that they should inject their own money into the baseball card market to "support the community".

michaelt 4y ago

Weren't all those ape NFTs brought with monopoly money anyway? I mean, buying a $1M ape NFT with real money makes no sense - but if you were Sam Bankman-Fried and you had an unlimited supply of coins you knew to be worthless, you're just swapping something worthless for something maybe-worthless, which is much easier to explain.

deltree7 4y ago
No, when you bought an NFT for X Coins, at the same time you could have bought Y dollars. So, the NFT did really cost Y dollars and if it's trading at Z, you have lost Y-Z dollars

andirk 4y ago

NFTs are collectors items. It's as stupid as collecting anything, including fine art, photography, baseball cards, rocks. I'll admit it seems more strange because it's uninteresting, but claiming collecting is idiotic is pretty short-sighted. No, I don't collect that crap :)

Yizahi 4y ago
There is one "small" problem - NFTs are NOT in any way related to the items/files someone is collecting. And collecting NFTs is about as interesting as "collecting" numbers from the random number generator.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  NFTs are probably the most interesting and legitimate use of these kinds of computer systems. For example, I could see a lot of value in specialized Yu-Gi-Oh projection card tables installed at game stores that only worked with officially issued NFT virtual cards. Players could rent out their virtual cards to other players and turn their purchases into assets. There are already companies in the MTGO space that rent out virtual cards but the whole trading system is (poorly) managed by Wizards of the Coast and lacks programmability. I think the biggest problem with crypto is that it was way overhyped for anything outside of having fun online. It's like meme stocks. It's fun to waste $50 playing some silly online game! It's not fun to waste $50k gambling on something that you think will change the global financial systems. I also think there's plenty of room for fungible tokens that represent ownership over digital content, eg, buying 4% of the rights to the future profits from the monetization of a digital video, as opposed to the patronage system of platforms like Twitch or Patreon. If we truly are reliving the existing financial system shouldn't we expect to reinvent a marketplace for intellectual property?
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    I have to repeat myself - your "YuGiOh virtual cards" are in no way related to the NFTs. Sure you can require buyer of a card to also buy NFT, you can even pretend that was a single transaction. But really NFT has zero function in this example, it provides zero value, and if you remove it from the system altogether - NOTHING will change. It's like saying that clapping with your hands at the gas station is somehow equivalent to the purchasing fuel. Sure, BP for example, can demand all fuel buyers to clap their hands once and claim that hand clap = fuel. But really it's just a dumb addition to the real transaction which does nothing. NFTs are such hand clap when buying digital (or real) objects. The only difference is that they are served with metric ton of technical and pseudo-technical jargon, to the point when even some people in IT are starting to have doubts. But then you think about NFTs again and the mist of bullshit dissipates leaving only bare facts.
    - williamcotton 4y ago
      If the projection system in the game store requires NFTs that were issued by the creators of Yu-Gi-Oh then you would need these virtual cards to participate, just like how you need virtual Magic cards in MTGO in order to participate, the difference being that in the former it would be some open standard where people could trade, sell, and lend as they see fit.
dorkwood 4y ago
I think the difference is that no one was trying to convince a generation of artists that baseball cards were the future of digital art, and that they should inject their own money into the baseball card market to "support the community".