What, exactly is a NFT?

Author
Discussion

cb31

1,135 posts

135 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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thegreenhell said:
Got to be a mistake, surely? I find it hard to believe that someone would pay $200 for a computer-generated picture of an ape. Seems overpriced to me.
Yeah but it has a pizza slice, a motorcycle helmet, and a bone necklace. Easily worth 200k.

I think I am getting too old for this life.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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This has to be a tax dodge or a way of laundering dodgy money. Nobody buys an image of a monkey eating pizza for $200K and then sells it for $200?

rdjohn

6,135 posts

194 months

Thursday 16th June 2022
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/15/bill-gates-says-cr...

Bill Gates calls it right - GREATER FOOL THEORY

robsa

2,254 posts

183 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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cb31 said:
thegreenhell said:
Got to be a mistake, surely? I find it hard to believe that someone would pay $200 for a computer-generated picture of an ape. Seems overpriced to me.
Yeah but it has a pizza slice, a motorcycle helmet, and a bone necklace. Easily worth 200k.

I think I am getting too old for this life.
But you totally get why someone would pay $300m for Kooning's Interchange? Or something by Rothko?

Much art looks utterly ridiculous and yet sells for vast sums. I wonder why...?

FourWheelDrift

88,382 posts

283 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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robsa said:
But you totally get why someone would pay $300m for Kooning's Interchange? Or something by Rothko?

Much art looks utterly ridiculous and yet sells for vast sums. I wonder why...?
Kooning didn't produce 1000s of similar paintings with very slight differences using a computer and no talent.

I don't agree with the price (there are idiots with money everywhere) but it's still a completely different thing.

bloomen

6,857 posts

158 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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robsa said:
Much art looks utterly ridiculous and yet sells for vast sums. I wonder why...?
Cos there's a wee bit of skill involved most of the time?

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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robsa said:
cb31 said:
thegreenhell said:
Got to be a mistake, surely? I find it hard to believe that someone would pay $200 for a computer-generated picture of an ape. Seems overpriced to me.
Yeah but it has a pizza slice, a motorcycle helmet, and a bone necklace. Easily worth 200k.

I think I am getting too old for this life.
But you totally get why someone would pay $300m for Kooning's Interchange? Or something by Rothko?

Much art looks utterly ridiculous and yet sells for vast sums. I wonder why...?
Art is usually infused with some level of talent, i.e. you're buying something that you can't easily create yourself or the majority of people.

BAYCs and its ilk are procedurally generated, and often lifted straight off of places like DeviantArt or websites that sell them in batches. They are as low effort as you can imagine, which actually tracks with the extreme grifting that surrounds them.

Fine art sales are basically public money laundering.

robsa

2,254 posts

183 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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FourWheelDrift said:
robsa said:
But you totally get why someone would pay $300m for Kooning's Interchange? Or something by Rothko?

Much art looks utterly ridiculous and yet sells for vast sums. I wonder why...?
Kooning didn't produce 1000s of similar paintings with very slight differences using a computer and no talent.

I don't agree with the price (there are idiots with money everywhere) but it's still a completely different thing.
No, but there are thousands of copies of it still which are all the same, as for 'no talent' well we could probably argue about that bit! The original is still worth a huge sum though, and the copies almost nothing. NFT's are the same. The bit chain aspect authenticates it as the 'original copy'. I don't disagree its weird, but it is inevitable that people are going to move more into cyberspace, and when there they will want to show off commodities like they do in the real world (for instance, see 'skins' in games - some are worth huge sums of money). This is a way of showing that your copy is the original. Also, not all valuable art is pleasing to the eye - it can have value for other reasons - and in NFT it's often very early stuff that is worth a lot. This may seem stupid now, but in the future if you have one of the very first pieces of NFT art, you can see why it may become valuable; like owning one of the first ever bound books or something. The subject may be irrelevant, its the fact it's a very early book that gives it value.

FourWheelDrift

88,382 posts

283 months

Friday 1st July 2022
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"Facebook Metaverse In Disarray & NFT Sales Are "Falling Off A Cliff" According To Reports

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbFU4L9VgA

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Friday 1st July 2022
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This feels like performative allyship squared:

https://mint.maketafi.com/coca-cola-collection

FourWheelDrift

88,382 posts

283 months

Saturday 2nd July 2022
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NFTs small fry when it comes to scams.

$4bn fraud with One Coin crypto scam - https://www.breezyscroll.com/world/u-s-adds-crypto...

"OneCoin is one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history”

FourWheelDrift

88,382 posts

283 months

Tuesday 2nd August 2022
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This blockchain technology is so secure.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/nomad-token-bridge-...

FourWheelDrift

88,382 posts

283 months

Monday 24th April 2023
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NFTs drop to record lows. Huge losses reported - https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/04/20/nft-marke...

Meta winding down NFTs on Facebook and Instagram - https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/meta-winds-down-...

Metaverse collapsing - https://qz.com/meta-microsoft-disney-are-reversing...

Oh dear, what a shame, how sad.

bloomen

6,857 posts

158 months

Monday 24th April 2023
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They are Too Big To Fail.

Mark my words.

rdjohn

6,135 posts

194 months

Saturday 23rd September 2023
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bloomen said:
They are Too Big To Fail.

Mark my words.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/22/nfts-worthless-price

….and so it came to pass, The King is in the all-together.

thegreenhell

15,115 posts

218 months

Saturday 23rd September 2023
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What, a cartoon of a monkey in a baseball cap is worthless? How can this possibly be?

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Saturday 23rd September 2023
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NFTs are a pretty perfect distillation of "what if capitalism, but too much?". Despite all the promises in whitepapers, etc no actual utility came of them except "members only" passes - an already solved use case.

Bored Apes actually look ste in pure objective terms, so it's even more surreal that there was a period of time that people genuinely thought they had artistic merit (not that art is some pure thing).

RichTT

3,047 posts

170 months

Sunday 24th September 2023
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The entire NFT market is down 95% in value, with most of that being at zero value, zero liquidity and zero trade volume.

lol

anonymous-user

53 months

Sunday 24th September 2023
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The whole thing was a cleverly orchestrated scam in market manipulation. The "value" of these NFTs was massively driven up by a small group of people selling them to each other for millions of dollars.

Then create loads of hype about how an NFT sold for millions and suddenly a lot of people want some free Internet money.

Add in a few celebrities being paid to say they bought a picture of an ape eating pizza with laser beams for eyes to add to the hype.

Then you get FOMO suckers buying any old crap without thinking about what they are actually buying because they don't want to miss out on the free money.

NFTs then go back to their true value of zero, the people who sold them and convinced everyone they were worth millions with a few trades between themselves to drive up the price laugh and count their money.

Everyone just thinks "because crypto", a new scam is born and a new line of crypto suckers line up to hand over their money.

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Sunday 24th September 2023
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Joey Deacon said:
The whole thing was a cleverly orchestrated scam in market manipulation. The "value" of these NFTs was massively driven up by a small group of people selling them to each other for millions of dollars.

Then create loads of hype about how an NFT sold for millions and suddenly a lot of people want some free Internet money.

Add in a few celebrities being paid to say they bought a picture of an ape eating pizza with laser beams for eyes to add to the hype.

Then you get FOMO suckers buying any old crap without thinking about what they are actually buying because they don't want to miss out on the free money.

NFTs then go back to their true value of zero, the people who sold them and convinced everyone they were worth millions with a few trades between themselves to drive up the price laugh and count their money.

Everyone just thinks "because crypto", a new scam is born and a new line of crypto suckers line up to hand over their money.
I was having a semi-argument with someone on Twitter when they were saying since the value has evaporated from them that now is the time the teams behind them will starting building utility....

I mean dude, the only reason utility was even touted in the first place was because it was perfect VC bait during an insane period of free money and FOMO. There has been zero utility developed out of NFTs in the 3+ years they have been the zeitgeist, why would that suddenly happen now the money has dried up? All NFTs have managed to achieve in 3+ years of "innovation" is "members only" club passes, which is an already solved problem.

The most surprising thing for me about it is not so much that - like art - they are an effective mechanism for money laundering, but that the "art" itself is so terrible. Bored Apes - the market leader - look like complete st, in objective "this is art" terms.