[HN Gopher] Metakovan, the mystery Beeple art buyer, and his NFT...
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Metakovan, the mystery Beeple art buyer, and his NFT/DeFi scheme
Author : davidgerard
Score : 158 points
Date : 2021-03-14 09:51 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (amycastor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (amycastor.com)
| cammikebrown wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody has brought up the absurd energy
| requirements of NFT. Yeah, it's been beaten to death here, but a
| single transaction can be equivalent to one person's household
| energy consumption for several months. And yes, I'm aware
| Ethereum is working away from that, but it's taking a long time
| and it's not there yet. In the meantime, I find it highly
| immoral.
|
| Just mind-boggling wastefulness. It doesn't make me feel hopeful
| about the future of the planet.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Yeah, NFTs are utter BS, but not much more than people who
| collect actual original art pieces when you could simply hang a
| replica of the original for a millionth of the price.
|
| People are weird is all.
| exdsq wrote:
| Having spent around 18 months of my life working on a top 5
| blockchain, it's pretty disheartening to see so many comments on
| HN suggesting I'm some sort of MLM Ponzi Scammer when I'm
| actually just a guy who's interested in various CS subjects and
| few industries involve them all the same way blockchains do...
| wmf wrote:
| The world's trying to tell you that being an honest person in a
| dishonest field isn't a good idea. I hope you're at least
| getting rich.
| ashkankiani wrote:
| What was some of the interesting technical CS challenges you
| had to face in doing so?
|
| I have no interest in blockchain or adjacent tech because I
| don't see any technical challenges worth solving, so I'd be
| interested in learning if I was mistaken to come to that
| conclusion.
| str33t_punk wrote:
| Game theory? Distributed systems? Cryptography?
|
| The technical challenges in crypto are much more interesting
| than that of a FANG company's (i.e enterprise software and
| widgets)
| vmception wrote:
| MetaKovan/Sundaresan I think transfers of the B20 token should
| somehow also result in royalties to all the artists in the B20
| porfolio.
|
| Without some form of transfer tax, this breaks the royalties
| advantage of NFTs because the NFTs aren't being transferred yet.
|
| I think you will accrue a lot of value and attractiveness if
| artists and token holders are aiming to be appealing to you and
| the other competing funds that pop up, if you had a way to make
| the residual go to the assets in your fund.
|
| You can easily add a transfer tax to the transfer() and
| transferFrom() methods of the erc20 token, which gets pooled and
| distributed prorata to all the NFT's royalty addresses. You can
| even keep that as an array in the erc20 token.
|
| Email me
| kotaKat wrote:
| Change my view, NFTs should require full AML KYC for the artists
| and buyers/bidders.
| sp332 wrote:
| That's not really possible to enforce. The smart contract is
| loaded into the Ethereum network. Anyone on the network (who is
| rich enough in network terms) can place a bid, and the winning
| bid will be automatically selected by the contract code.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| Seems like a great way to start a flame war.
|
| Anyway: If you've worked with the crypto space much, you know
| there's a strong undercurrent of some libertarian-esq thinking.
| Crypto currencies represent decentralized trust, of some kind.
| I mean, Bitcoin was created in large part _because_ Satoshi
| didn't trust the central authorities in charge of the money
| supply. In some areas you'll hear the phrase "governance
| without government" (I.e. fiat). What gives this place any
| spirit is the drive to overcome problems of distributed trust.
| Take that away by forcing KYC and now you've lost any
| ideological motivation to push the space forward. It just
| becomes a digitization of existing societal structures. Let it
| grow naturally and yeah, you'll see plenty of scams, but you
| leave the door open for real innovations (like zero knowledge
| proofs) that could be worth massively more than any mistakes
| along the way.
| wmf wrote:
| Sure, if you do the same for real art.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| For HN there sure are a lot of people completely ignorant of the
| technical details commenting below.
| echelon wrote:
| I can't believe people are getting excited over collectable
| barcodes.
|
| Of course this is a scam.
|
| I can create NFTs for Beeple's art too.
|
| I can create NFTs for Jack Dorsey's first tweet. I'll sell you a
| hundred of them if you want.
|
| This is exactly like buying a spot on million dollar homepage,
| except anyone can make a million dollar homepage and nobody will
| honor your purchase because they don't have incentive to care.
| rblatz wrote:
| It's like those star registries, but with less of a story less
| polish and 100% more scam.
| kgwgk wrote:
| It's amazing that the million dollar webpage is still up.
| Unlike most of the links there, I guess.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Alex is a man of his word
| dcl wrote:
| I really don't understand this. What mechanism is there to
| ensure an NFT was created by the 'right person/people'?
| (whatever this means).
|
| I could make an NFT for Mickey Mouse, and it _should_ be
| worthless, but if Disney created one then maybe it could be
| worth something?
| Kiro wrote:
| Nothing. It's a social contract.
| powerapple wrote:
| I guess an NFT will be signed with owner's digital signature,
| it can be verified with owner's public key. It is the same
| way as people can verify an encrypted email is from you with
| your public key.
|
| It feels strange reading all these on the news now. Either
| future is coming fast at us, or people are crazy. I wish I
| had bought bitcoin though
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Imagine some game company creates an online basketball game
| and owning a LeBron NFT grants you the right to play with a
| unique LeBron skin. If you aren't using the official NFT, the
| game won't recognize your skin and no one will see you
| playing as that version of LeBron.
|
| That same token might grant you access to use that skin as a
| statue in Decentraland and everyone will be able to see who
| issued it (based on digital signature). Other people can make
| their own LeBron statues, but just like having a knock off of
| a statue in real life, having the real thing is more
| impressive.
|
| These NFTs can also encode more information such as how many
| of this same item exist, which other items are in the set,
| etc... and these virtual worlds can understand that info and
| you can prove that you own the entire LeBron set and only 10
| sets exist.
|
| With NFTs being so new, people haven't seen the eventual way
| they're supposed to be used across ecosystems and their only
| experience with them so far is that they are useless.
| iamben wrote:
| Genuine question - why do you need an NFT/the blockchain
| for the "in game" stuff? Why not just manage that "in
| game"?
|
| And then I guess - outside of "in game" what incentive
| would companies ever have to work with/create compatibility
| with any NFT stuff as opposed to just creating something
| similar themselves and owning it whole? Like if I was
| Apple, would I make it compatible with Facebook and Google,
| or just wall in another marketplace?
| tantalor wrote:
| Blockchain provides a mechanism to trade the token in a
| standardized way with existing marketplace tools, and
| without central authority/consent.
| iamben wrote:
| Right, but as a game manufacturer, wouldn't I _want_ to
| be a central authority?
| iamwil wrote:
| Yes, but only if I think I can capture most of the
| market. You see this behavior with Apple App store and
| Facebooks Quest store. Because they own the hardware,
| they have substantial power to be the central authority
| and extract the 30% rent.
|
| But for smaller game studios, you may not be able to do
| it, due to lack of resources, or lack of a moat, or
| you're not #1 in the space. Then you'd rather go into a
| collective marketplace. NFTs allow you to have
| marketplaces with items that are usable in any game that
| recognizes it.
|
| This has already happened once. For example, in Gods
| Unchained (a CCG), you can import a Cryptokitty that you
| own, to decorate your playing board.
|
| https://www.cryptokitties.co/gods-unchained
| https://blog.godsunchained.com/2019/02/11/cryptokitties-
| x-go...
|
| It's kinda like cross promotion between games, in the
| same way mobile games did cross-promotional ads.
|
| You also see this kind of behavior with Openstreetmaps.
| Google is #1, so they don't care. All the #2 and #3
| players are working together on openstreetmaps to collect
| their market power to beat #1.
|
| What lots of people on HN don't see is that NFTs are
| public interfaces for interchangable immutable items with
| a history that any application can choose to honor for
| interoperabililty. I think you can use it for more than
| just art.
| candybar wrote:
| Gods Unchanied and CryptoKitties decided to mutually
| acknowledge each other's NFTs so that they can each sell
| more NFTs, since they are both NFT sellers first and game
| developers second. There's no incentives for any game
| publisher to unilaterally accept NFTs created by other
| game publishers. And this collaboration only works on a
| 1:1 basis - there's no good way to generically support
| all NFTs that come from a collective marketplace in a
| useful way and no incentives to do so without having your
| own NFTs acknowledged by others.
| tantalor wrote:
| Yeah. But this way you don't need to build/operate the
| marketplace.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Operating the marketplace _is the point_.
| rblatz wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to do all the work and let other
| people get rich off of it.
| iamben wrote:
| But surely you'd still need to build something to work
| _with_ the NFT marketplace(s)? At which point, why not
| just own the whole thing?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > Other people can make their own LeBron statues, but just
| like having a knock off of a statue in real life, having
| the real thing is more impressive.
|
| This is the thing though. How do you authenticate the
| creator of the NFT to ensure that the "legit" token is
| actually legit.
|
| To give you a concrete example, right now an organisation
| calling themselves "GlobalArtMuseum" is selling NFT's of
| artworks held in museums. This is not being done in
| collaboration with any museum, the artwork is counterfeit.
|
| How do you set the "authentic" NFT in the first place
| without rigorous compliance controls?
| ahepp wrote:
| So there's a central registry somewhere that validates
| "this is lebron's real nft"?
| candybar wrote:
| Who makes money from the original NFT? Why would the game
| company not want to capture the revenue with their own
| NFTs? And why would Decentraland then honor the NFT some
| other game company issued, instead of issuing their own?
| Any entity who's providing utility associated with the NFT
| is going to want to sell their own NFTs - why would they do
| all the work only to have some third party capture the
| value?
| detaro wrote:
| The mechanism that the "right people" communicate which
| minting wallets are the "legit" ones. I.e. even in the less-
| crazy levels (i.e. not thousands of dollars), you'll see
| artists announce their wallet key on Twitter/Instagram/their
| website, and it's on the buyer to check that what they buy
| has the right source. (If people think that your bootleg
| mickey mouse NFT has value and pay for it, well that's their
| decision, they just might not find anyone who agrees later)
| capableweb wrote:
| Seems you answered your own question. Yeah, anyone can create
| Mickey Mouse NFT but unless Disney officially releases it
| themselves, people will not be (as) interested in buying.
| tantalor wrote:
| How do you suggest verifying the token is "official"? Call
| up Disney?
| capableweb wrote:
| Takes like 5 seconds to check Disneys Twitter feed or
| blog. If they haven't said anything, they haven't
| released anything.
|
| How do you verify that Apple has released a new phone?
| You don't, you hear from Apple that they released a new
| phone. Why would it be different with NFTs?
| hanniabu wrote:
| It's coming from an address that Disney owns.
| tantalor wrote:
| Same question for that address
| superbaconman wrote:
| Address is linked to a wallet. Wallets can sign messages
| to prove ownership of addresses.
| tantalor wrote:
| Same question for that wallet
| hanniabu wrote:
| I'm pretty sure someone like Disney will have their
| wallet public on their website. They'd also likely own an
| ENS domain and sit all their addresses behind that, for
| example waltdisneyco.eth or something along those lines.
| lm28469 wrote:
| People don't buy the art, they buy the story that comes with
| it. Take two chairs, one was used by Abraham Lincoln, the other
| is an exact copy down to the atom, the first one would sell for
| hundreds of million, the second wouldn't sell at all
| brazzy wrote:
| Reality check: _two_ chairs used by Abraham Lincoln sold in
| 2014 for a mere $26,121.
|
| Source: https://www.antiquetrader.com/collectibles/lincolns-
| rocking-...
| [deleted]
| ericlewis wrote:
| Incorrect. I buy art, the story is nice - but I mostly just
| like the way something looks & the fact it was handmade by
| someone with a deep level of care. I'm not sure I'd call
| appreciating craftsmanship a "story".
| christiansakai wrote:
| You guys are thinking too hard.
|
| It is a scam.
| epinephrinios wrote:
| This is how Ethereum is competing with Bitcoins in terms of
| "store of value".
| drcode wrote:
| One of the many ways
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Nothing to see here
|
| > What's interesting is that Beeple, the creator of the artwork,
| is actually a business partner of MetaKovan's. He owns 2% of all
| the B20 tokens. I'm sure there is no conflict of interest here
| newsclues wrote:
| Art + money laundering + crypto = nft
| habitue wrote:
| Art + money laundering = regular fine art world[1]
|
| So really this is just adding crypto to the mix, because
| "everything's a little bit better when you sprinkle crypto on
| it"
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-
| laundering...
| rmrfrmrf wrote:
| So it's "everything's better with bacon" for the 2020s?
| Gross!
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Hopefully no one comes out with nft lube...
| vmception wrote:
| Sounds more art guild-like than impropriety.
|
| But of course, without any governance or rights.
|
| B20 tokens launched on January 23rd. Beeple has been on
| Clubhouse and other NFT spaces for months. It is common in the
| crypto space (and everywhere) to give an influencer an
| "advisor" share of the project.
|
| Their pie-chart says 11% of the tokens are to collaborators. So
| really its 13% but Beeple is the influencer that is worth
| having his own separate piece of the pie, for advertising.
|
| "You know its legit because Beeple is involved", and its
| working because now I know to bet on winners!
|
| This token is up 2,000% in a month and a half, and I didn't
| know about it before and have been searching for the right way
| to get exposure to the NFT space, and these are the winners!
| They got Christie's involved and the whole world!
|
| I'm absolutely going to try to partner with them as I have more
| clout in the crypto space.
|
| The real discussion is on whether there could be a more
| community oriented token distribution schedule, or a similar
| project without the massive team/advisor share. So there is a
| market to compete in this regard.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It's a bit much to say someone who owns some B20 tokens is a
| "business partner" of MetaKovan's. Are all the token holders
| "business partners"? Obviously not.
|
| It's enough to point out that MetaKovan has a financial
| interest in increasing the value of Beeple's art. That alone
| lessens the impact of this auction, and I'm a NFT booster.
|
| Using auctions to increase the value of your holdings is one of
| the questionable things that happen in the high end art world.
| Check out the Mugrabi family Warhol collection sometime.
| tlb wrote:
| Every art buyer has a financial interest in increasing the
| value of the art they've bought.
|
| One reason that Christies can charge substantial fees is that
| it serves as a guarantee that the transaction is somewhat
| real. If an artwork changed hands privately between friends
| for $1M, there'd be no reason to believe that price. But when
| they're paying a 15%+ fee to an auction house, there must be
| something valuable.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Private sales affect market values all the time.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Of all the hilariously stupid things coming out of the scammy
| world of crypto, NFTs take the biscuit. I've been hearing A16Z
| and other VC podcast breathlessly talk about the brave new world
| they enable. Now you can have digital assets in games, people can
| buy them with real money! Finally, because that's of course not
| possible without The Blockchain (tm).
|
| And people can use them to prove ownership of physical things,
| TRUSTLESSLY. Because it's so much safer to have decentralised
| system of digital bearer shares, than a central registry run by
| the government or a bank, right?
|
| Oh but it's for third world countries where the state is not to
| be trusted. Of course that also means you can't trust them to
| enforce your digital bearer shares either, but that shouldn't be
| a big problem. We'll just get all the farmers and villagers to
| agree on using one particular blockchain bases system to keep
| track of who owns what land. What could be simpler.
|
| And if you thought that was stupid, enter NFTs for digital art.
| Yes let's use advanced technology to create digital tokens that
| can't be copied, and use them to track the ownership of digital
| art that can be copied indefinitely. Brilliant.
| dcl wrote:
| I've got some dumb questions about this whole NFT thing...
|
| Is the artwork actually stored in the token or does it contain a
| URL that isn't guaranteed to always exist? I'm guessing there is
| no mechanism to change the link if the host should go down or
| stop hosting the content.
|
| Are NFT's used to recognise a transfer of ownership of the
| intelectual property?
| Kiro wrote:
| It's one URL in the token pointing to a JSON file with the
| metadata. In the JSON file there's another URL to the image
| itself. So you need to go through two different centralized
| servers to access the image. The only permanent thing is the
| first URL to the JSON file but nothing prevents the hosts from
| changing the content.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Last I checked it's typically hosted on ipfs
| Kiro wrote:
| Hm, I had a look at the 5000 days token and it's indeed an
| IPFS URI:
| ipfs://ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx3VC5zUz
|
| (enter 40913 at https://etherscan.io/token/0x2a46f2ffd99e19
| a89476e2f62270e0a... in tokenURI)
|
| With that said, I went through some random NFTs the other
| day and I saw a lot of tokenURIs pointing to a plain
| metadata.json on a regular server that I could access in my
| browser.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| IP is generally not transferred with an NFT. There's some NFT
| markets that offer that as an option, but I'm not sure how it
| would hold up legally. It should be noted that IP is not
| generally transferred with any physical art purchase.
|
| Very few current NFTs exist on-chain. A handful do, and there's
| the interesting case of generative art where the code that
| makes the art lives on-chain.
|
| There's a push to get things on Arweave, a solution that
| purports to be a perpetual storage solution. In the long run, I
| think all art NFTs will have to go in that direction to remain
| credible.
| ahepp wrote:
| >Very few current NFTs exist on-chain.
|
| Are you saying the underlying asset isn't stored in the
| blockchain? Or that the "title" isn't stored in the
| blockchain?
|
| How is the title associated with the asset? Presumably the
| title is something like a sha256 hash associated with a
| wallet. How do you know that hash means "beeple artwork"?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| As far as I can tell, most of the NFTs that have broken
| into popular consciousness are entirely non-public and
| nobody can verify or inspect them at all. I spent like an
| hour yesterday trying to figure out which blockchain,
| specifically, the $69M Beeple NFT is on; nobody seems to
| know, and nobody really seems to be asking.
| vmception wrote:
| It is currently safe to assume Ethereum with the file
| stored on IPFS.
|
| Christie's interface didn't just lead with the
| transaction hashes, but your conclusion is pretty far
| off, for now.
|
| Try emailing them next time.
|
| I'm understanding of the frustration, it took me a year
| of asking similar questions about Venezuala's Petro coin,
| which was even subject to pre-emptive US sanctions,
| before it became official that the Petro didn't exist and
| was never issued. Nobody could tell me the contract
| address and people acted like I grew two-heads for even
| asking, when it should have taken two seconds.
|
| The technology allows for really basic things to be
| transparent, and when you don't lead with that stuff and
| nobody asks about that stuff, it does become pretty
| obvious that they aren't even using the technology.
| tim333 wrote:
| The Petro coin was a weird one though much about
| Venezuela's economy is weird these days.
| Kiro wrote:
| On https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-
| first-5000-days/be... you will see the token ID (40913)
| and the smart contract
| (0x2a46f2ffd99e19a89476e2f62270e0a35bbf0756).
|
| Enter 40913 in tokenURI at https://etherscan.io/token/0x2
| a46f2ffd99e19a89476e2f62270e0a...
|
| You will see an IPFS URI which contains the
| metafile.json: https://cloudflare-
| ipfs.com/ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVeda...
|
| This in turn contains a URL to the image: https://ipfsgat
| eway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmZ15eQX8FPjfrtdX3Q...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Thanks. That does seem to be it.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > Are you saying the underlying asset isn't stored in the
| blockchain? Or that the "title" isn't stored in the
| blockchain?
|
| What even is the "asset" in a lot of cases?
|
| People are buying Tweets, which are generated in real time
| by querying a database and generating some HTML and CSS. Or
| some UI code on native platforms. Or some JSON via an API.
| What is the asset? The Twitter code that generates the
| Tweet? A JPEG of the Tweet itself? The text of the Tweet?
|
| If it's an image of the Tweet, does take into account
| whether or not my user agent is in light or dark mode?
|
| The rabbit hole is never-ending with such questions.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I think a hash of the file itself is stored on chain. So
| you could prove that your title matches the "artwork", but
| still need to store the artwork yourself or rely on the
| seller/platform to keep hosting it
| machawinka wrote:
| It is bullshit all the way down to such details.
| dgellow wrote:
| In general you serve the actual assets via IPFS or hyper, or
| another immutable, decentralized network, and reference its
| address.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Almost always a URL.
| dcl wrote:
| I see. So what would you even really own once that URL goes
| down.
|
| The whole thing relies on a weird level of trust and belief
| in what other people believe to be valuable.
| smitty1e wrote:
| My limited understanding is the blockchain data are
| distributed enough to get past the "that URL" issue. You'd
| need to destroy "that unknown collection of URLs" to
| eradicate the NFT.
|
| The problem as I see it is that NFTs lack any potential
| energy. Their value is purely kinetic, and expressed in the
| transaction. If no one wants my NFT, it's so much binary
| noise.
| Applejinx wrote:
| In this way it's like the stock market to the Nth power.
|
| As money accumulates in larger and larger sums, and is
| abstracted farther and farther from tangible real-world
| power and resources, you get this. Things get increasingly
| weird.
|
| There's got to be some kind of equilibrium point between
| this stuff, and your basic anti-fiat-currency gold bug, but
| I'm not sure what it is, particularly since modern
| macroeconomics acknowledges the capacity to just print
| money and make it up pretty quickly in the increased
| economic activity that makes possible: austerity isn't
| really a functional solution. This crypto stuff really
| works by the same principle: if you get enough people into
| it, they CAN'T crash because the important people are too
| deeply enmeshed in the system and will cheat to any degree
| to preserve the value of their properties.
|
| I think it depends what is done with it. With
| macroeconomics, you can have entire countries spurred to
| activity and producing goods and services because they can
| transact with resources. With this crypto stuff, I very
| much wonder if it ends up being a small number of very
| privileged people demanding rights to increasingly silly
| abstractions that are said to be the value of entire
| cities, or countries.
|
| I'm not sure that's sustainable, politically. I'd ask, how
| convenient is it for the first crypto trillionaires to buy
| real-world mercenaries? Things could get very dark, albeit
| in a peculiarly cyberpunk sort of way that might appeal to
| some.
| lottin wrote:
| It's not at all like the stock market. Shareholders are
| own the underlying business. NFT holders don't own the
| underlying piece of art. They only own the NFT. It's like
| buying a "share" that is just a blank piece of paper, and
| paying millions for it!
| isoskeles wrote:
| I interpreted the comment to mean something more like the
| derivatives market. In the derivatives market, you start
| getting "weird" stuff like futures contracts,
| collateralized debt obligations, or credit default swaps.
| Last two examples are, admittedly, a biased reference to
| 2008 since those are sort of the poster-boys of that
| market crash. Futures contracts aren't really that weird,
| but certainly more weird than just owning stock in a
| company.
|
| So people might be trading (as in 2008) to "own" some
| N-th power representation of private debt that ends up
| going to zero because the underlying private debt itself
| was not sustainable. It's different from NFT, but for
| each degree of distance the financial instrument moves
| away from the real world, it looks increasingly weird,
| e.g. _I own a share of insurance on a fraction of a
| bucket of debt people took out to buy their homes_. (And
| I still think this is better than NFT unless the NFT has
| some underlying real-world thing tied to it.)
| Anon1096 wrote:
| Derivatives markets always have some claim to an
| underlying financial good. If you buy futures, you can
| redeem it later for the good the futures guarantees. NFTs
| have zero relation to the underlying asset they are being
| connected to. All you're buying is a pointer to a piece
| of art.
| davidgerard wrote:
| The same thing you "owned" before: the token.
|
| An NFT is just a pointer. Unless you have a contract
| specifically transferring additional rights, you literally
| just bought the pointer.
| capableweb wrote:
| Wrong. Most NFTs contain a content-address (hash) that is
| pointing to data on IPFS. The buyer can pin and make sure the
| data stays alive for everyone. Kind of like torrents but for
| web.
| [deleted]
| zepto wrote:
| > _Most_ NFTs contain a content-address (hash) that is
| pointing to data on IPFS.
|
| Is there a stat somewhere showing that IPFS is the most
| common kind of URL in NFTs?
| spurdoman77 wrote:
| Though, there isnt guarantee that someone will keep hosting
| these? Similarly as with torrents the seeders might go
| away.
|
| Maybe marginally better than URL but not very much IMO.
| nerdponx wrote:
| If the buyer takes down their pin, and nobody else has it
| pinned, then that's their prerogative. The NFT is still
| there on the ledger, unless the whole blockchain goes
| down too.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Maybe marginally better than URL but not very much IMO.
|
| Vastly better than a URL. Content-addresses points to
| content that can be served from anywhere. URLs point to
| actual locations. Anyone can seed the content behind the
| IPFS hash, including the owner of the NFT.
|
| While with a URL, you cannot change it. If the owner
| wants to make it work after it disappeared, they would
| have to buy the domain name, make the hosting work again
| and then setup a server there, add the file so it can be
| served.
|
| While with a IPFS hash, the owner could just turn on
| their IPFS node and everything works as before.
|
| Big difference.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Can't it be a URL with an IPFS address in it? Or should
| it be s/URL/URI? Does it matter?
| lottin wrote:
| But this has nothing to do with the NFT.
| capableweb wrote:
| But it does matter and has to do with the NFT. If you put
| a URL, whose content can change over time, the NFT that
| effectively be changed. At least what it's pointing to.
|
| If you're using a content-address hash, you can be sure
| that you can always get back the same result from that
| hash as when you got the NFT N years ago.
| lottin wrote:
| Yes, I can see that, but seems completely unrelated to
| the NFT. The NFT and the content it points to are
| independent from one another.
| ectopod wrote:
| A URL has another huge disadvantage: a URL is the address
| of a thing, not the thing it is pointing to in itself.
| The thing it is pointing to can change. If you paid $70
| million for a URL pointing to a Beeple artwork, you might
| be upset if the owner of the URL changed the content to a
| Rick Astley video.
| davidgerard wrote:
| * An NFT is just a pointer - could contain a URL, or just a
| number used by its smart contract.
|
| * The artwork is just pointed to, it's not on the blockchain.
|
| * The URL may or may not exist for any given length of time
| either. (Even some NFTs that tried to point to IPFS, actually
| pointed to an IPFS redirector.)
|
| * No other rights - copyright, moral rights, reuse rights, etc
| - are conveyed without an explicit contractual transfer. Even
| the Christie's deal says, once you dig through the 33-page
| sales agreement, that you are just buying the token itself, and
| not the image pointed to.
|
| Also, you have zero guarantee that the artist had anything to
| do with that particular NFT - and there's a _lot_ of NFT
| grifters "minting" other people's art.
| qixxiq wrote:
| A minor clarification about IPFS here:
|
| The metadata in the NFT can (and in my opinion _should_)
| point to an ipfs:// style URL. The websites displaying the
| NFT would have to use some redirector, _but_ the actual token
| would have a URL that anyone could host (known as "pinning")
| on the IPFS network.
| gigatexal wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that all this hype and these huge
| dollar figures of these NFTs and art being at the center that
| none of this is being fueled my money laundering. Jack's first
| tweet? What value is there in that? The Beeple "art", same
| question. All of this seems like a scam.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's pretty baffling. You don't even _own_ Jack 's first tweet.
| You can't delete it or control it in any fashion. You have no
| IP rights to it. You own a unique link to it... it's like
| paying for a bit.ly link.
| skyzadev wrote:
| NFTs are HIGHLY inflated right now - paying $2mil for a tweet
| is NOT real demand. It's marketing by people with a stake in
| the industry. Justin Sun who bid $2mil for Jack Dorsey's tweet
| runs a blockchain network called Tron. I think NFTs will
| stabilize at some point but it isn't going to go away that's
| for sure.
| rblatz wrote:
| So from the outside looking in this looks very silly, not
| highly inflated. In fact on the surface it looks clearly like
| a scam with a lot of hand waving and philosophical nonsense
| tacked on to confuse people.
|
| Anyone can mint an NFT that points to whatever, and the
| benefits you get are purely imaginary or at best speculative
| that a greater fool may exist and buy it from you for a
| higher price.
|
| The art world while also somewhat suspect at least has
| physical possession/ownership.
| la_fayette wrote:
| It boils down to the same question why somebody would pay
| millions for a picture with a couple of squares on it (see e.g.
| piet mondrian)? I guess one aspect is, that rich people can
| show off for their rich friends what shit they can afford...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You don't _own_ the artwork, though.
|
| You own the equivalent of a museum's _accession number_.
| jonas21 wrote:
| For me, the weirdest part is that you apparently place a
| $70,000,000 bid at Christie's the same way you'd place a $70 bid
| for a used phone on eBay.
|
| https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1370227566125096961
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Also weird that at around 1:55 in this video the user seems to
| be trying to place a bid for 70 million and can't for some
| reason. Is this a bug in their auction UI costing someone 10
| million dollars?
|
| https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1370227566125096961
| Grustaf wrote:
| Was he using RobinHood?
| trhway wrote:
| For people placing $70M bids those money are probably less
| important than $70 for somebody who buys a used phone.
|
| Wrt. the people trying to question what value NFT has - well
| what value a piece of a paper with a black square has? I'd
| guess close to $0 or less - a ruined piece of paper. Until of
| course it is said to be done by Kandinsky. The value of the
| most of the art is in that information, not in the material
| artifact. NFT is just a distillation of that idea.
|
| Reminds a recent Russian meme - a photo of Kandinsky with a
| bubble "Everybody can paint the same. Not everybody can sell
| the same way."
| gomoon wrote:
| great article!
| amycastor wrote:
| Thank you!
| stevesimmons wrote:
| So the actual cost net of related party transactions was not $60m
| + $9m auction fees, but just the $9m in fees.
|
| And who knows whether Christie's keeps all that, or part/most
| finds it way back to Beeple/MetaKovan/Sundaresan in other ways.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| Oh, at least good to read that MetaKovan/Sundaresan is a YC
| alumni...
| vmception wrote:
| MetaKovan/Sundaresan email me, my email is listed in my
| profile, I have other NFT projects for you and your fund, and
| also some recommendations for the B20 token.
| patentatt wrote:
| > What's interesting is that Beeple, the creator of the artwork,
| is actually a business partner of MetaKovan's. He owns 2% of all
| the B20 tokens. I'm sure there is no conflict of interest here.
|
| And they're basically selling it off to 'investors.' So it was
| really just an elaborate marketing ploy for some shady crypto
| currency? I'm surprised an institution like Christie's was
| willing to lend their reputation to such an endeavor. Or were
| they conned too? Or did they actually net that $9m 'fee' which is
| enough to buy Christie's reputation?
| vmception wrote:
| Private equity funds participate in art auctions all the time,
| crypto in this case just makes it easier to make something
| analogous to an ETF.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| To get an idea of what's selling for $70 million, take a look
| at:
|
| >
| _https://mobile.twitter.com/beeple/status/1347406074685566977_
|
| There's too much money being pumped. Crypto is a symptom not a
| solution.
| paulpauper wrote:
| This sounds like a great way to facilitate money laundering . I
| put up a smileyface NFT for $10 million and then someone, that
| person being myself, 'buys' it for $10 millions, funds change
| wallets, with receipt of payment on blockchain.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| That sounds like a good way to layer, but that in and of itself
| doesn't launder the money
| daenz wrote:
| I feel like I'm saying "the emperor has no clothes", but doesn't
| anyone else think this NFT art thing is bullshit? Everything
| about it screams "scam": they're asking you to spend your real,
| hard-earned money on some digital "asset", pumped by celebrity
| influencers and hype entrepreneurs. Everyone is drawn to the big
| multi-million dollar figures of these high profile artists,
| figures that you will never see for your "assets", and do nothing
| but serve as a siren's call to everyone around. These high
| profile sales are marketing, nothing more. They are serving their
| purpose to kick start the mainstream adoption of this scam,
| because everyone thinks they can make a quick buck buying some
| digital signature.
|
| What's more is the pseudo-intellectual justifications for it all.
| As soon as you bring up value, proponents put on their philosophy
| hat and ponder "what is value? money is just paper, maaaaan, we
| just believe it has value." Or we hear that owning a digital
| "asset" is actually the same thing as a physical "asset" because
| they're both unique things that can't be copied. It's all smoke
| and mirrors, and you know that when you have to hide behind vague
| philosophical assertions about "well nothing _really_ has any
| value ", then you have no actual argument supporting the value of
| the thing you're defending. It's a new illusion, pumped by hype,
| and they're trying to justify its existence by pointing to other
| illusions.
|
| Thanks but count me out.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| Not everyone.
|
| Personally I'm buying only stuff that resonates with me. I do
| not plan to flip it for a quick profit. In fact, my.taste is
| sometimes so eccentric that I doubt anyone else will want to
| buy them from me. However, I must say that owning a NFT to an
| artwork, gives you a stronger connection to it, even if it is
| digital. The artist also appreciate that you support their
| work.
|
| That's the way you should go about this too. If you see
| anything promoted by celebrities, run, run away. Also avoid
| corporations caching in on it like the NBA. Only buy from
| Artists directly, and if you must, then trade only peer-to-
| peer.
| sneak wrote:
| Buying an NFT from anyone other than the original artist does
| not support the artist in any way.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Huh?
|
| Buying art with an NFT is just a way to give artists and/or art
| auctioneers money for their art. That's it.
|
| Oh and it can be used for other things like event ticketing,
| software license keys, etc.
|
| An NFT is just a way to record (in an immutable distributed
| ledger) that a specific, uniquely-identifiable token was
| transferred from A to B.
|
| People have always paid stupid amounts of money for art, and in
| the last 100 years increasingly art that doesn't require years
| of training/practice and advanced craftsmanship. Why is this
| any different?
|
| It sounds like you just don't want to be involved in the art
| market, which nobody in their right mind wants to be involved
| in anyway.
|
| Complaining about NFTs is like complaining about "blockchain"
| or "the internet" or whatever.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > Why is this any different?
|
| Because if you buy a painting, you can hang it on your wall.
| djitz wrote:
| Buy an NFT and make it your desktop and mobile backgrounds.
| You're welcome.
| andreilys wrote:
| You don't need to buy an NFT to make it your desktop or
| mobile background.
| everly wrote:
| Right and you can also buy a cheap print of an expensive,
| famous piece and hang it on your wall. In fact, people do
| it all the time! Doesn't diminish the value of the
| original.
| finexplained wrote:
| Except that in this case the bits are literally
| identical.
| jackvezkovic wrote:
| So, if we in the future are able to clone a Mona Lisa
| perfectly, will it be as worth as the original? Does it
| decrease the value of the original?
| Grustaf wrote:
| Even if that were possible, it wouldn't BE the original.
| Digital bits, unlike physical matter, has no identity, so
| the concept of "original" makes no sense.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| No, because the original was made hundreds of years ago
| by a now globally recognised artist. A jpg is just a jpg.
| mint2 wrote:
| Perfectly as in the exact paint compounds, the effect of
| that order of brush strokes and timing, and then aging.
| Such that no art expert or chemical/forensic analysis can
| tell them apart other than the label saying which is
| which?
|
| That doesn't not sound at all feasible. But if it were,
| then sure the prices would have to be close for the
| original and new one. It sounds impossible to do, and
| extremely easy expensive to make a copy like that of a
| real painting. It's stupidly easy and simple to do with a
| digital work.
| miracle2k wrote:
| Any number of artworks are being sold which allow for
| reproducibility, say photographs. Expensive limited
| edition prints are a thing. In most of those cases the
| particular physical manifestation you acquire is entirely
| a construct. Even for an original painting, the fact that
| you desire that particular manifestation (over say an
| improved one which the original artist may now be able to
| do) is a construct. If a painting needs restoration, you
| may find that some elements are no longer original; this
| will not diminish its value. If over the years we replace
| all the parts of the Mona Lisa, it will still be the Mona
| Lisa (see also: the Ship of Theseus).
| tantalor wrote:
| It diminishes you, it's tacky.
| rodonn wrote:
| You can do this without buying the NFT also.
| palebluedot wrote:
| Here is one thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around,
| and how I think it is fundamentally different from something
| like a painting:
|
| The thing that is "non-fungible" is the token, not the actual
| art. The underlying digital asset is actually fungible with
| copies of it. With a painting, there are prints and
| reproductions of the Mona Lisa, but they are all
| fundamentally different in some way - the exact brush stroke
| texture, etc.
|
| NFTs have this feeling of valuing the receipt, not the art.
| As if I walked into a gift shop at The Louvre and bought a
| Mona Lisa slick poster print, but then valued the gift store
| receipt more than the more-or-less completely replaceable
| poster.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's like buying a piece of land. You don't physically take
| the land home, you just acquire new and specific rights
| depending on your legal jurisdiction. Are you buying the
| property, or just the deed to the property?
| pitaj wrote:
| Land can't be copied. Land is rivalrous. Digital art is
| not, in any meaningful way.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Try telling that to the MPAA.
| Grustaf wrote:
| No it's more like the opposite of buying land. Land is
| non-fungible, "digital art" is exceedingly fungible. A
| land deed is perhaps not fungible, but it is
| reproducible, unlike an NFT.
|
| I heard the bozos on the A16Z podcast (I think it was)
| compare NFTs to land deeds, but they very seldom know
| what they're talking about.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Acquiring the land makes you the legal owner of it,
| backed by the law of the country and its military. Owning
| the nft has no legal consequence at the moment. Who will
| enforce any right on your behalf?
| miracle2k wrote:
| Which rights? Legal rights that the artist wants to sell
| alongside the token can be legally enforced. Beyond that,
| the ownership of the token is enforced by the blockchain,
| and that ownership token _is the thing people value_.
| lottin wrote:
| From what I gather a blockchain doesn't enforce anything.
| It simply states who owns what. Anybody can create a
| blockchain and own the world's entire supply of gold
| according to that blockchain. But can they enforce that
| ownership? No, they can't.
| joosters wrote:
| It doesn't even do that. You can easily have one unique
| NFT claiming it represents ownership of the Mona Lisa,
| and another, unique and distinct NFT, also claiming
| ownership of the Mona Lisa. Besides ownership being
| unenforced, uniqueness is also unenforced.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Legal rights that the artist wants to sell alongside
| the token can be legally enforced._
|
| For the first sale. I'm not sure current contract law
| permits any legal rights to follow the token in
| subsequent sales.
| benreesman wrote:
| If you have the deed to a piece of land that's (usually,
| in stable-ish jurisdictions) backed by the police and
| ultimately, military, of the government. You can stand on
| it, build on it, possible mine it, and the cops will stop
| anyone from interfering.
| weare138 wrote:
| > _Buying art with an NFT is just a way to give artists and
| /or art auctioneers money for their art. That's it._
|
| But we could already do that. It's a solution to a problem no
| one had. A NFT would only be useful for proving ownership if
| it will hold up in court, which I doubt it would without
| accompanying proof of purchase.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Does most of the money actually go to artists?
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| From the original sale almost all of it goes to the person
| who minted it, minus a small fee (around 5%) for the
| platform. That _should_ be the artist, but of course there
| are people minting art that isn 't theirs. There's efforts
| to catch and remove that, but a lot slips through.
|
| From secondary market sales, the artist can get a royalty
| if they choose and the secondary transaction is on the same
| platform. Typically around 10%. The same platform
| requirement is an issue and hopefully a future NFT standard
| smart contract will build in a royalty option/.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| How do you remove tokens minted by people other than the
| artist? Who removes it, and what stops that person or
| those people from removing legitimate tokens?
| cmrdsprklpny wrote:
| If the artist is themself selling the art as an NFT, I
| believe so.
| rodonn wrote:
| Yes, but there is a big problem of people other than the
| artist creating NFTs for other peoples art. There is
| nothing in the NFT process that guarantees the money is
| going to the "right" person.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Because without NFTs there would be no way to give money to
| the original artist, right.
| ahepp wrote:
| How is the token associated with the work?
| Kiro wrote:
| The token (according to the ERC-721 standard) contains a
| URL to a hosted JSON which contains a URL to the hosted
| image. So to access the actual image you need to go through
| two different servers.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Serious question: What happens in 20 years if the domain
| registration for that URL is not renewed, or the website
| hosting that JSON is gone?
| parhamn wrote:
| I don't part take. But I think you're a bit too quick to
| dismiss the "social" part of economics, remember it's a social
| science after all. Once you include that, your rational
| valuation frameworks start to erode as it becomes subjective
| (even worse, collectively subjective). Then the rest of the
| conversation is shouting over each other. Both sides are right,
| it is insane, but it's insane because it wants to be insane.
| History will look at it positively if it crosses some
| threshold/tipping point of social acceptance. And negatively if
| it doesn't. That's all there is to it really.
|
| The lines between economies and schemes are blurry and hero's
| and villains are only declared once the dust settles. We're not
| there yet.
| chedine wrote:
| Well said, this is exactly what it is
| egypturnash wrote:
| IMHO, it's just the same game as with the gallery art scheme,
| except on top of cryptocurrencies.
|
| As a broke artist, if I can get some rich assholes to start
| convincing each other that my art has ludicrous amounts of
| money, then I will happily let them pay me for it, and let the
| gallery owner who was instrumental in convincing them of this
| value have a healthy cut. If the gallery owner wants to arrange
| a money-laundering kickback to the rich assholes that's their
| own business, personally I feel like I'd rather avoid it but
| who knows how I'll feel when I'm being offered a price with
| enough zeros at the end of its number?
| numbsafari wrote:
| Cheesy police procedural plot line...
|
| Create a bunch of art, put the ownership into a decentralized
| autonomous organization with 51% held by the artist and the
| other 49% held by a bunch of random, anonymous "owners".
|
| Start the hype train with a loud, crazy scandal that results
| in the "death" of the artist.
|
| The artist's estate leaves their stake to the gallery owner
| who starts to sell off the stake at stupid prices following
| the death of the artist.
|
| Secretly, you've faked your death and also were in control of
| the "anonymous" ownership stake. You can launder the
| increased value of that part of the stake and recombine it
| through a bunch of shells and mixers.
|
| Who knows, maybe this was "Satoshi"'s plan all along. That
| "unclaimed" stake was just there to increase the mystery and
| the hype, meanwhile "he" actually had control of a bunch of
| other coin that "he" was able to launder at a later date.
| tim333 wrote:
| I imagine Satoshi, if not dumb, which I doubt he was, had
| other bitcoins apart from the publicly held ones.
| vmception wrote:
| Funny, but the actual plot of this timeline is to support
| living artists, and we've collectively leveraged that
| sentiment to create entirely new infrastructure to support
| that. This is the beginning of it.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Honestly I think Patreon does just as well to support
| living artists, without all the bullshit that comes from
| the "convince some absurdly rich asshole that your worth
| is worth absurd amounts of money" game, and also without
| the extra layers of bullshit that comes from involving
| cryptocurrency in it. I'd rather convince a few hundred
| people that my stuff's worth a buck or three per month.
| Feels a lot more sustainable, and less likely to end up
| with someone deciding to kill you to bump up the value of
| their investment in your originals.
|
| I mean if you've got a bunch of money burning a hole in
| your pocket, I'll gladly take it off your hands. My
| Patreon's over at https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash.
| vmception wrote:
| It's the same game and sentiment, and there are plenty of
| people that don't like the trend of patreon, onlyfans,
| github sponors to make a buck.
|
| The NFT space is building in royalties via transfer
| taxes. Which means you the artist would earn a lot more
| from volume than from the initial sale, and this is
| potentially even better than the subscription SaaS model,
| and for people that want to support you they may be even
| incentivized to keep you alive to make sure the royalty
| goes to you instead of possibly burned.
|
| I don't really see using stablecoins such as USDC or DAI
| as "extra layers of bullshit that comes from involving
| cryptocurrency". In the US with the latest OCC
| regulations, these are the same as using settlement
| networks like FedWire or SWIFT. Your self-limiting
| philosophy requires conflating all aspects of
| cryptocurrency as the same, and the good news is that you
| will find a lot of camaraderie in doing that, for now.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I think there are few things.
|
| 1. There are some people who struck it megarich with crypto and
| now have so much "f-u money" that they are willing to spend it
| on conspicuous consumption. It is the same sort of thing that
| comes from "look at how much money I lit on fire" posts being
| given social credit in places like WSB.
|
| 2. There are other people who already had a gazillion dollars
| and are also interested in conspicuous consumption.
|
| 3. NFTs are trendy and trends in the crypto space attract
| people seeking to make money on a trend. A bunch of people are
| surely buying these things hoping to leave somebody else
| holding the bag.
|
| 4. It is crypto, so some degree of fraud and crime is involved.
| spinny wrote:
| > 4. It is crypto, so some degree of fraud and crime is
| involved.
|
| some degree of fraud and crime exists in regards to anything
| of value. Money laundering existed before cryptos. Most banks
| caught laundering money, did it at a massive scale in
| comparison to the value of the Bitcoin network. Fraud and
| crime are directly connected with value
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure. Fraud and crime have been part of art sales for
| centuries. I'm not saying that crypto is unique here. Only
| that it is a force that cannot be discounted when analyzing
| an ecosystem.
| ahepp wrote:
| If my bank has insider fraud, I usually don't lose my
| deposits
| ric2b wrote:
| But sometimes you do. See: Cyprus in 2008
| ahepp wrote:
| Yeah, in shady tax haven jurisdictions. It's the wild
| west factor.
| fakename11 wrote:
| Exactly, also there was this bank that went bankrupt in
| the 1800s and everyone lost their money too!!!!! You
| can't trust the system!
| ptero wrote:
| That is, sadly, not how it works in many countries -- if
| the money is gone, it's gone.
| dgellow wrote:
| It's bullshit (in the sense "absurd and meaningless") but I
| wouldn't call it a scam.
|
| Something I wrote yesterday[0] that I think is relevant here:
|
| > I'm not sure I understand the hate for NFTs. Don't get me
| wrong, the concept of NFT as currently used is completely
| absurd and definitely overhyped. But what is bad about it?
| People who spend their money on NFTs mostly do it because they
| got rich in the past few years gambling on BTC or ETH, and now
| use that money to basically tip the artists they like. Or they
| plan to resell the token at some point, which is pure
| speculation, but nobody other than themselves risk to get burn.
| Minting and selling NFTs is almost zero work and effort for
| artists, all the risks are on the buyers side, and only if they
| buy them as speculative assets.
|
| > It still make no sense to me, but if rich people want to
| gamble their money and by doing so support some artists, that
| doesn't sound too bad IMHO.
|
| > I would be more cautious if retail investors would start to
| gamble in this market, but that's not what I've seen so far.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26448481
| 542458 wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've seen a large number of retail-ish early
| adopters jumping into NFTs on Twitter.
|
| And I can't help but wonder if it is a true scam - you could
| do some massive early transactions to pump of perceived
| values and create get-rich-quick hype (optimally, these
| should mostly be left-hand-to-right-hand transactions), then
| go ahead and make money as an NFT marketplace. Or by selling
| other works from the artists that you just pumped to the moon
| (which you had purchased before the pump operation).
| egfx wrote:
| What are some examples of nft early adopters on Twitter? As
| far as accounts and specific tweets.
| Grustaf wrote:
| That's exactly how the traditional art world works, so why
| not... NTFs just makes it more efficient!
| ericlewis wrote:
| The fact it's been in the news way more on top of the Bitcoin
| stuff has had the retail investors around me ask a lot about
| these NFTs and Bitcoin and if they should sink thousands of
| dollars into them.
|
| This stuff is in the news to sell the crap to the people who
| don't really know what they are doing.
| dgellow wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds horrible. Thanks for sharing, I wasn't
| aware of this
| mdoms wrote:
| Did you read the article? It's plainly a scam. There's no
| sensible way to look at this without concluding "scam".
| dorkwood wrote:
| If someone truly understands that the money is coming from
| crypto speculators, and that the way to make money is to
| essentially become an NFT influencer, then it's hard to fault
| them for extracting money from millionaires. But most artists
| in the space are convinced that the money is coming from
| real-life art collectors. I've seen multiple people quit
| their jobs to sell NFTs full-time. They say this is the
| future of making money as an artist -- that the true value of
| their art is finally being appreciated. It's hard not to
| dislike such a misinformation campaign.
| lottin wrote:
| Unbelievable! How can people be so gullible?
| Hoasi wrote:
| > this is the future of making money as an artist
|
| The artists who create the future cannot short-sell
| themselves, can they?
| lupire wrote:
| Not just quitting jobs, but the artists are paying huge
| fees the marketplaces and getting nothing for it.
| bodhi_mind wrote:
| Minting and selling can actually cost the price of a meal at
| a restaurant depending on ethereum fuel prices. The nft
| marketplaces are making a killing even if your art doesn't
| sell. In that sense, there is potential harm to artists who
| get caught up in this.
| DennisP wrote:
| That will change as NFT marketplaces migrate to rollups.
| dgellow wrote:
| That's right, though that's quite limited. And you can use
| other blockchains than Ethereum, Tezos (a proof of stake
| blockchain with smart contracts) has NFTs platforms too and
| doesn't have the high gas fee issue.
| timnetworks wrote:
| Imagine if instead of a piece of art, it were your orange juice
| pint that came with a token. You could check it to see where
| that batch of oranges came from, if there are any FDA recalls
| on it, or whether your religious certification was reversed due
| to a hilarious but tragic cheese danish accident.
|
| Other people can also see this information, but it isn't as
| useful to them.
| atleta wrote:
| I talked to a guy a few weeks ago. He needed help with his art
| related NFT project. Basically he was looking for a CTO because
| he had no idea whether his developers were doing a good job
| (and, I'd also add, what he built wasn't necessarily what he
| needed to build).
|
| I have a pretty good understanding of block chain technologies
| but didn't hear about NFTs before, so like you, I started to
| challenge his ideas. Partly to understand what he was building.
| Because at first I tried to find real and practical
| applications for the platform that somehow connect to physical
| things, works of art.
|
| But what he said was pretty interesting. The guy had a
| background in art management and, I think, trade. He said that
| art collection has always been about being able to say that you
| have _the original_ piece. And that it 's not rational anyway,
| not even for physical works of art, like paintings. It's not
| that you like the actual picture on the actual canvas so much
| that you want to buy it for say $1M and if you just had a copy
| you'd notice the difference and that wouldn't give you as much
| pleasure. It's simply about having _the original_. And also
| _collecting_ related _originals_.
|
| Now it's easy to trace it back to real, actual scarcity, where
| indeed there weren't many e.g. paintings (or books, etc.) and
| there was a big difference between the paintings of different
| artists (both in style and quality) and you had no way of
| looking at these other than having the originals probably.
|
| I guess the big question here is whether this phenomenon is
| strong enough on its own to transfer to purely digital assets
| or whether this is really rooted and tied to that original
| scarcity that we kept changing the story around. (I.e. while
| it's not about being able to enjoy and look at the piece
| anymore, now it's tied to the knowledge that that specific
| piece of canvas was painted on by that specific very talented
| guy X hundred years ago, and he was standing in front, etc.)
|
| One hint might be those 'limited edition' sport cards that some
| people seem to collect, as well as 'limited edition' e.g. CD or
| vinyl albums from the past millenium. (I never understood
| those, but I had a friend who did get a very obvious joy out of
| being able to buy those. For me, these were always just
| delivery mediums and I only cared about the music.)
|
| Honestly, I have no idea, but that call was definitely
| interesting.
| miracle2k wrote:
| Bravo. Also consider for example Sol LeWitts Wall Drawings,
| which can be sold as a set of drawing instructions, and need
| not exist in physical form:
|
| https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lewitt-wall-
| drawing-113...
|
| In that sense, this is ownership over something intangible
| very much like NFTs.
| clairity wrote:
| it's the same kind of financial intermediation to extract
| wealth without providing value that underlies ponzi schemes and
| the derivatives that got us the 2008 crisis. it's a lot of
| wealth accumulation for its own sake detached from its real
| basis as a claim on (someone else's) productivity.
|
| in short, it's bullshit, but for the tech crowd rather than
| wall streeters.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| A few fairly disconnected thoughts:
|
| 1) It could be a scam of sorts, but one that the parties are in
| on. For example tax fraud or an attempt evade capital controls.
|
| 2) Leave aside digital anything, art has gotten really weird
| lately. The self destructing Banksy thing, the banana duct tape
| thing---I could see being knowingly, publicly scammed as some
| kind of bizarre performance art. I guess the super rich are
| really bored.
|
| 3) The most reasonable spin on it I could think of is what if
| there was a limited edition print where the print itself wasn't
| limited edition. There were as many prints as anyone wanted to
| buy for the cost of production, but the artist sold a small
| number of certificates of authenticity. It still seems kind of
| pointless and scammy to me but it's at least closer to
| understandable.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Crypto IFF: It's a scam unless there's compelling evidence to
| the contrary.
| Angostura wrote:
| I think of them like paying for a signed, numbered print. On
| that left it seems reasonable. The prices, seem less
| reasonable.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Only you set a whole forest on fire every time you buy a
| print.
| kevinwang wrote:
| Source?
| Hjfrf wrote:
| Forest is a clear exagerration, but this article goes
| over numbers.
|
| A few weeks of ordinary household energy usage per NFT is
| realistic.
|
| https://www.loop-news.com/p/the-big-problem-with-nfts-
| energy
| grey-area wrote:
| And you don't actually get the print, you get a number.
|
| People are buying a number here which has no relation for
| he actual artwork. You own nothing but the number.
| SwimSwimHungry wrote:
| We truly are in the era of more money than sense. I get
| that people want put their money into something other
| than virtually-worthless low-interest savings accounts,
| but where will we all be once the musical chairs stops?
| benreesman wrote:
| I don't think anyone knows, but it's starting to look
| like we might find out soon:
|
| https://g.co/kgs/C5ZSHk
| carver wrote:
| Yeah, digital-only NFTs will likely be a fad. I'll be
| interested again when the trend moves toward deeds. A title for
| a physical work could have staying power. Even potentially an
| iou from an artist for a one of a kind (physical) piece.
| stelonix wrote:
| It's pretty obvious any why I look at it. The resemblances with
| MLM are staggering and the late-stage capitalism arguments for
| NFTs are baffling. It makes me see bitcoins and other
| cryptocurrencies as not so fun anymore and just a big
| capitalist scam.
| [deleted]
| Moodles wrote:
| I'm surprised blockchains are _still_ being hyped even though
| they have practically no useful applications for business. Of
| all buzzwords, blockchain must surely have the worst hype-to-
| usefulness ratio of all-time. Having said that, even though
| paying for a digital signature on a blockchain is absolutely
| ridiculous in my opinion, if people know what they 're buying
| then I don't really care what they choose to waste their money
| on.
| dqpb wrote:
| Most people on HN are (rightly so) calling bullshit on the
| technology. I think it's worth noting though that there does
| seem to be a legit market for it, so it's probably worth
| considering what it would take to make the technology not
| bullshit.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I guess the challenge is separating the bullshit from the
| technology. Right now they're joined at the hip.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| I'm going to disagree with you. Pseudo-intellectual gives the
| "justifications" far too much credit.
|
| What I also find hilarious, folks who love this NFT "can't be
| copied" are great are the same people who hate DRM. While I'm
| not a fan of intrusive DRM, I'm going to side with paying what
| folks deserve for putting time into coding/art/planning for a
| game/movie/whatever. I get something from their effort, they
| deserve something in return.
|
| That and I'd rather buy a $20 poster of art from my real life
| wall than over glorified digital wallpaper.
| Animats wrote:
| Henry Ford got this. He was once pitched by some art dealers,
| who gave him a big book of prints of artworks they had for
| sale. He then asked, now that I have this book, why would I
| want the original?
| vmception wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| People are using NFTs as stores of value. Despite spending, the
| owners are not illiquid and are much more liquid than fine art
| collectors, as borrowing at decently high Loan to Value ratios
| against the NFT can happen in the subsequent block.
|
| Given your existing predilection, knowing that probably also
| just moves the goal post for why you think there is something
| wrong with it "omg, now there's _leverage_!? ". But its just an
| efficiency on the existing art world which has all the same
| stuff just much slower due to poor data and information, and
| nothing to do with the pseudo-intellection abstraction of
| value.
|
| In a single protocol (standardized class with a set of
| standardized functions), art provenance has been disrupted, art
| appraisal has been disrupted, art insurance has been disrupted,
| art lending has been disrupted, and art royalties have been
| disrupted.
|
| You will just be seeing more participants in the collectors
| market because of it, and a market that moves faster and can
| attract more capital globally, instantly, during a period of
| massive currency creation.
|
| Its not anybody's problem that new galleries/marketplaces have
| fees for the artists. Its not anybody's problem that there will
| still be a ton of starving artists that will never get bids on
| these platforms. Its not anybody's problem that a buyer ends up
| with an asset that might not be valued the same or higher or
| ever get a bid again. Its not anybody's problem that a lender
| winds up with an illiquid asset. Buy art you like and from
| creators you like to support, maybe some times you won't get
| outbid.
| swayvil wrote:
| I think that you underestimate the power of bullshit.
|
| We can create reality out of nothing but talk now. If enough
| people assert a story as real then it is indeed real. Social
| media is wonderful for this.
|
| Yes, it's basically 1984 with some extra steps.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| so it's just like most other art then
| Traster wrote:
| So NFTs are valuable because they're unique- but this guy has
| created a fractional ownership screen so an unlimited number of
| people can own 1 NFT. Oh and he's lying about his identity and
| business relationships.
| dgellow wrote:
| > So NFTs are valuable because they're unique-
|
| Just a small correction: they are "valuable" because they are
| unique AND because people want them. Otherwise they have no
| value. Scarcity in itself isn't enough to have value, you still
| have to create hype around the token somehow.
|
| ("valuable" in quotes, because it's really not that clear there
| is any actual value in an NFT that isn't legally binding...)
| ahepp wrote:
| Not clear that it's scarce either, since the guy owns 59% of
| them. Seems like a classic trick to jack up the "market cap"
| ketamine__ wrote:
| This is an industry where a startup launches and a few days
| later has a $400 million market cap.
| achimlittlepage wrote:
| NFTs is the unwritten chapter of Infinite Jest that eventually
| led to DFW committing suicide. Start with something
| decentralized, layer a bunch of centralized entities on top of it
| and, Voila, you have, you have no idea what you have.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I just love to see art being pushed forward.
|
| We had Duchamp with his pissoir in 1920. I remember someone
| exhibiting a goldfish in a blender. And now this ...
|
| They would say that art is what happens between the artwork and
| the observer. But of course it is much broader than that. There
| is also the artist, the story, the room, the broader society and
| ... the market.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| But notice how virtually zero of this discussion is about the
| content of the work. Just its sale mechanism. Even the banana
| on the wall had people discussing its nature as art.
| vmception wrote:
| For me that piece is hard to see.
|
| There have been discussions about it and its value, here on
| HN. Mostly people that were mad that they exchanging a fixed
| amount of time in a small range of price per hour for money
| instead of creating an unlimited number of assets and
| exchanging them at an unlimited range of prices.
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