Art is in the eye of the beholder ultimately. People been saying the same thing about art since the dawn of art, NFT are just newer so not as accepted as abstract paintings just yet, but eventually it seems we'll end up there.
What? Moving film, even CGI film, has been a well studied artistic medium for nearly a century. The mechanisms to analyze and critique this kind of art exist. The novelty here is the mechanism of attributing ownership - not the piece itself.
Nothing to disagree with there-- but in terms of what's actually possible with animation / 3d graphics, this looks like it was done in paint (and I'm questioning why anyone would pay money for that standard of work)
Am I correct that unlike owning a physical piece of artwork, "owning" the registration of a work on the blockchain only proves that no one else "owns" said work -- I suppose what makes this a trade-able financial asset -- but nothing is stopping someone else from seeing the work?
Yes, that would be possible. Authenticate users based on them signing messages with their keys, and you can safely see if they are the owner of a NFT or not.
Trust networks or tools used to keep track of it all are only as effective based on the integrity of the physical accountability and security systems of a nation; if the people in power that you need to care to enforce/protect ownership, then however it's kept track of doesn't matter.
Yeah, I've seen them sold before in "lootboxes" where you can see the artwork that you are gambling to get. The cryptographic proof of ownership is all your paying for.
> "owning" the registration of a work on the blockchain only proves that no one else "owns" said work
It doesn't prove that. It proves no one else owns that particular copy of the work. The author or anyone else can create another NFT in a different collectible contract from another copy of the same work.
Think of it as the certificate you get when someone sells you a star.
> Is this any different than the certificate I got for my tenth birthday that says I own a star?
Very real. The Zircon Confederacy on the fourth planet of my star system immediately submitted to my hegemony on account of my $10 certificate, and now I earn a steady income of 4 billion quadrooons of gold in tribute per annum.
However, due to the difficulty in transport across interstellar space, they've helpfully represented my ownership interest in the tribute using NFTs.
There seems to have been a steady stream of posts hyping NFTs lately.
> In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million.
And I believe in several comments, it's been explained that fake "sales" (really transfers from someone's left hand to right hand) are really easy to implement in order to inflate the "price" of an NFT on the blockchain.
So did someone really part with $6.6 million for this token, and if so did that person actually earn that money, or just win it from the Bitcoin slot machine?
Every time I make the point that the entire "financial" system and all it's associated people are shameless parasites everyone falls over each other to tell me that is a load of nonsense. The same goes for you here.
That whatever people say is happening with NFTs today has been happening elsewhere for a very long time already. NFTs on the blockchain might suffer the same issue, but it'll be easier to track down what actually happened, both in real time and retrospectively.
I feel like it's almost a meme where anytime this topic comes up there's a lot of comments that argue that whatever new thing 'this is just like the existing system'.
I don't think that's the point, and meanwhile everyone else is actually asking more specific questions. But the meme continues on in every discussion.
There's no profound discussion going on in the parent thread, it's all rehashing of the same arguments. People saying "well this is worse" and folks responding with "it's not worse, because it's the same". Fundamentally I just don't see why it's different, and nobody has been able to explain the difference in a way that doesn't sound like a scam artist. Therefore, it must be the same. I don't see why one system must be criticised above and beyond the other when they do the exact same thing.
The terms of many of these auctions give a percentage of the sale to the original creator. I don't know the terms but it's possible Mike Winkelmann got quite a bit from the resale.
> The terms of many of these auctions give a percentage of the sale to the original creator. I don't know the terms but it's possible Mike Winkelmann got quite a bit from the resale.
I guess the suspicion I have is that someone who's heavily invested in NFT marketplaces may have arranged this to hype them.
And that category may even include this artist, Mike Winkelmann. According to the article linked here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26303420, he'd only ever sold his artwork once before listing it for sale on some NFT marketplace in December 2020 and immediately hitting jackpot.
> Mike Winkelmann never used to call himself an artist. But that was before he made $3.5 million in a single weekend from selling his artworks. In December, he auctioned off multiple editions of three digital artworks, each priced at $969, and 21 unique works, most of which sold for about $100,000 each. It was only the second time he had put his art on sale.
The alternative, which is I think is also very possible, is this is just lucky cryptocurrency money hoping luck strikes twice.
> Is it convertible to USD which can easily be used to buy kitchen appliances, and pants and flights? If so who cares.
$6.6 million is going to be treated a lot differently by someone who worked hard to build that fortune, vs. someone who won it (e.g. from a lotto ticket or by buying $1000 of bitcoins on Mt. Gox on a lark for a $1/per).
Sure. I hope they commission a $6 million dollar painting of themself with Napoleon's body and unicorns in the background. It's their money. They can waste it however they want.
And unlike your extremely simplistic worldview, it's very possible they'll do something that will create long term value for them. They don't owe it to you to do that though.
> Sure. I hope they commission a $6 million dollar painting of themself with Napoleon's body and unicorns in the background. It's their money. They can waste it however they want.
You're missing the point: the question is what this $6.6 million transaction for this token mean? Does it mean these NFTs are starting to be taken seriously? Does it mean someone's hyping the tech through a shady transaction? Or does it mean some bozo who won the lotto was willing to blow some money on one?
Winning lotto tickets can also be convertible to USD, which can easily be used to buy kitchen appliances, and pants and flights. Noting that doesn't reveal anything about the differences between how lotto winners spend vs. other people.
How would you know? I feel like it's the principle of charity to assume a transaction is not some kind of shady conspiracy in absence of evidence to the contrary
The point the parent was making was that someone could simply “buy” the NFT from themselves, and nobody would be the wiser. They more or less just transferred $X between their virtual bank accounts, but we can’t tell that apart from an actual sale. It’s not proof that $X actually changed hands.
> Who's the victim here? As far as I know it is legal to sell your self digital assets at any price you'd like.
Lets say I run a lunar land registry like this: https://lunarland.com/. I have a friend of mine buy a worthless deed from me for $10, then "sell" it to himself for $10,000. Now $10,000 is the "market price." I then use that transaction as "evidence" to hype the idea that lunar land deeds are serious things, part a growing market, good investment opportunity, etc. In the ensuing tulip mania, I pocket a pretty penny selling a lot more worthless deeds to lunar land. The victims are the people convinced my misleading hype to invest in them.
Now I'm not claiming something like is actually happening here, but the whole thing is fishy and I think it's a serious possibility to be considered.
The accusation (I don't know if it's true, I know next to nothing about NFTs) is that person A buys and NFT for $10,000. Because NFTs are online, and likely pseudonymous, they proceed to list it for sale, and then bid on it to drive the price up to $50,000. Person A still owns it, but to the rest of the world if looks like person B bought it. They then proceed to relist, pump up the price to $100k, and buy it themselves.
To the rest of the world, it looks like the value of this NFT grew by 2 orders of magnitude in a week. In reality, that person is leveraging the pseudonymous nature to just make it appear that way, in hopes that when they list it for $200k, someone else will actually buy it. They cleared $190k for making a couple of garbage auctions.
Like, they still need to eat the costs: transaction fee, percentage to the artist (if that’s configured on the platform), and any costs to convert/move currency.
As well: I can buy my $200k house from myself for $5m, but I still need to get the $5m. At that level maybe I can game the system (owning 5 properties on that block and selling when the “neighbourhood is valuable”), but this kind of system gaming is as old as money itself.
> So did someone really part with $6.6 million for this token, and if so did that person actually earn that money, or just win it from the Bitcoin slot machine?
The solution to that problem is amazingly simple: IRS. Whoever made that money, fake or not, gets to pay taxes on $6.6M USD.
Nope. Even if the "seller" pays taxes on that 6.6M we still won't know if he just paid himself that money. If you have 6.6M of dirty money, this seems like a nice way of washing it clean.
>>So did someone really part with $6.6 million for this token, and if so did that person actually earn that money, or just win it from the Bitcoin slot machine?
When you dismiss the concept of cryptocurrency, and another party sings its praises, and argues it will attain massive market value, and the latter ends up profiting from their judgment, they earned their gains. Now when you claim they won the slot machine, you're trying to diminish their accomplishment, and delegitimize their moral right to their success.
I'm not familiar with the example you gave, but what if it's just an old school tax write-off? "Buy" something for crazy value, whilw knowing the buyer, then later get that money back and claim (some strange tax law) it on tax?
Edit: Ahh I missed you part about other comments, I guess I was pretty close
"Mike Winkelmann never used to call himself an artist. But that was before he made $3.5 million in a single weekend from selling his artworks. In December, he auctioned off multiple editions of three digital artworks, each priced at $969, and 21 unique works, most of which sold for about $100,000 each. It was only the second time he had put his art on sale."
I think I finally get it. You know how with some modern art the main value of some artworks is just the fact that people get very mad about it because something they don't like/get is being displayed in a museum and treated as art? It's the same with NFTs. Yeah, sure, if you dig deep down to the essentials it doesn't really make sense, but there's still nothing you can do to stop others from trading these for large sums of money. Teehee! If you are mad or confused, you've lost the game.
In 1636 A single Tulip bulb was exchanged with
Two lasts of wheat 448ƒ
Four lasts of rye 558ƒ
Four fat oxen 480ƒ
Eight fat swine 240ƒ
Twelve fat sheep 120ƒ
Two hogsheads of wine 70ƒ
Four tuns of beer 32ƒ
Two tuns of butter 192ƒ
1,000 lbs. of cheese 120ƒ
A complete bed 100ƒ
A suit of clothes 80ƒ
A silver drinking cup 60ƒ
Can someone play devils advocate and explain why NFTs might be the next big thing? From what I can tell it’s really the only way to prove ownership of a digital good and have the ability to sell it (outside of the legal system).
Kind of seems like dogecoin or other meme/shitcoins? You own a digital asset that you think will go up in value. Coins are currency while NFTs are more like.. rights to a song?
I'm guessing the same reason owning the rights to song lyrics can be very valuable, despite the fact that the lyrics are easy to copy and paste. You can say in legal terms "I own that" which gives you monetisation options you might not otherwise have in the regular economy.
It's obviously a bit tenuous because of the digital only nature. A real Banksy that physically exists with proof of originality affords control and exclusivity over it's access. A digital Banksy is provably yours as an NFT, but doesn't actually prevent others from viewing it trivially and perfect copies obfuscate the nature of "original". So you own it, and assumedly have exclusive rights to sell it, but it's also very easy to copy and distribute.
I'd be very interested to see if the recent push to artificially inflate the price of NFT's in order to set a precedence for what people should expect as their innate value works.
> So you own it, and assumedly have exclusive rights to sell it, but it's also very easy to copy and distribute
And this is also questionable. I mean, anyone can make a perfect copy and sell it. They cannot get that sale recorded on some blockchain, but who cares? There are no legal ramifications, because the legal system does not recognize some random blockchain as authoritative regarding ownership, instead most jurisdictions have their own (central) database about registered/copyrighted works.
From what I understand, it depends on the particular NFT. Some (most?) of them do not transfer copyright, so you couldn't reproduce or license the work for profit. Maybe you could loan the token somehow?
Insurance policies. Land deeds. Preferential equity. IP. Domain names. Really, any sort of value that is in nature non-fungible that you may want to represent and transact digitally.
That's absurdly reductionist and my comment is sincere. All the items you listed are able to bought and sold digitally. There is no evidence that the market in these items is being restricted because digital transactions are somehow being suppressed.
Where is the added value from NFTs? From my perspective, the only "value" from an NFT is the concept that a digital item that is indistinguishable from an identical digital item may now be tagged with a token that proves ownership (but only of that one digital item) and which may be bought and sold. This is unnecessary for things like insurance policies, land deeds, equity, intellectual property, and domain names. All of these items have meta-information that allows proof of ownership (land deeds are recorded; IP is registered with the USPTO; equity ownership is registered with brokers and trades are recorded with the SEC; etc.). There are already functioning systems setup to record, register, and transact these items.
I think it should be clear based on the digital asset that was sold (https://odysee.com/WvmIn9XyiNHMn3Tc:2) that nobody cares about the digital asset itself. NFTs may be the next big bubble I would say. An speculative market. Right now I could create a similar video, upload it to a NFT marketplace, and buy it myself for 50.000$. That would set the value of my 'art' high enugh to trick other people to buy more 'art' from me.
I'm wondering why we don't get rid of the digital asset itself and replace it with a 1x1 pixel gif... it would accelerate the bubble since one doesn't have to spend time creating fake 'art'.
Only way I can imagine is if it were integrated with a blockchain-based Content ID system, you could try to force people to pay royalties. Overall, I'm skeptical of NFTs...
TL;DR
- NFTs help prove ownership without needing a central authority (which is a big deal) e.g. have you ever been misled and bought a fake concert ticket? It's also huge for the collectibles market which is plagued with high-levels of fraud (which is a billion dollar industry).
- NFTs can also make fractionalized ownership more accessible.
So using your analogy, as an artist I release a song but I sell fractions of my song as NFTs to my audience and when I receive royalties it automatically gets distributed to all the nft song owners.
There will be meme NFTs of course (the cat that got sold for $600k), it is a speculative asset that people are experimenting with but I think eventually things will reset and the useful NFTs will remain. They can have real utility whether for a virtual or physical world.
> NFTs help prove ownership without needing a central authority (which is a big deal)
The same artwork or membership card or movie ticket can be wrapped in multiple NFT, each living on a different blockchain or on the same blockchain but in different contracts.
Hence you still need the central authority saying which chain is the true one. For example if the NFT represent a plot of virtual land, the game or software managing that land acts as the central authority.
I'm a "cryptoartist" one one of the curated NFT platforms. I've always had creative hobbies, and over the years have taken time off of my career to try and make a living from art (LOL impossible). Now this NFT thing comes along, and I start uploading my creations and collectors are buying them. Not life changing money in anyway, I'm a nobody in this space, but let's say a few $K in the last year.
My take is that most of the bigger collectors are probably wealthy folks that have $xsx,xxx - $x,xxx,xxx budgets in "investing" in this emerging economy of NFTs. They are creating the market by collecting. That's all fine, but the really promising piece of all of this is that it acts as a type of "patreon" for artists, especially digital artists.
Not sure I even touched on answering your question, but I think it's great that people of means suddenly have an easy way to support artists far and wide, instead of say buying from a gallery, or buying from the guy you walk by on the street when you're on vacation.
This new space has allowed folks to feel like artists, and some of the more talented people that got attention early have even been able to remove themselves from poverty.
People spend money to buy things for many reasons. I think that anyone collecting NFT art because they are "investing" is walking a dangerous tightrope, but it's a great way to support artists you like, especially if you believe "digital ownership" is something that will be moving forward in our culture.
And the library of congress has a copyright system for digital books as well.
A big difference is that NFTs do not come with any legal rights, outside of “owning” the NFT itself. You don’t own the underlying asset or the copyright, just the NFT of the asset.
I think the idea is trying to replicate ownership of a physical item. When you own a book or a painting, you don't own the underlying copyright in that item and you don't control reproduction and distribution of the item or the creation of derivative works (i.e., if I buy a paperback copy of Confederacy of Dunces, I can't contract with a movie studio to make a movie based on the book -- I just own a copy of the book and that's it).
But who honestly wants to own a digital copy (without underlying rights) of something that can't be consumed like a movie or book? We're supposed to now pay for an image I can view freely? Where's the benefit in owning the NFT of an asset? Perhaps if a device manufacturer comes out with a device to display ultra-high resolution art images in an attractive frame and you can only obtain a compatible copy of the ultra high-res image if you buy the corresponding NFT, this could be an attractive offering if executed properly but I'm not aware of any devices that create such value for NFTs.
NFTs are somewhat interesting but I strongly suspect there is market manipulation (most likely by players with investments in NFT-adjacent entities) going on with some of these NFT sales.
Nothing quite illustrates the current state of wealth inequality like seeing this news story next to one about the eviction crisis.
$6.6M pays 2021 rent for 500+ struggling people, but for the wealthy, the opportunity cost is that of vaguely owning a 10-second anti-Trump video loop...
This exactly was purchased: your certainty. They are speculating about NFTs: the more they are get to know, the more people will buy NFT with the hope they can sell them later at a higher price.
What I meant is that they are just speculating about NFTs and that what was actually sold is of no importance. They could as well have sold a 1x1 pixel image, nobody really cares about the digital asset itself...
I think to re-phrase, people are speculating that the artist will become well known sometime in the future and the artwork will appreciate.
What I don't understand is how ownership is enforced and if a DMCA is filed, who will work that case? I guess there are some bitcoin lawyers out there for that!
A certificate that says "thanks for donating your money to support the creator". Or in this case, the person who bought the certificate off the creator.
Everyone says this NFT craze is money laundering. Can someone explain how the money laundering scheme works with NFTs? I know people first hand who have bought NFTs and I'm pretty sure they are not money laundering.
The fact that you know people who are legitimately buying that stuff makes it a great money laundering scheme. If only people laundering were buying them, it would be obvious, but the fact that it's picking up steam makes high sales prices seem legitimate.
Say, you have a bunch of money made from selling cocaine and you want to buy a house. It's really hard, because people will want to know how you made the money without a job. So you buy some NFT for about 10k with your clean money. Two months later, you sell the NFT for 500k to an anonymous buyer online, who pays through crypto. The buyer is you, buy nobody knows that, because they're anonymous.
You now have 500k cash, you will need to pay some taxes over your gains, but then the money is clean and when you buy the house you say you got the money through an investment in NFT.
Meanwhile, some random people read about how you made 10k into 500k in two months by trading NFT. So people will start investing in it, making your money laundering less obvious.
This is a bit of a simplification of what could be happening, but it does seem feasible.
That doesn't matter though. You bought an NFT for 10k and re-sold it for 500k (and paid taxes). The IRS isn't going to come after you and now you can buy your house.
Say I have $1m in dirty money. I buy an NFT for $1, then use the dirty money to ‘buy’ the NFT from myself for $1m (through an anonymous cutout, like a crypto bank), and now I have a clean $1m.
Bonus points, as now a lot of people think the NFT that my dirty hand still holds is worth $1m!
When I show up at the bank and want to deposit the $1 million I just got from selling bitcoin, they're going to want to know why someone just transferred $1 million worth of bitcoin to me. NFTs are 'real' enough that my story is plausible, and anonymous enough that investigating it would be very time consuming.
It would be anonymous if you used something like Zcash. Now the current craze is happening over Ethereum so it's pseudo-anonymous at best. And for sure many governments have tools for linking accounts and transactions together by now.
If I sell BTC for $1m, the IRS/InsertGovAgencyHere will want to know where I got the $1m in BTC from. If I can point to an NFT that I 'sold' (after a dramatic rise in value) then I have a plausible source of that income.
That's the purpose of money laundering - to bring ill-gotten gains into the light so they can be used.
it's money laundering in the same way that the art world and car washing businesses are money laundering. meaning, it's mostly not money laundering, but some use it for that.
Among those who "solve problems", how many have the end result of their efforts be rent-seeking schemes, skinner boxes, surveillance tools, superfluous services, shiny toys for adults, Veblen goods, etc.?
Beeple is a cult digital artist who has been making digital art, releasing an asset per day, for 13 years straight. Yes, you read that right. One asset per day for 13 years. Most of his works were free. So, $6.6M is not just an overnight luck. It's the return for what he has been investing in for 13 years.
Yeah there is definitely some shady stuff going on. NFT appeared on my radar a month ago and now its everywhere. IMO this a bubble being artificially inflated by rich marketers. Also in general, people with wealth have given up on investing in real value business. Its high speculation crypto/stocks/shorts now. Not a good sign for the future when some of those risks fall apart.
True. People never cease to underestimate the value of capturing people's attention. Strange considering that attention is the only thing which gives these things any value at all in the first place.
Yes, most NFTs are ERC721 tokens, which is Ethereum's primary NFT standard. The one notable exception is NBA HotShots, which is on the application-specific Flow blockchain.
Without NFTs, I would sign a contract with the artist (or current owner) of a digital artwork that transfers the ownership and all rights to the work to me. Since it's a digital artwork, the contract would include a secure hash fingerprint of the artwork to ensure we know what artwork we're talking about. Now, somebody somewhere could fraudulently claim to own the artwork and try to sell it, but the prospective buyer could check with the original author and track down the current owner (through the contracts trace) to ensure they're dealing with the legitimate owner.
NFTs make this easier by putting all that stuff on the blockchain.
I asked this in another NFT post the other day. As far as I could understand unless specified it still doesn't include the rights to the image (like you can't reproduce it on t-shirts), it's just you own a (for want of a better phrase) 'digital original'.
This alone makes me really uncomfortable because then what the hell are you paying for?
On the one hand it's a way to give an artist more money directly, sure, and tie it to the specific work. But you could just do that publicly or anonymously anyway.
On the other hand it seems entirely performative, in that it only servers to signal to wealthy peers (in this case, crypto bros) that you are an "art patron" without the messiness that comes with a real work on canvas that can get damaged by sun, fire, moisture... where's all the risk? The value is all declarative and speculative. As others have offered, this is like land on the moon.
I could sort of see the logic if this was tied to a massively popular online game where it enforced your ability to have the one custom skin and no one else can use it, with the cooperation of the game itself.
But in general this is not what's happening. It seems primarily driven by speculation and probably a criminal element... crypto bros wanting in on the money laundering and tax evasion possibilities of art collecting without all the business of actually you know, having it.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadhttps://mobile.twitter.com/niftygateway/status/1364745727889...
Shhh we are not supposed to talk about the censorship imposed by our overlords.
It doesn't prove that. It proves no one else owns that particular copy of the work. The author or anyone else can create another NFT in a different collectible contract from another copy of the same work.
Think of it as the certificate you get when someone sells you a star.
Does having some random bit set on some random blockchain grant me any actual legal rights or privileges?
Very real. The Zircon Confederacy on the fourth planet of my star system immediately submitted to my hegemony on account of my $10 certificate, and now I earn a steady income of 4 billion quadrooons of gold in tribute per annum.
However, due to the difficulty in transport across interstellar space, they've helpfully represented my ownership interest in the tribute using NFTs.
> In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million.
And I believe in several comments, it's been explained that fake "sales" (really transfers from someone's left hand to right hand) are really easy to implement in order to inflate the "price" of an NFT on the blockchain.
So did someone really part with $6.6 million for this token, and if so did that person actually earn that money, or just win it from the Bitcoin slot machine?
Every time I make the point that the entire "financial" system and all it's associated people are shameless parasites everyone falls over each other to tell me that is a load of nonsense. The same goes for you here.
I don't think that's the point, and meanwhile everyone else is actually asking more specific questions. But the meme continues on in every discussion.
I guess the suspicion I have is that someone who's heavily invested in NFT marketplaces may have arranged this to hype them.
And that category may even include this artist, Mike Winkelmann. According to the article linked here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26303420, he'd only ever sold his artwork once before listing it for sale on some NFT marketplace in December 2020 and immediately hitting jackpot.
> Mike Winkelmann never used to call himself an artist. But that was before he made $3.5 million in a single weekend from selling his artworks. In December, he auctioned off multiple editions of three digital artworks, each priced at $969, and 21 unique works, most of which sold for about $100,000 each. It was only the second time he had put his art on sale.
The alternative, which is I think is also very possible, is this is just lucky cryptocurrency money hoping luck strikes twice.
Jealous much
Is it convertible to USD which can easily be used to buy kitchen appliances, and pants and flights? If so who cares?
$6.6 million is going to be treated a lot differently by someone who worked hard to build that fortune, vs. someone who won it (e.g. from a lotto ticket or by buying $1000 of bitcoins on Mt. Gox on a lark for a $1/per).
And unlike your extremely simplistic worldview, it's very possible they'll do something that will create long term value for them. They don't owe it to you to do that though.
You're missing the point: the question is what this $6.6 million transaction for this token mean? Does it mean these NFTs are starting to be taken seriously? Does it mean someone's hyping the tech through a shady transaction? Or does it mean some bozo who won the lotto was willing to blow some money on one?
Winning lotto tickets can also be convertible to USD, which can easily be used to buy kitchen appliances, and pants and flights. Noting that doesn't reveal anything about the differences between how lotto winners spend vs. other people.
> And unlike your extremely simplistic worldview
Excuse me?
Also, I don't see the issue with someone buying an asset from themself for some inflated price.
Lets say I run a lunar land registry like this: https://lunarland.com/. I have a friend of mine buy a worthless deed from me for $10, then "sell" it to himself for $10,000. Now $10,000 is the "market price." I then use that transaction as "evidence" to hype the idea that lunar land deeds are serious things, part a growing market, good investment opportunity, etc. In the ensuing tulip mania, I pocket a pretty penny selling a lot more worthless deeds to lunar land. The victims are the people convinced my misleading hype to invest in them.
Now I'm not claiming something like is actually happening here, but the whole thing is fishy and I think it's a serious possibility to be considered.
It is. But if you register it as a sale, you get to pay taxes on "the profit".
To the rest of the world, it looks like the value of this NFT grew by 2 orders of magnitude in a week. In reality, that person is leveraging the pseudonymous nature to just make it appear that way, in hopes that when they list it for $200k, someone else will actually buy it. They cleared $190k for making a couple of garbage auctions.
As well: I can buy my $200k house from myself for $5m, but I still need to get the $5m. At that level maybe I can game the system (owning 5 properties on that block and selling when the “neighbourhood is valuable”), but this kind of system gaming is as old as money itself.
However wash trading is rampant in crypto.
Adults actually believe that people "earn" money? smh.
The solution to that problem is amazingly simple: IRS. Whoever made that money, fake or not, gets to pay taxes on $6.6M USD.
When you dismiss the concept of cryptocurrency, and another party sings its praises, and argues it will attain massive market value, and the latter ends up profiting from their judgment, they earned their gains. Now when you claim they won the slot machine, you're trying to diminish their accomplishment, and delegitimize their moral right to their success.
Edit: Ahh I missed you part about other comments, I guess I was pretty close
No link? Reuters you are such a dinosaur!
"Mike Winkelmann never used to call himself an artist. But that was before he made $3.5 million in a single weekend from selling his artworks. In December, he auctioned off multiple editions of three digital artworks, each priced at $969, and 21 unique works, most of which sold for about $100,000 each. It was only the second time he had put his art on sale."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/arts/design/christies-bee...
So from $100k/piece up to $6.6M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage
I periodically have the need to find that picture every now and again, and I usually find it by searching "Curbes Lurb" or "Mmm...mlurp"
My guess is that trolling accounts for a tiny fraction of the spend compared to the other factors.
In 1636 A single Tulip bulb was exchanged with Two lasts of wheat 448ƒ Four lasts of rye 558ƒ Four fat oxen 480ƒ Eight fat swine 240ƒ Twelve fat sheep 120ƒ Two hogsheads of wine 70ƒ Four tuns of beer 32ƒ Two tuns of butter 192ƒ 1,000 lbs. of cheese 120ƒ A complete bed 100ƒ A suit of clothes 80ƒ A silver drinking cup 60ƒ
Total 2500ƒ
One heck of a Tulip it must have been
Kind of seems like dogecoin or other meme/shitcoins? You own a digital asset that you think will go up in value. Coins are currency while NFTs are more like.. rights to a song?
It's obviously a bit tenuous because of the digital only nature. A real Banksy that physically exists with proof of originality affords control and exclusivity over it's access. A digital Banksy is provably yours as an NFT, but doesn't actually prevent others from viewing it trivially and perfect copies obfuscate the nature of "original". So you own it, and assumedly have exclusive rights to sell it, but it's also very easy to copy and distribute.
I'd be very interested to see if the recent push to artificially inflate the price of NFT's in order to set a precedence for what people should expect as their innate value works.
And this is also questionable. I mean, anyone can make a perfect copy and sell it. They cannot get that sale recorded on some blockchain, but who cares? There are no legal ramifications, because the legal system does not recognize some random blockchain as authoritative regarding ownership, instead most jurisdictions have their own (central) database about registered/copyrighted works.
If that is a sincere comment, you’re missing the point.
Where is the added value from NFTs? From my perspective, the only "value" from an NFT is the concept that a digital item that is indistinguishable from an identical digital item may now be tagged with a token that proves ownership (but only of that one digital item) and which may be bought and sold. This is unnecessary for things like insurance policies, land deeds, equity, intellectual property, and domain names. All of these items have meta-information that allows proof of ownership (land deeds are recorded; IP is registered with the USPTO; equity ownership is registered with brokers and trades are recorded with the SEC; etc.). There are already functioning systems setup to record, register, and transact these items.
I'm wondering why we don't get rid of the digital asset itself and replace it with a 1x1 pixel gif... it would accelerate the bubble since one doesn't have to spend time creating fake 'art'.
https://foundation.app/osiris/low-effort-nft-1319
TL;DR - NFTs help prove ownership without needing a central authority (which is a big deal) e.g. have you ever been misled and bought a fake concert ticket? It's also huge for the collectibles market which is plagued with high-levels of fraud (which is a billion dollar industry).
- NFTs can also make fractionalized ownership more accessible. So using your analogy, as an artist I release a song but I sell fractions of my song as NFTs to my audience and when I receive royalties it automatically gets distributed to all the nft song owners.
There will be meme NFTs of course (the cat that got sold for $600k), it is a speculative asset that people are experimenting with but I think eventually things will reset and the useful NFTs will remain. They can have real utility whether for a virtual or physical world.
The same artwork or membership card or movie ticket can be wrapped in multiple NFT, each living on a different blockchain or on the same blockchain but in different contracts.
Hence you still need the central authority saying which chain is the true one. For example if the NFT represent a plot of virtual land, the game or software managing that land acts as the central authority.
My take is that most of the bigger collectors are probably wealthy folks that have $xsx,xxx - $x,xxx,xxx budgets in "investing" in this emerging economy of NFTs. They are creating the market by collecting. That's all fine, but the really promising piece of all of this is that it acts as a type of "patreon" for artists, especially digital artists.
Not sure I even touched on answering your question, but I think it's great that people of means suddenly have an easy way to support artists far and wide, instead of say buying from a gallery, or buying from the guy you walk by on the street when you're on vacation.
This new space has allowed folks to feel like artists, and some of the more talented people that got attention early have even been able to remove themselves from poverty.
People spend money to buy things for many reasons. I think that anyone collecting NFT art because they are "investing" is walking a dangerous tightrope, but it's a great way to support artists you like, especially if you believe "digital ownership" is something that will be moving forward in our culture.
Youtube has its content-id system.
And the library of congress has a copyright system for digital books as well.
A big difference is that NFTs do not come with any legal rights, outside of “owning” the NFT itself. You don’t own the underlying asset or the copyright, just the NFT of the asset.
But who honestly wants to own a digital copy (without underlying rights) of something that can't be consumed like a movie or book? We're supposed to now pay for an image I can view freely? Where's the benefit in owning the NFT of an asset? Perhaps if a device manufacturer comes out with a device to display ultra-high resolution art images in an attractive frame and you can only obtain a compatible copy of the ultra high-res image if you buy the corresponding NFT, this could be an attractive offering if executed properly but I'm not aware of any devices that create such value for NFTs.
NFTs are somewhat interesting but I strongly suspect there is market manipulation (most likely by players with investments in NFT-adjacent entities) going on with some of these NFT sales.
$6.6M pays 2021 rent for 500+ struggling people, but for the wealthy, the opportunity cost is that of vaguely owning a 10-second anti-Trump video loop...
What I meant is that they are just speculating about NFTs and that what was actually sold is of no importance. They could as well have sold a 1x1 pixel image, nobody really cares about the digital asset itself...
What I don't understand is how ownership is enforced and if a DMCA is filed, who will work that case? I guess there are some bitcoin lawyers out there for that!
Say, you have a bunch of money made from selling cocaine and you want to buy a house. It's really hard, because people will want to know how you made the money without a job. So you buy some NFT for about 10k with your clean money. Two months later, you sell the NFT for 500k to an anonymous buyer online, who pays through crypto. The buyer is you, buy nobody knows that, because they're anonymous.
You now have 500k cash, you will need to pay some taxes over your gains, but then the money is clean and when you buy the house you say you got the money through an investment in NFT.
Meanwhile, some random people read about how you made 10k into 500k in two months by trading NFT. So people will start investing in it, making your money laundering less obvious.
This is a bit of a simplification of what could be happening, but it does seem feasible.
Bonus points, as now a lot of people think the NFT that my dirty hand still holds is worth $1m!
That's the purpose of money laundering - to bring ill-gotten gains into the light so they can be used.
The $6.6M video itself: https://odysee.com/WvmIn9XyiNHMn3Tc:2
Edit: right-click on the video and select 'loop'. couldn't find the option before.
Beeple is a cult digital artist who has been making digital art, releasing an asset per day, for 13 years straight. Yes, you read that right. One asset per day for 13 years. Most of his works were free. So, $6.6M is not just an overnight luck. It's the return for what he has been investing in for 13 years.
Or possibly, the transaction between one collector interested in news of the $6.6M transaction.
(Which have been around forever, what’s the reason for the current hype)
The Beeple video clip is an ERC721 token.
Without NFTs, I would sign a contract with the artist (or current owner) of a digital artwork that transfers the ownership and all rights to the work to me. Since it's a digital artwork, the contract would include a secure hash fingerprint of the artwork to ensure we know what artwork we're talking about. Now, somebody somewhere could fraudulently claim to own the artwork and try to sell it, but the prospective buyer could check with the original author and track down the current owner (through the contracts trace) to ensure they're dealing with the legitimate owner.
NFTs make this easier by putting all that stuff on the blockchain.
Did I get it correctly?
On the one hand it's a way to give an artist more money directly, sure, and tie it to the specific work. But you could just do that publicly or anonymously anyway.
On the other hand it seems entirely performative, in that it only servers to signal to wealthy peers (in this case, crypto bros) that you are an "art patron" without the messiness that comes with a real work on canvas that can get damaged by sun, fire, moisture... where's all the risk? The value is all declarative and speculative. As others have offered, this is like land on the moon.
I could sort of see the logic if this was tied to a massively popular online game where it enforced your ability to have the one custom skin and no one else can use it, with the cooperation of the game itself.
But in general this is not what's happening. It seems primarily driven by speculation and probably a criminal element... crypto bros wanting in on the money laundering and tax evasion possibilities of art collecting without all the business of actually you know, having it.
There are interesting use cases for NFT but for art it doesn't really solve anything new.