Interesting piece by W. David Marx that situates NFTs within the category of Status Symbols. Marx is among the most lucid watchers of culture with a focus on Japan, where fashion and futurism converged decades ago.
If you tell me you have spent thousands on an NFT, then I will assume you are an idiot. And I'm sure lots of other feel the same way. So not a great status symbol.
Its an interesting piece, people just reading the comments or commenting on NFTs in general are missing out.
>>[Status symbols] also need alibis, plausible excuses for ownership other than the intentional acquisition of status symbols ... The best alibi for NFTs is that they are an investment ... to cunningly flip later.
So when the market becomes saturated and the ability to flip (aka the alibi) is gone, will the market collapse?
Bubbles keep growing until they run out of suckers. Those who get out before the bubble bursts might make a lot of money. Everyone else will lose the lot. It happened with the South Sea Bubble, Tulipmania, Bernie Madoff, Onecoin and any number of other bubbles/scams.
Isaac Newton, one of the smartest men who ever lived, lost loads of money in the South Sea Bubble.
Not really. I'd argue that a true status symbol commands the respect of any person in it's presence, whereas any sufficently educated person will look at your 77" OLED NFT display case and scoff before walking away.
I think this definition needlessly dilutes the term. Personally, I hold no extra respect for you if you're rocking a gucci handbag, wearing a rolex, or if you crap on a gold commode. The people who buy these things don't do it to impress me though, they're hoping to show off to their peers who do value such displays.
"But NFTs communities host individuals of both low- and high-status positions, making them fundamentally different from country clubs or VIP lounges. Anyone can join, if they have the money."
Has anyones status been raised by owning a specific NFT (outside of the NFT ecosystem)? No. Maybe they could sell it for an amount of money that raises their status elsewhere but at this point in time the answer is no.
I don't understand baseball and never collected any type of cards, but I do get people who own a rare baseball card and see its value (limited production, has history behind it, it can only be lost, not multiplied). I don't see the status value of someone owning an $180k NFT more than that he indeed has $180k, money that will probably go down in value over time. Anyone can create an identical or improved NFT at any point, and its value can be the same of higher simply if someone pays that amount of money for it.
I still see it as someone paying $180k for a common, non-original, useless rock, it doesn't mean that the value of that rock is now $180k.
Steph Curry 'bought' an NFT, made it his avatar, asked about getting into crypto, and then immediately announced he had a deal with FTX to be a sponsor/investor (coincidentally right after another FTX celebrity sponsor, Tom Brady, replied to his tweets about crypto).
It wasn't purchased by Steph Curry on a whim as a status symbol. It was probably given to him as part of his roll out deal with FTX.
It's nearly the same roll out move every other FTX celebrity sponsor has made, of which, there are now many. They get paid to act like they're interested.
I’m not so sure it’s complete bs. Ive worked with Steph on a dozen design projects through his brand. Typically I’m actually only interfacing with his team so I’ve only met him personally a few times and only for a few minutes. The last project I got to meet him again at the roll out. I pitched the idea of creating NFTs for his foundation to the guy running his foundation. The guy was totally interested. A few seconds later Steph walked by (and wasn’t being mobbed by everyone around) and the guy told Steph “this guys talking about NFTs” … Steph did a triple take and eyes wide and seemed genuinely juiced to talk about it. Moments later he got mobbed by kids for autographs and that was it.
Not saying NFTs are not a sham, just that I was super surprised at how interested he seemed in the subject.
The art world is definitely a sham(1). That doesn't mean there isn't money making opportunity, nor does it mean there isn't intrinsic value in artwork; if anything it tends to mean there are outsized winners and losers that are divorced from any intrinsic value of the art.
(1)Consider all the artists "unrecognized" during their lifetime; did their genius just get discovered after their deaths? No, it was just at that point their works were a limited commodity, and not well distributed yet, and so suddenly became good places to park wealth. That isn't to say there isn't good and interesting and thought provoking work being done, but it's definitely only loosely, if at all, correlated to price. A good artist with nothing else can expect to sell a custom painting for $1k, tops. A hack artist with a known PR person in the art world can get themselves selling them for hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
>A good artist with nothing else can expect to sell a custom painting for $1k, tops.
That's not really right, my wife is a painter without gallery representation who sells in $5k-$12k range. Through her I've met many other people in this "middle tier". A well connected gallery can get collector eyes on your art at fairs like Art Basel and further increase the price of paintings to the higher tens of thousands. Beyond that, there's a relatively small circle of prominent living artists selling for $100k-$1M; these are mostly talented hard working people with distinctive styles that find an eager collector audience. The tier beyond that is an even smaller group of "celebrity" artists -- which is maybe who you're referring to as "hack artists" since it includes some gimmicky work.
If you have status, you can leverage that to get money.
The two are not directly fungible, and work is needed to convert one to the other. But it is straightforward to obtain one for the other, in direct proportion to how much money or status you currently have.
The real trick is to have enough money and status, and cleverly use both to simultaneously get more of both.
They are digital certificates congratulating you for paying a higher price for a digital thing that has no utility other than being a diamond handed bag holder.
They know it is a scam, since that the only winners are the celebrities, influencers, meme creators. The collectors who keep buying NFTs however, have to wait and find another fool willing to buy it off of them for even higher.
Fabricated demand, Person A purchases NFT_1, Person A as Person B buys NFT_1 from Person A. Person C thinks NFT_1 is worth at least what Person A paid for it and buys it, hoping to make a profit.
If you have cash to burn and want a 'status' symbol, why not build a school or a clinic in a developing country? Get your name plaque put on it. Much better bragging rights than an NFT. $10k - $20k to http://thejunipertrust.org should do it.
I never see any discussion about the actual art behind the NFTs. When classic art pieces are sold as NFTs, someone else often still owns the actual art. NFT discussion is 100% about the price. The art is a convenient sideshow.
In fact, most of the hyper NFTs seem to come from series of generic artwork with variations in the 1000s or 10,000s. The goal isn’t to produce good art, it’s to produce a massive quantity of low-effort or algorithmically generated pieces so they can be sold and traded in volume.
I have feeling that everyone in and out of NFT communities are fully aware that this isn’t about the art at all. It’s about hype and trading and profit. The art just happens to be an excuse to mint new tokens now that the crypto coin market has been flooded with 1000s of altcoins for a decade.
I might have the details wrong, but isn't there a mechanism so that the original artist can get some portion of the proceeds every time an NFT is sold?
I think non-crypto coverage of NFTs conflates a few different categories. There's a lot of stuff for sale on more niche venues like Hit et Nunc that's really just art made in a classically recognizable way; people don't flip there very effectively and seem to buy based on their own aesthetics. There's also generative art, most prominently Art Blocks, which has a very active collector community but has more recently entered into a speculative bubble because some pieces pull in high prices. And then there's avatar NFT projects (e.g. Pudgy Penguins), which I think what you're mostly talking about.
Yes they are. I don't see it as a problem though. People also spend fortunes on designer handbags which have little intrinsic value.
Personally, I wouldn't waste my money on this stuff, but I don't get the anger. Perhaps people feel upset that others are making significant money from this and it doesn't feel 'fair'?
I get angry when I see people spending a fortune on worthless crap (NFTs, designer handbags, watches that don't actually tell the time very well) when other people are living in poverty. Wouldn't it be better to spend some of that money on helping other people, rather than some ridiculous bauble that only impresses shallow people?
I think, culturally, NFT boosters are close to multi-level marketers in coolness. I can't imagine them being actual status symbols, except for the way those who were able to make a quick buck are able to parlay that money into conventional status, such as it is.
I know this is kind of arrogant, but to me the whole NFT debate, whether it's good or not, is a "hand me the popcorn" thing, partly, because I think the answer is entirely obvious
For those of you trashing NFTs, have you ever bought one? If not, I suggest picking something up on a drop from Nifty Gateway. Of course, research the artist first. I also check out the artist's Twitter page and Discord server to make sure they have a solid community established already.
Why would you want a stock in Amazon? Why would you want a Bitcoin? Why would you want to own a Picasso painting? I don't understand how an NFT is different from any of these things.
You use your private key to verify ownership. In the digital world, this is the closet you can get to having the "original thing". You can disagree with this, but it doesnt matter because obviously the NFT market believes in this.
Some NFTs just sit there, the same way an original piece of art will just hang on a wall. However, some NFTs can have 'utility'. For example, owning one can qualify you to buy a piece that is exclusive to collectors of a particular artist. The artist can also verify holders and send out physical products. Some artists are using profits to re-invest in larger scale NFT projects as well, like virtual worlds and games.
That only matters if you are buying the NFT for the purpose of speculation. Otherwise just find some art you like.
Twitter followers are between $5-30 per thousand, and Discord server members look to be around $70-80 per thousand. People pulling crypto scams will frequently fake popularity, back in the ICO days it was standard to have a telegram channel filled with 20-30 thousand bots.
62 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 42.0 ms ] thread>>[Status symbols] also need alibis, plausible excuses for ownership other than the intentional acquisition of status symbols ... The best alibi for NFTs is that they are an investment ... to cunningly flip later.
So when the market becomes saturated and the ability to flip (aka the alibi) is gone, will the market collapse?
Isaac Newton, one of the smartest men who ever lived, lost loads of money in the South Sea Bubble.
Actually it's not fundamentally different at all!
They can be totally differnt besides their fungibility.
Is owning a rare baseball card a status symbol?
I still see it as someone paying $180k for a common, non-original, useless rock, it doesn't mean that the value of that rock is now $180k.
It wasn't purchased by Steph Curry on a whim as a status symbol. It was probably given to him as part of his roll out deal with FTX.
It's nearly the same roll out move every other FTX celebrity sponsor has made, of which, there are now many. They get paid to act like they're interested.
None of this is organic. It is all a sham.
Not saying NFTs are not a sham, just that I was super surprised at how interested he seemed in the subject.
> Not saying NFTs are not a sham
How do these two statements go hand in hand?
“Not saying apps are a sham”
… I don’t understand how those two sentences are contrary in your thinking. What do you see?
(1)Consider all the artists "unrecognized" during their lifetime; did their genius just get discovered after their deaths? No, it was just at that point their works were a limited commodity, and not well distributed yet, and so suddenly became good places to park wealth. That isn't to say there isn't good and interesting and thought provoking work being done, but it's definitely only loosely, if at all, correlated to price. A good artist with nothing else can expect to sell a custom painting for $1k, tops. A hack artist with a known PR person in the art world can get themselves selling them for hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
That's not really right, my wife is a painter without gallery representation who sells in $5k-$12k range. Through her I've met many other people in this "middle tier". A well connected gallery can get collector eyes on your art at fairs like Art Basel and further increase the price of paintings to the higher tens of thousands. Beyond that, there's a relatively small circle of prominent living artists selling for $100k-$1M; these are mostly talented hard working people with distinctive styles that find an eager collector audience. The tier beyond that is an even smaller group of "celebrity" artists -- which is maybe who you're referring to as "hack artists" since it includes some gimmicky work.
Yep, status symbols. NFTs are just internet bling/flexing, like digital cold chains and chunky rings.
If you have status, you can leverage that to get money.
The two are not directly fungible, and work is needed to convert one to the other. But it is straightforward to obtain one for the other, in direct proportion to how much money or status you currently have.
The real trick is to have enough money and status, and cleverly use both to simultaneously get more of both.
They know it is a scam, since that the only winners are the celebrities, influencers, meme creators. The collectors who keep buying NFTs however, have to wait and find another fool willing to buy it off of them for even higher.
You bought a mutable token in a poorly thought out "investment" scheme based on hipsters shilling nonsense? Here's your sign.
In fact, most of the hyper NFTs seem to come from series of generic artwork with variations in the 1000s or 10,000s. The goal isn’t to produce good art, it’s to produce a massive quantity of low-effort or algorithmically generated pieces so they can be sold and traded in volume.
I have feeling that everyone in and out of NFT communities are fully aware that this isn’t about the art at all. It’s about hype and trading and profit. The art just happens to be an excuse to mint new tokens now that the crypto coin market has been flooded with 1000s of altcoins for a decade.
Personally, I wouldn't waste my money on this stuff, but I don't get the anger. Perhaps people feel upset that others are making significant money from this and it doesn't feel 'fair'?
Encouraging the crypto scams means we're going backwards on climate change at a time when we need to be sprinting forward. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
If you care about climate change, this doesn't feel like a particularly high leverage area to focus on.
Yes. I would download a car.
You use your private key to verify ownership. In the digital world, this is the closet you can get to having the "original thing". You can disagree with this, but it doesnt matter because obviously the NFT market believes in this.
Some NFTs just sit there, the same way an original piece of art will just hang on a wall. However, some NFTs can have 'utility'. For example, owning one can qualify you to buy a piece that is exclusive to collectors of a particular artist. The artist can also verify holders and send out physical products. Some artists are using profits to re-invest in larger scale NFT projects as well, like virtual worlds and games.
Twitter followers are between $5-30 per thousand, and Discord server members look to be around $70-80 per thousand. People pulling crypto scams will frequently fake popularity, back in the ICO days it was standard to have a telegram channel filled with 20-30 thousand bots.