- Lettuce eat lettuce ( @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml ) 91•1 year ago
Gee, if only there was some way to have seen this coming before hand…
- kubica ( @kubica@kbin.social ) 6•1 year ago
Actually I didn’t have many hopes in humanity when it started to happen. It’s a bit comforting, not much though with other things around.
- drolex ( @drolex@sopuli.xyz ) 53•1 year ago
🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
- Altima NEO ( @altima_neo@lemmy.zip ) English22•1 year ago
Were they worth anything to begin with?
- Gradenko ( @Gradenko@lemm.ee ) 13•1 year ago
They have no intrinsic value, but they’re worth what people will pay for them I guess. The only problem is that entire thing was a hype bubble conjured up scammers. The insane thing is that for a brief moment they even had famous auction houses buying into the scam.
That shitty set of randomized pixel art sold for more than anything else in that particular show, aside from a Basquiat.
- bitsplease ( @bitsplease@lemmy.ml ) 13•1 year ago
No one will convince me that there isn’t money laundering going on there. There’s just no way an actual person looked at that and thought it is worth that kind of money
Well, no piece of art has an intrinsic value. And auction houses exist to make money, not because of some divine purpose to connect true art to its worthy new owner. Of course they’re going to jump on the hype train if they think it’s worth it. I fully agree that NFTs are a scam, like almost all crypto crap. But so is the current art market. Money laundering and investments for the rich.
- chicken ( @chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 7•1 year ago
A better question would be, did anyone ever even buy them to begin with?
This means that 79% of all NFT collections – otherwise known as almost 4 out of every 5 – have remained unsold.
That is, most of the NFTs included in the OP statistic were listed for sale by their creators, and never recorded a sale. Another important detail is that even for the ones that did record sales, there’s no real way of knowing if those sales were real. You can easily make another crypto wallet and buy an NFT from yourself. For more elaborate wash trading, you can find someone with an established wallet to collude with. There are obvious reasons to do this too; building up a history of increasing sale prices could potentially dupe someone into thinking an NFT is a good investment, or you could launder money by selling an NFT to a ‘dirty’ wallet you also control.
Probably some portion of the market was “real”, but the volume is almost certainly much lower than anyone is reporting. Statistics like what the OP article is quoting are just about totally meaningless.
- hemko ( @hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English4•1 year ago
Hundreds of millions collectively, when people were dumb enough to buy them. The problem is that eventually dumb people ran out of money and the worth plummeted to zero.
- Em Adespoton ( @adespoton@lemmy.ca ) English22•1 year ago
Just because something is unique doesn’t mean it’s valuable.
Some people are just discovering this.
- SpaceCowboy ( @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ) 12•1 year ago
It’s not even that it’s unique. It’s just one particular system associates you with something. It’s basically those star registry scams. Except you’re not associated with a star by one particular scam organization. You associated with an image of a cartoon ape by a scam organization! But there’s a trendy technology involved so idiots think that makes it somehow legit.
- BaconIsAVeg ( @BaconIsAVeg@lemmy.ml ) English5•1 year ago
Try telling that to sports memorabilia collectors though.
“Look at my hockey jersey!” “Yeah, so? I have the same one.” “Yeah but you’re wasn’t signed by Wayne Gretsky.”
Or even trading cards, or comics. Or hell, even plain w-shirts with a brand logo on it for $250. People assign arbitrary values to stuff all the time. I don’t understand it at all, but there’s a whole ton of people that just eat that shit up like it’s candy.
- devils_advocate ( @devils_advocate@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 year ago
However NFTs were trying to assign value to the receipt for the Gretzky shirt.
- BaconIsAVeg ( @BaconIsAVeg@lemmy.ml ) English2•1 year ago
Well no, in my example the shirt is the image and the signature on it is the NFT bit. Physically, it’s just a bit of ink, but the shirt itself is no different than one you can go pickup at the store.
- devils_advocate ( @devils_advocate@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 year ago
In your example what happens if the shirt is sold to someone else? In the NFT case the signature changes.
The shirt analogy doesn’t work well, but NFTs are great for transferable tickets.
- foreverandaday ( @foreverandaday@lemmy.ml ) 19•1 year ago
🔫️ Always have been
- watson387 ( @watson387@sopuli.xyz ) 14•1 year ago
Of no surprise to anyone.
- davel [he/him] ( @davel@lemmy.ml ) English12•1 year ago
- squiblet ( @squiblet@kbin.social ) 12•1 year ago
Perhaps they’d have retained value if they had been attached to quality art rather than awful-looking algorithmically generated complete trash.
- Dr Cog ( @Dr_Cog@mander.xyz ) 24•1 year ago
No, they wouldn’t have. Because owning a link to a thing doesn’t mean anything, no matter what that thing is. They were only valuable because people didn’t understand NFTs and wanted to get rich quick.
- squiblet ( @squiblet@kbin.social ) 12•1 year ago
The concept of a certificate of authenticity for digital goods that can be traded isn’t inherently terrible.
- Dr Cog ( @Dr_Cog@mander.xyz ) 10•1 year ago
The concept isn’t, I agree. But it also isn’t a useful idea, either. There really doesn’t appear to be any benefit to using NFTs in any meaningful application, or at least nobody has pitched one that isn’t either a grift or a way to appear “trendy” by reinventing the wheel.
- Grimpen ( @Grimpen@lemmy.ca ) 4•1 year ago
The actual infrastructure was horribly inefficient, but that may have improved with ETH’s move to proof of stake.
There’s other issues, but the idea of using the digital receipt as an “investment” seems fundamentally flawed.
- squiblet ( @squiblet@kbin.social ) 3•1 year ago
Some established, legitimate artists have been selling NFTs with their originals. But sure, overall, like crypto in general, the field is filled with scammers and get-rich-quick schemes.
I know someone who is a painter who for some reason decided to try selling NFTs a couple of months ago (I pointed out it was a bit late…). The only responses on opensea and Instagram she received were from scammers, trying to pull a “my payment didn’t work, you need to manually approve it” scheme to try to steal her credentials.- SpaceCowboy ( @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
She could also simply write down the name of the person who bought the painting from you. And ask them to let her know if they sell it so she could update her records.
Sure it’s possible someone might not let her know they sold the painting. But it’s equally possible someone sells the painting without transferring the NFT along with it.
- squiblet ( @squiblet@kbin.social ) 2•1 year ago
Sure, and instead of credit cards, the store can just write down on an index card that I owe them $60. Anyway, the idea is a level of automation exceeding what they had in Sumeria 7,000 years ago.
- library_napper ( @library_napper@monyet.cc ) 12•1 year ago
But it was nice while artists were able to sell to profit from rich people
- asexualchangeling ( @asexualchangeling@lemmy.ml ) 10•1 year ago
Was that happening? All I ever heard about was people selling artists art that they didn’t own the rights to without permission, and getting away with it
- June ( @June@lemm.ee ) 3•1 year ago
The major nft exchanges paid a portion of each sale to the artists, yes. It was one of the things that NFTs, and blockchain in general, was supposed to help solve for. IMO it’s a good use case for blockchain being used when paired with real world items.
- QHC ( @QHC@lemmy.one ) 4•1 year ago
But we don’t need blockchain to do any of that, someone still has to be trusted so might as well just use normal database tech.
- June ( @June@lemm.ee ) 2•1 year ago
Don’t need blockchain, no, but blockchain has some advantages since its peer verified and, when implemented well, much harder to fake data than a centralized database might be.
With a normal database we have to trust the one person/entity managing it.
With blockchain, it’s a community that we trust.
- moormaan ( @moormaan@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
Ok, ok, hold on - what’s being sold here? A link to a digital asset or something else? If it’s a link, I still don’t get the point. Does that link (or whatever it is) confer some kind of license? What’s the use case for faking this data and why are we defending from this?
- June ( @June@lemm.ee ) 1•1 year ago
My idea is that the art is being sold and the NFT only says who owns it. It doesn’t need to be digital art, it can be just about anything where an original creator should benefit from the item changing hands.
Whenever the NFT changes hands, there are fees associated, which would include a portion of the sale going to the original artist, a royalty. And because the NFT exists on a publicly visible blockchain, back alley sales can’t happen ensuring that the artist gets paid.
This type of thing helps ensure that artists benefit from their art going into demand and increasing in value.
- moormaan ( @moormaan@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
Blockchain mathematically guarantees trust… for info stored on the blockchain. What guarantee do you have that this info matches things that happen in reality?
If you say: we need a social contract to ensure people update the blockchain, then I say: that defeats the purpose of the heavy lifting you need to mathematically guarantee info on the blockchain is genuine. Let’s just have a social contact to pay the artist when appropriate.
I don’t see what other way could exist to keep the blockchain and reality in sync.
- library_napper ( @library_napper@monyet.cc ) 2•1 year ago
Yes, many artists made a lot of money on NFTs
- moormaan ( @moormaan@lemmy.ca ) English1•1 year ago
If you are referring to scam artists, you are 100% right! Also, some actual artists might have got some money out of it, but I suspect the majority of dough that exchanged hands went to the former kind.
- library_napper ( @library_napper@monyet.cc ) 2•1 year ago
I’m sorry you dont have any technically inclined artists in your circle, but I first learned about NFTs from myartists friends.
Colored coins have been around for a very long time, and NFTs have been an income stream for artists long before the financial elite gave them a bad name.
History is important
- roguetrick ( @roguetrick@kbin.social ) 9•1 year ago
To be real, even cryptobros would tell you the vast majority were useless as soon as they were minted.
- magnetosphere ( @HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org ) English8•1 year ago
It must have been really hard for the underpaid researcher to put this report together while doubling over in laughter.
- magnetosphere ( @HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org ) English8•1 year ago
I can imagine being desperate to hit it big, but at least but a lottery ticket or something. That way, the school system (or whatever) gets a few bucks, instead of the fucking Trumps.
- primalmotion ( @primalmotion@lemmy.antisocial.ly ) English8•1 year ago
Who would have thought?
- TheImpressiveX ( @TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml ) 7•1 year ago
They always were.
- Comment105 ( @Comment105@lemm.ee ) 7•1 year ago
Pumped, dumped, done.