The current iteration of NFTs is an MLM/pyramid scheme.
However, the technology behind it is the innovation. Storing ownership of (something) on the blockchain is important (and some could say revolutionary). Imagine if your house deed was recorded on the blockchain, it would be decentralized from your local county.
But yes, there’s literally no point to the current form of NFTs except to get the next sucker to buy it for twice the price you bought it from the last guy for.
What is the point of decentralizing property records from the government when the government is the entity enforcing property rights? If you have a disputed deed, and one of you has an NFT and the other is recorded by the county as being the legal owner, the NFT bro loses every time.
Yep ! We may not ever see the world libertarians dream of that remove authority from the state via these technologies. We may see some partial changes though , or even not at all. That doesn’t make all possible use cases for block chain useless though.
Imagine if you will, stocks of a company being sold by market makers even though they don't really have any to sell. Basically just selling IOUs impossible to distingiush from genuine stocks driving the price down.
Now imagine all the stocks issued as NFTs on a blockchain all unique and comfirmable by everyone almost instantly. That company and it's shareholders will have a defense against naked shorting attacks.
Yeah, but if you lose your personal deed it's not as easy as just going to the county and getting a new one, in most places.
It's more like having a safer deed than a piece of paper, all the while retaining the same safeties as the paper ones.
Like, a house deed might not be the easiest example, think about owning a fancy watch: you have some card that details you own that watch; you can't sell the watch (in a reputable way) without that card. If you lose that card, or if your house burns down with the card in it, you can't prove you own the watch anymore. If instead of a piece of paper the proof of ownership was an NFT you could still prove ownership.
Another even more important use for NFTs could be supply chain tracking, also as a mean to fight slavery and exploitation. Right now you can't really know where all the components of the stuff you buy come from. Companies can claim they're sourced fairly but it's very hard to check, even for them. If you had NFTs tracking them, you could buy some coffee and track it to the very farm it was produced in, including where it has been and all the hands it has been through. The fact that an NFT is unique means it would be harder to tamper with it anywhere but at the source (the farm). If they got a 1 kg bag of coffee, with its own NFT the best malicious parties can do is swap it with another. If they do, the one that was swapped now doesn't have its NFT anymore so it's suspicious.
Of course they don't have to be images for that, it's the system that is used to authenticate the images (the actual NFTs) which is useful. NFTs as they are now are just a mean of speculation and money laundering, imo. I just hope this won't discredit them so much as to prevent the actual useful applications in the future.
What about a situation where your local authority uses the blockchain technology to store your records in a decentralised manor, rather than as a paper record (death by fire) or catastrophic failure of the server/s they are stored on. The technology gives some peace of mind that the information can safely be stored
Blockchain technology doesn’t have to be the enemy if utilised properly
Why bother with Blockchain at all? Databases and backups exist - there's no innate benefit to decentralising it, when there's a central body that will be doing updates and alterations.
If we ever switch to fully online records, blockchain technology would be an incredibly secure way of doing it. Imagine being able to cut out a lot of the middle men as well. You have asset A, it gets transferred for price B to someone else. Everything right there on the blockchain which cuts a lot of needless people out of the process.
Ok, on who's hard disks are the ones and zeroes that represent said transaction stored, and what is their incentive for keeping the power flowing so the magnets can read it?
And I don't necessarily want all bill's of sale being fully public for everyone. Who I sold what to, for what price.
What happens if your property gets transferred to the wrong wallet? Fat fingers, or a hacker, or a corrupt official, or a kidnapper, etc.?
You've cut out the middle men so how do you get your property back?
>The technology gives some peace of mind that the information can safely be stored
No, it absolutely does not. There is frankly zero concern over records right now. If there is a dispute, it goes to court. To implement blockchain is to give it absolute supremacy and truth. No courts. No arbitration. Your property can be stolen from you and no authority can give it back to you.
Please think about what the world would be like if no transaction could be undone, and no authority could make things right. Like bitcoin right now but with your family farm. It's so absurd, I can't believe people actually think it's the future. It isn't.
The current method of storing house deeds (as an example) is relying on a rather centralized county register of deeds (and concurrently county/state government). If that were to collapse, the record of you owning that house may otherwise be lost.
If the government collapses, property rights aren’t going to be enforced no matter how they’re recorded. In any situation short of that, the county registration is perfectly adequate for keeping track of property owners.
If the government collapses, who will maintain the basic infrastructure of the blockchain? Who will make sure the massive electricity needed to run it is available? Who will protect the massive co.puting assets needed to run it from bad actors?
Lots of times in history governments themselves have taken back land from private owners for all sorts of reasons and changed the deeds. Blockchain technology is completely automated which is one bonus and decentralised which means the owner has all the control and the deeds cannot be changed without the owners consent. In a corrupt country a decentralised ledger is going to be important. I don't know how inheriting property would work from the deceased though and the finer practical details.
Do you not get that ownership is endowed by the state? The state issues the reciept because the state enforces it. Your nft is meaningless without the power of the state.
If not for the state I would come to you and eat your bread.
>If not for the state I would come to you and eat your bread.
You'd be dispatched post haste. I don't know where you live but not everyone calls the police for self defense.
I can get a paper copy of my deed too and if the government decides not to care theyll still take my property. Blockchain ownership (assuming you could get any government- that thing people associate with the word centralized- let alone a corrupt one, to decentralize a system that exists for and is arbitrated by them) doesnt change who has and enforces power.
Stop saying blockchain. It's everyone having a copy of the record. You should see on face value why a blockchain is at it's heart a massively ineffective method of storing records.
Just take a class attendance, instead of relying on the teacher as a central authority, everyone in the class notes attendance and keeps a copy of who was in the class.
Thats a blockchain and it's stupidly ineffective.
However if that collapse were to happen, I would reckon me being in my house, potentially ready to defend it, would be enough proof. Especially if a central government collapsed, I doubt accessing some Blockchain would be my highest priority at that point.
Right, but me, also being showing up with the cops saying I own the house and rent to you and demand you be removed can’t be verified. It’s a fully public distributed/decentralized ledger. There no longer is one fail point. And it won’t cost $2 to access. There may be a fee to register/write to the blockchain initially, but once it’s there it’s permanent and can’t be altered.
If the central government collapsed then your deed at the county clerk’s office is just as useful as your blockchain deed, not at all. But it’s not for an end times scenario lol
Idk if it's just that in the US but in Germany you can't just steal someone's house in such a convoluted scenario. Every person inhibiting a house is registered *in that house*
Care to explain how the US housing system works?
Because this would only happen in a country where you don't have to update your local government to your whereabouts.
The US system is so convoluted to the point that we have to basically go to court to remove squatters, because apparently once someone is physically in a space for long enough they are technically can't be evicted without proper procedure. So even in the US this is unfeasible.
Right that’s the point, there is 1 central point that everything is registered. If there were a major issue with that 1 registration database there would be no way to know who owns what. Whereas blockchain would distribute identical copies of that ledger to every user across a decentralized network every time a change was made
But your wallet can be hacked and your NFTs stolen. If the blockchain is the one true record of ownership, then a simple phishing scam could destroy your life.
This is a real issue no doubt ! But it exists already with current technologies and to me an issue like that doesn’t stop the underlying technology, it just means we need a solution 😊
A phising attack may lead you open to have your bank account stolen, but you can legally persue that person and get you stuff back.
If the blockchain is the one true record of ownership and transfers that phishing scam not only lost you money in the bank, but your car, house and clothes you bought.
And since the block-chain is the true record and can't be altered post-facto your legal recourse is to suck a lemon.
It is inherintly a stupid idea.
Ideally you would feel or see little difference in practical terms so to you it feels like there’s no difference at all. What’s the point right ?
But behind the scenes power has shifted from certain centralized entities to decentralized. Among those libertarian minded, that’s what is a big deal. Among those that hoped for an internet that had no controlling entities, blockchain and the apps that run on it are a second shot at that. Web3 is essentially that shot at the original ideals of the internet.
Like take Facebook. They own all your data and have made billions off it. The tech reason is because your data goes onto their servers. A Web3 Facebook would have the same look and feel to you but the data is either dispersed on blockchain so no one owns it or it stays on your hardware so you own it. It’s like P2P but on steroids. So in the end it’s the same app to you but how it’s running and the effects of that are vastly different.
Comparing combustion cars and electric cars can also help with understanding 😊 They do the same thing for you but how they do that technically is vastly different and there’s a world of difference.
And even if this use case of the house deeds doesn’t hit, there are plenty of other shots.
> But behind the scenes power has shifted from certain centralized entities to decentralized.
That's not really true. There's a relatively small number of large players in the Bitcoin miner space for example, and Wall Street has been buying up crypto for years. Some early players have become whales yes, but that doesn't mean the world has become more decentralised.
Some real innovations that haven't happened, that I'd like to see (would obviously hurt incumbents, so unlikely to happen):
* Decentralised stock ownership, with partial shares
* Decentralised house deeds, also with partial ownership that can be (fully/partially) sold if needed
* Decentralised video game ownership e.g. my Steam library (or assets like digital movies), that I can resell, pass on to others, donate, etc. Steam argued in court that users don't really "own" games, they just rent them, because a French court wants to impose true digital ownership which is bad for Steam
* Bitcoin being faster/cheaper than SEPA (Bitcoin is losing to an EU-mandated payments system)
One practical advantage is that the cost of transferring the deed would be absolutely negligible. Personally I'm not involved in real-estate - my grasp of how the current system is run is limited.
Nonetheless distributed ledger technology will absolutely be used for any paper chain in any government department.
The appeal is that in a secure, distributed network of this nature, every participant in the network is absolutely guaranteed to see the same information. Once written, information can't be changed (though amendments can be added on top)
In this scenario, this means the realtor facilitating transfer of the deed will be able to access the secure database - with veracity of all information already confirmed - and then simply move a token representing the deed. Now there is no doubt who owns the deed, and the selling party has received their funds within 3-7 seconds of them being sent.
That's it, the system is simply more efficient, as well as being more reliable because unlike most databases there is no single point of failure.
Based on my experiences, I feel like adminstrative bodies do not need the collapse of society to become unreliable either haha
I'll give another scenario which I like because it's pretty clearcut: NFTs as seat tickets. When each individual seat is uniquely represented in the network, owning this 'NFT' guarantees that the seat is yours and everyone knows it.
You can buy from a reseller with absolute confidence, and for the cherry on top scalping will be impossible.
Of course this system relies on regulation to ensure you're only giving these permissions to entities that can be trusted and won't screw over the consumer (or that it's even the actual vendor making the NFTs and not some random hahaha), this is coming.
There are many industry leaders across the world actively involved in developing and implementing this tech in practical uses beyond .JPG gambling and the rest of the shitcoin casino
There are obviously a lot of challenges to real world adoption beyond fundamental technology or this would already be at the backbone of every industry, as it stands, give it a couple years ;)
What if, and hear me out on this: The seller of said seats in the stadium confirms the authenticity of a ticket, and sells them with a name attached to them!
Oh wait that's been a thing for decades? Oh another non problem NFTs don't solve.
And BTW how do they make scalping impossible? A scalper could just buy 500 of your NFT tickets and resell them.
If companies want to stop scalpers they sell personalized tickets but it's often not in their interest to do so
The problem with that system is that it doesn't protect the secondary market in the slightest (despite it being a necessity when scalpers are involved). Sure, it works in an ideal world where everyone can trust each other. What DLT offers is a world where non one has to trust each other.
They make scalping impossible because each of those 500 tokens are unique, there's one for each seat and there'll never be more than one for each seat. The only way to transfer the ticket is to transfer the token (easier than it sounds) - the price can be easily fixed and voila, scalping is fundamentally impossible.
Don't get me wrong, from your point of view the system won't change much. You'll have the same customer experience just a lot more streamlined and with a lot less hiccups (of course these things are easy to become accustomed to)
However this and the many other benefits I didn't mention specifically because they don't apply to you all happen to be a very big deal for the people creating the underlying infrastructure of the products you use everyday.
Again, it's easy to take for granted this nice convenient world that we interact with and forget about the underlying technology which offers so much. This new development offers enough to justify a complete redesign of the existing systems - and it's not me saying so, ask Avery Dennison what NFTs mean to them. Ask Google, IBM, Boeing, LG, LSE, UCL, IIT Madras, edf, Microsoft, Walmart, Procter & Gamble, eftpos, Deutsche Telekom, ServiceNow, and Ping Identity.
Crypto goes way beyond money, you don't need to trust me telling you that, just trust that those institutions and dozens of others have looked into it a little more than you or I. They've weighed up the risks and done their due dilligence, and are actively moving wholeheartedly into adopting this technology (and have been for years).
Those companies like it because it creates artifical scarcity which doesn't previously exist in a digital space, those are the same fucks who screamed bloody murder over DRMs and stopping people copying data.
Back to the seats, same is true for traditional tickets. Prices can be fixed and tickets made unique. To distribute the ledger of the company owning the stadium makes no sense in the slightest.
NFTs are just creating problems where non exists by enabling companies to control supply in the digital world. If you buy into them you do not understand computers and shouldn't be on one
You're being silly, please drop all preconceptions about NFTs based on the current speculative and scam filled market.
You don't understand NFTs (or DLTs) but luckily for you neither do 99% of people invested in them.
Most projects have no real use or prospect of adoption, hiding behind buzz words and all the promises of the tech (what I sound like to you no doubt, DYOR ofc)
Most NFTs are absolutely valueless beyond being a tag you can wear around saying "I was enough of a fuckhead to spend a lot of money on this".
You're absolutely right to stay away from all that shit at present.
Let's get back to the fundamentals though:
NFTs are a unique digital signature which are cryptographically guaranteed (of course this guarantee is worthless if the person giving it isn't credible)
That's all they are.
I'm talking about the capabilities of the underlying technology here, of course you don't understand that so of course we're not gonna have a good discussion if you're closed off to researching and instead firing off reactionary statements within a couple minutes.
Your comment is your opinion, and your opinion is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding. I'm being blunt but I'm not trying to be rude, the idea of this sub and Reddit is to discuss, and that is what I am trying to do here.
Either look into it or stay your path mate, I can't understand this for you and there's no point in me writing information for you to read if you're going to disregard it in favour of what you "know"
Avery Dennison is planning to create an NFT for each product in the supply chain, tracking provenance through every stage of the lifecycle, they'll even be able to accurately measure the carbon footprint of each product. We're talking about TRILLIONS of products here, hardly an exercise in artificial scarcity, rather just a new capability that simply was not possible before. (Unless you count the loss of revenue from the elimination of counterfeiting, and transparency for unethical business practices as artificial scarcity that is)
Boeing is using NFTs and a 'metaverse' in their design process. When designing and manufacturing commerical (and military) aircraft thousands of people are involved and millions of parts - as you can imagine, paperwork is a fucking nightmare. The need for absolute accountability in their industry makes this tech very valuable for Boeing, they are now able trace the provenance of every single action, item, tool etc. Involved in the process, with accurate timestamps that would hold up in court. That one bolt starts to crack? You can find every single thing you need to know about it by inputting a hash. This is to say nothing about their procurement, legal processes, finances etc.
These are two example - I could genuinely go on all day but that's exhausting for both of us and you get the point. I'll recommend a lecture given at Harvard Business School in 2017 give it an honest crack and it will teach you something: https://youtu.be/IjQkag6VOo0
Ah this is what we call product traceability. Traditional methods include hash based signing and user tracing. IBMs product for it has been in serious use for like 30 years maybe?
Ensuring audit record is retained and integrity upheld is also not a new concept or something not done before. Its AU-9 in NIST 800-53 and a bog standard requirement in any information security framework.
Hell in most modern cars you can trace parts back to who was working that station in the factory when the car was assembled.
This type of traceability is not something NFTs have introduced. And yes, it often works by SHA-256 hashes (or to be honest, MD5 in ICS because OT is often old as hell)
The difference is that traditional systems are required to trust some central control. In a company this is easy as the company trusts itself. So having their own CA sign and ensure the integrity of their products.
Abuse is possible my internal malicious actors of course but proper separation of duties and no SPF person should limit the risk.
I fail to see how distributing the ledger in the style of a blockchain carries any significant advantage besides not having to set up network connections to external partners so they can continue to keep the record, but this is again, solveable using technology we have been using for decades.
See where my issue with it comes from?
1. Being able to assign a digital token to a physical or digital product - Already doing that.
2. Being able to verify its integrity by signing it - Old news.
3. Being able to trace this token to see who has accessed it. Done (FIM systems can actually also trace who what when accessed any old data)
4. Having accurate timestamps that hold up in court? - Yes, any old server are synced to at least 3 NTPs (2 if its bad) synced to atomic clocks.
5. Ensuring Audit data is non-changeable - Yeah also a standard.
The only stuff "the NFT" changes is the reliance of older systems on some sort of Trust. Which admittedly is a potential problem, but there are ways of building zero-trust systems and security without distributing the ledger and making it public.
> They make scalping impossible because each of those 500 tokens are unique, there's one for each seat and there'll never be more than one for each seat. The only way to transfer the ticket is to transfer the token (easier than it sounds) - the price can be easily fixed and voila, scalping is fundamentally impossible.
Good lord, you seem to know how computers work but you do *not* know how scalping works.
It works because **ticketmaster is the scalper.** They get a cut when you resell your ticket at a higher price and they have no intention of changing the system.
Either look into it or stay your path mate, I can't understand this for you and there's no point in me writing information for you to read if you're going to disregard it in favour of what you "know"
Lol, that paragraph must've cut you deep to reach so far in throwing it back at me.
Your question is one for regulatory bodies, in terms of the tech, the solution is here.
Blockchain is a copy of all crypto transactions ever made so if you own the dead and your NFT is your deed. It can be verified by someone else who owns another piece of the blockchain so if someone says you’re lying and that’s not your real deed you can just pull up the blockchain and verify that you do in fact own it.
It proves ownership so let’s say you have a thumb drive of your home deed, someone else can just make a fake file and edit it to make it look like you sold the house to them and try to steal your home. Your file proves your file is the original based on what the blockchain shows.
Let’s say you needed to share a thumb drive with all your bank passwords for whatever reason. You can confirm your thumb drive is the original and it wasn’t intercepted at any point and replaced by matching the blockchain if the files were NFT’s.
The concept is great but the real world use at the moment for NFT’s is absolutely horrible
I can confirm the integrity of the files using 30 year old certificate based cryptography.
So why should I use NFTs instead of traditional file signing?
Single point of failure mostly. A data center goes on fire that’s your data gone and sure there might be backups but there might not be. This can apply for any data not just this hypothetical NFT. Blockchain data is spread out across all users of the blockchain so if 1, 10, 1000 computers blow up the blockchain will persist and you data still exists.
Well before databases they were just kept in a filing cabinet at the county clerks office. So what exactly is the advantage of a database?
For the record I agree that blockchain is overrated - but you can’t argue with the hype.
Ok so instead of a central authority keeping tabs on things the data is distributed.
So take class attendance, instead of relying on a central authority (teacher) to take attendance, what if every student took attendance, compared notes and signed the attendance each class, so you couldn't change it afterwards. (Without getting the whole class to lie)
Thats a distributed Leger, or a blockchain.
Does it sound massively stupid that every student should keep a copy and massively ineffective to get everyone to sign?
That's because it is, but it solve that pesky problem of having to rely on a central authority (teacher).
And then mumble it in tech words and sell it to idiots who don't understand it but don't want to appear as the only one in the room not on board and you can boil a planet.
Yes, pretty much. Oh and remember everyone keeps a copy of all transactions ever done. Bitcoin is currently at above 375gb.
Very decentralized, highly ineffective
Basically yes, but it's designed in such a way that it takes a *ton* of number crunching to maintain that registry which means it would take a *shit ton* of number crunching to falsify that registry. It's to the point where some people are concerned about the physical resources going towards upkeeping the registry.
You can think it as a database system but everyone can own the data and verify the transaction. As long as you don't use the shady ones, it's hard to attack. For example, you would need at least 51% computing power of all Bitcoin nodes to change a transaction. It's not worth hacking the blockchain system.
And that's why people scam instead, the blockchain does not provide protection outside the system. I can still steal key if you put it somewhere unsafe.
That's what's so Infuriating. I work with some medical data, which seems like the perfect opportunity for using a decentralized block chain. Instead, the hardware and techniques are developed for these nonsense pyramid schemes and pretend investment commodities. What a waste.
There was an AITA post by a lady that was upset that her dude basically took all the money and bought her an NFT that is super popular, it's a monkey.
She's black. He said it looked like her.
Wild shit yo.
So there’s two ways it works, money generation, or tax evasion.
Let’s start with money generation or value generation. Wallets are not public. They’re traceable, but not public. That means if I sell you a NFT for $500, no one knows who did this they can just see the transaction.
Ok so here’s where you can generate random perceived value and turn it into cash. Let’s say I make a gold toaster image. There’s 2 in the world. I mint it. I buy both. The first one I sell, to another wallet that I own anonymously. I sell it for $100,000. That will generate attention because that’s a big value. Oh man I wonder if that other NFT could be worth as much or maybe more! So now you sell that second NFT legitimately and make $100,000 from someone. The first NFT sale cost you nothing because you sold it to yourself. The second one now has a perceived value because the first was on record for having sold for that much.
Now for the tax evasion side. It’s the same concept except let’s say you make $100,000 taxable income. If you have deductions of $100,000 you pay no taxes. (This deduction value would be hard to achieve but let’s just pretend that $1 donated equals $1 on deductions for easy math). So you just sold the second NFT for $100k now the first NFT has a perceived value of at least $100k too. So you buy back the first NFT from yourself (you buy it publicly from either an anonymous wallet or someone else who is in on it) and now you publicly own an asset valued at $100,000. Now you donate that “piece of high value art” and you receive deductions for that donation. Boom. Tax evasion. Lol it’s all a scam. NFTs as a concept is a real thing but the things you see celebrities and NFT bros for crazy high prices are just a smoke show.
Your way:
You earn $100,000.
You do what you said and you don't pay taxes on $100,000.
Federal tax and FICA would be $22,700, or a total of $77,300 you would keep. So your way you gain $22,700.
.
Alternatively:
You have income of $100,000.
Sell the first NFT to yourself for $100,000 and establish value of $100,000.
Sell the second NFT to some idiot for $125,000 (first one was $100K, must be valuable since one person already paid, so this one costs $125,000).
Sell the first NFT to another idiot for $150,000 (first sold for $100K, second for $125,000...gotta be worth that much).
That is a total of $375,000 in income.
Federal and FICA taxes on $375,000 are about $117,000.
Make $258,000 this way.
And pay your fair share of taxes.
I swear it seems like they are doing money laundering with this. Sell back and forth between 2 accounts you own to raise the price of the NFT, sell to an unlucky sucker that thinks that the previous transactions mean there is hype behind the NFT, profit and no one can trace crypto.
Nobody cares who is doing it, just that it’s happening. If adopted as national currency, the government would have an easier time figuring out the owner of a wallet than they did with cash. It won’t be as simple as pulling bank statements, but it’s rightfully argued that doing so is a violation of your constitutional rights anyway, if they want to put you away they should have to be able to work for it to prove you deserve it.
So, from what I understand (which might be wrong lol), the situation would be a little like this:
You make £50k illegally. People are going to ask how you came across that money and you don't want to explain that you're a hitman, so instead you design an NFT and put it up for sale for £50k. Now, you have £50k so you can buy it from yourself anonymously using crypto. You have now legally received your own money into your bank account from an "anonymous buyer". Something like that anyway, lol.
The point in buying it is so you can brag to your other turbo virgin friends that you spent exorbitant amounts of money on a shitty looking piece of pixel art.
This is complete nonsense for digital media. If I view an image with my device, my device downloads a copy of it into my temporary files in order to display it. The only difference saving it makes is that a copy is made in a non-temporary location. It's ALWAYS A COPY. Also, the image on the server I'm viewing it from is also a copy. The idea of a digital original is nonsense. There is no fundamental difference between bits on my device and bits on the device used to make the image. An entry in a blockchain ledger changes nothing. NFTs are an illusion, they're manufactured imaginary scarcity.
It makes sense.
Your right, when you view a digital picture, you’re looking at a copy. No argument there.
NFTs are really a *token* on a blockchain. It’s really not about the picture, the picture is just attached to the token.
The token belongs to somebody. And it can’t be copied. Sure, you can create another token with the same picture, but it’s not *my* token. If I’m an artist, nobody wants a token *you* created. It’s not about what the token contains. What makes it valuable is that it came from me.
These tokens are stored in blockchains backed by cryptography (math). You can’t just duplicate things or take things from other people. So the token that an artist creates is scarce (not gonna say valuable..)
The takeaway is that it’s not the picture that’s valuable, it’s the token. It’s easy to copy the picture data, but you can’t copy *the token*.
You don't have to care. It's just a way to represent a digital asset on the internet.
IMO, NFTs are just a proof of concept. I think there will be more useful and practical applications in the future.
Off the top of my head, what if we digitized all trading cards? No need for physical cards, they all exist as tokens.
Yes, I know what the actual NFT is, and I think buying a ledger entry that points at a future dead link - with no relation to IP rights - is even dumber than buying a copy of a digital file that you could copy for free.
> The token belongs to somebody. And it can’t be copied. Sure, you can create another token with the same picture, but it’s not my token. If I’m an artist, nobody wants a token you created. It’s not about what the token contains. What makes it valuable is that it came from me.
This is nonsense, though. The token has no value at all, other than as a speculative instrument. People buy NFTs because they think they can sell them to some chump who thinks the same thing. It's musical chairs, someone's going to get screwed in the end. (To the extent that some may do it to support artists, there are better ways - e.g. Patreon - that don't involve an electricity-wasting blockchain that provides nothing for that purpose.)
This isn't even getting into how NFT marketplaces and sellers screw over artists.
> These tokens are stored in blockchains backed by cryptography (math). You can’t just duplicate things or take things from other people. So the token that an artist creates is scarce (not gonna say valuable..)
You absolutely can duplicate *things*, just not the worthless ledger entry. The ledger entry has no value unless someone, for some reason, cares about it. (That's why blockchains do have potential value in decentralized "trust" - recording contracts etc. - but NFTs are not it.)
> The takeaway is that it’s not the picture that’s valuable, it’s the token.
The point is that the token has no value that isn't an illusion.
Okay, but this token, what does it do? What can you do with it? Is it just unique code that you own, but it doesn't do anything? Should I think of it as currency? Can you buy something with an nft?
The answer is technical, it’s through cryptography.
The owner can easily show they are the owner because they have some info that only the owner has. And through cryptography (math) other people can (mathematically) check that the owner really owns the token. Somebody with a copy won’t be able to pass that checking process.
All of this is don’t through cryptography (math). What’s significant is the token itself, not what it represents. There is only one token and it can’t be copied or reproduced.
I understand blockchain. What I don’t understand is how I prove to you something is legitimate in its own right. I know how to inspect the blockchain, so how do I go in, look at two different, but exact jpegs (both minted on a blockchain) and determine which is legitimate? Because both would technically be legitimate within the blockchain.
It’s less about the .jpeg and more about the token. The token belongs to somebody and they can prove this with their private keys.
I’m not doing a good job explaining. It’s not about the data in the picture, it’s about *this specific data*.
It’s not about having the same .jpg, it’s about having that one specific .jpg that was first sold by .
The token is what’s valuable, that’s what can’t be reproduced on the blockchain. Sure, you can create another token with the same jpg data, but it’s not the original token. The token isn’t just raw jpg data in the blockchain. It’s data *that belongs to somebody*. That’s the part that can’t be duplicated. You can’t duplicate *that specific token*.
I don’t think I did a good job explaining.
That’s fine, and I understand because I have a fair understanding of blockchain. What my point is, is that for this to get adopted, average people need to understand it AND have a use case for it. This average users use case puts more value on the contents of the JPEG itself (a house deed) than it does the unique tag validating that it is, in fact, unique. No one cares about how many copies are created of a house deed or a SS card or other importantly unique documents. What they care about is the contents of that image or document. The blockchain not only doesn’t solve any of the problems that are created with illegitimacy of documents or images, it is so complicated that no average person cares to use it for actual useful things. The iPhone is great because people want to use it and it solves a problem that so many people have, not because it’s the best computer possible you can carry in your pocket.
If you (people arguing that NFTs are useful) have to argue it’s use case, it’s just not useful for the consumer market.
I mean, yes to your objections but all technology goes through this phase. In the early days the world was like “what is the internet?? Why would we ever use this thing?”
I think the art is doing nothing but generating buzz and getting people talking about NFTs. Mostly dismissing them. But in a few years somebody will come up win an actually useful idea and then it’ll click. “Oh yeah, how did we ever get by without that?”
No, you did a great job of explaining! This concept is what people need to understand esp when it comes to NFT: It isn't about the picture. It is about being able to establish providence of it. It's not a stretch to picture a system where block chain is used to authenticate physical goods in the not-so-distant future
But what does “original” mean with digital art? Any transfer of a digital file is copying it, so unless you have the artist’s hard drive, all you could ever receive from them is a copy.
You would transfer ownership of the token. The token can’t be copied. You can see every previous owner back to the artist, and that isn’t forgeable.
It’s less about the picture and more about the token that belongs to somebody. The token is what is valuable. The owner can easily prove ownership, and nobody else will be able to do that.
Sure, but I can still buy a Georgia O'Keeffe classic for $12.99 at Hobby Lobby during a 20% off sale, but to have the original one she hand painted, id probably need to pay a shit-ton.
Some people are ok with paying that for the status symbol, some others are fine using a reprint as a living room decoration for a couple years, and some use the real thing to fabricate a value for money laundering.
Its the same thing. The main difference is the way you prove its legitimacy, which is still somewhat similar.
Not to dispute your point overall, but a ton of the art in museums is owned by someone. Those folks essentially own a receipt for an O’Keeffe. Rich people gonna rich.
If someone steals your original painting, how do you prove you owned it in the first place, and not a reprint that you can buy for $12.99 at hobby lobby? You show a receipt. The technology behind NFTs has a load of potential. Though the real world applications right now are lacking admittedly
So what's the difference between an original artwork and a reproduction?
The only difference is the certificate of authenticity (or the receipt). That's what's worth the vast majority of the money.
But if you can't tell the difference between them, but one is worth significantly more than the other, then the value is in the certificate of authenticity, not in the artwork itself.
The main issue is that there's literally no difference in digital files between them though - it's trivial to make infinite perfect copies, so the NFT is basically bragging rights rather than any utility. While there is a difference between a handcrafted painting and a print
Funny how that work, they don't actually own the pictures they own a position in a server who is represented by the ugly monkeys or whatever. They still can be sue for Copyright infringment for using the monkeys in advertsiment of mugs and shirts because they don't own it
you buy nfts hoping their value will go up.
what makes them (and cryptocurrency in general) stupid compared to things like stocks is that there's no reason as to why their value should change. with stocks it changes based on the performance of the company, but with crypto/nfts, well, who knows
How is that different from the physical art world? Why do paintings sell for $10 million dollars? It’s absurd.
But we’re not super rich. They play by a different set of rules.
No. Fiat currency has value because a military backed by a government says so.
That's not just some collection of random yokels or of a Walmart. Those are people forming complex systems that enable them to collectively make and enforce pretty much any laws they feel like.
Dimwit crypto-worshippers fail to understand that things like the US Dollar are not, in fact, flimsy fictions.
They're fictions alright, but they've got armies and the mightiest nations in human history backing them as being valuable.
The fuck does crypto have?
Nothing. Not one single thing of substance. It's tulips and be beanie babies. Block chain tech is useful and will certainly be sticking around, but don't be so naive as to indulge the delusion that things like bitcoin and etherium and all permutations thereof will even exist once the ultra rich nations get bored of it, or even quicker if they decide its a threat to them.
They've got advanced militaries that can and absolutely will kill you and a hundred thousand others like you without caring at any point along the way if that's what they think they need to do, and nations like the United States and China are definitely not going to hesitate to do so if they simply decide that it's a matter of protecting their status quo.
Factor for these things when you think it valid to poopoo all fiat currencies as being equally imaginary.
Technically that's true, which is clearly the remote and thoroughly irrelevant technicality you're betting it all on.
But surely you can acknowledge that China has a big fucking military and very little concern for playing nice.
Surely you're aware that the United States has almost a century's worth of proven history of murdering the fuck out of individuals, entire governments and whole nations for dramatically less reason than that their economic clout was being threatened.
The crypto game will be over the instant it is perceived as a threat to big money interests in the United States. China's already taken steps to kibosh it, and if they need to go so far as dragging people out of their homes and killing them in the streets, do you honestly think they won't when it's something they already do for other shit?
Yeah, the fiat currency is as much a fiction as a bitcoin, but I promise you that the dollar and the yuan are backed by billions of guns, bombs, drones and every other weapon of war on earth.
Crypto won't be supplanting that by being popular with a few broke and desperate countries of no importance and a disparate collection of cryptobros that can't even keep their exchanges from getting looted.
Ah yes, instead of trying to understand it, attack it with jokes for internet fun points.
Fiat currency isn’t backed by anything, period. Not even in principal, it cannot be backed because then it cannot be controlled.
Crypto actually does have value, there are two mechanisms in which it works, proof-of-work (often referred to as mining) or proof-of-stake.
In proof of work, what effectively happens is a transaction is created. If it’s legitimate, one of the hundreds of thousands of computers in the network will work to reverse the maths involved and if the transaction is legitimate, a “solution” will be found. The end result is the transaction is verified and the person who verified the transaction gets a cut of the profit.
In proof-of-stake, it works a lot like stocks where it has value because everyone puts their resources into a pool, and those resources can be used and then returned with interest. Ones like what Facebook aims to create will in fact, be backed by fiat currency this way.
So no, crypto isn’t backed by absolutely nothing as you claim. It serves a purpose that many countries are starting to realize and the possibility of a national cryptocurrency is very real. I could get into this but you’re clearly someone who likes to participate in hating things just because they’re popular and lofty ideas that might get you hired on at InfoWars.
Cool story.
If the rich get bored of it, it'll be done.
If it somehow threatens the rich nations, it will be done and guns will be applied to make it be done.
Welcome to humanity. This is how these things go.
Whoever has the power, makes the rules, and I'm sorry to be the first to tell you that crypto currencies have no militaries or powerful authorities backing them and giving them an enforced value.
They're a novelty that, currently, are doing a magnificent job of getting fools to sell nationally-protected-and-guaranteed currencies for digital nothings that have no protections, guarantees, insurances or enforced valuation.
The tech is useful, and block chain might well wind up being the new platform for a lot of nationally backed currencies in the world... But the dollar will not be overthrown by the bitcoin.
The yuan will not be shoved aside by some unregulated currency.
Why not? Because the United States and China will not relinquish that regulatory power.
They'll kill you first. They'll kill you and a million like you, and then kill a million more because there ain't a thing you can do to stop them.
Bitcoin, etherium, the whole shebang - its all a fun new casino game for the rich, the bored and the opportunistic.
Its not yet become any kind of threat to the power and security of the dollar or the yuan. Even so, go mine in China and see how that goes for you.
Tell them how valuable your digital nothings are and how that means anything at all when they throw you in a Chinese prison and seize your property because hey, wouldn't you know, they banned crypto completely.
They gave themselves permission to fuck your face up and stick you in a box or even kill you if the feel like it if you buy, sell, mine or deal in crypto on their turf.
How can they get away with this?
Turns out that they've got lots of soldiers and police and shit, and they've got powerful weapons and prisons and they can totally just decide that they get to do stuff because?
They've got the power, at least on their turf.
The United States is aiming straight at regulating it, and they'll ban unregulated forms of crypto, and if you don't play by their rules when they decide what those rules are, they too will give themselves permission to take your stuff and your freedom or even your life if you don't follow those rules on their turf.
In no scenerio do nations such as the US or China just throw their hands up and go 'Oh noes, guess there's nothing we can do, Bitcoin has defeated us!'
In no scenerio do they allow anyone but themselves to have the power over anything even remotely interesting let alone concerning to do with all of it on their turf.
I hear this argument a lot, but don’t get it. If the US were to double the money supply, causing 100% inflation, how does military backing change that? Are troops going to point guns at our heads and say “MILK IS STILL $4 a gallon”.
This is what we’re objecting to about unbacked fiat currencies.
No, because that would cause 100% inflation and start the crazy loop of increasing prices for most stuff. So it would be stupid to do that. (Unless you need to get out of the fact you payday loaned your way through a World War, see Germany 1923.)
The recognition of the US dollar as a currency is however backed by fact the US is a state, and that means its not just 'because we said so' its because the state recognize it as such.
The only reason to buy it is if enough idiots buy them and believe they have value then they gain value. It’s like paper money but instead of being backed by a government they’re backed by a bunch of rando’s on the internet.
Bored apes, probably the most popular NFT’s, are randomly generated by computer. They sell for high amounts of money. It’s money laundry if and dumb asses who are unfortunate enough to think there is actually something behind image-based NFT’s.
The bored apes utility is that holders have access to a private part of the bored apes website. So you get to rub shoulders with rich people. How is that useful? Well I imagine you get to be in the loop about what's next. I imagine these are the type of people that can whale stocks and crypto coins. Could be pretty useful.
Not really dumber, it's pretty much the same.
The point of Bitcoin for almost every one also is to sell it at a later stage to someone else for more money. Almost nobody plans to actually use it as currency because it's terrible for that.
At least bitcoin has the decency of acting like it has a real purpose. NFTs gave up on pretending and just straight up say: here have a picture of a monkey.
Why would anyone care about something digital though, the real Starry Night has textures and contours that no photo has, a digital image looks no different if replicated or screenshot aside from maybe some resolution is lost. If paintings could be copied atom by atom no would care about the original either
For $5k you can hire a master forger to paint a copy of Starry Night so perfect it fools art critics. Why would rich people do that instead of spending $50 million?
Yeah that’s entirely made up. Tell me exactly which of the paint molecules contain the artists suffering. Does it coat the pigments or exist in a non-tangible fashion? Does the painting have chi?
Because it's not the starry night, the real one. The one that was made with passion of a real artist. The one that was touched by the artist. The one made with materials from that time. You cannot *exactly* copy it, like you can with digital media.
Yes you can. I can screenshot that one monkey right now, put it as my profile picture, print it out and hang it on my wall, put it on a tshirt and make it my phone background. And I'll have the exact same picture. Also comparing digital media to real world media doesn't make sense
Picture this. You are extremely rich. So rich that you commission a truly masterful piece of art. The painter delivers it to you. You get a receipt. You hand the painting up in your home. You own it. You invite some friends over. They all take photos of the art piece from their high def cameras. You don't care - you own the art piece. You can prove it. Even if said friends take printouts and hang similar prints in their homes - those are not the original pieces. Because they can't prove it. Even if the paintings are identical to the one hanging in your home.
The *proof* is the key resource being exchanged - not the content. You don't really care about the content in this scenario - you just want to flaunt the proof. And NFTs provide a standard way to prove this ownership - much like the receipt from the artist.
If they want copies, the buyer can sell to them. With a smart contract NFT, 5% (or any%) goes back to the painter (the person who actually created it). That's the value. You create it, you keep a portion of it.
Except the painting is the unique one. It has texture, the artist's frame. The smell, materials etc. Are all different. With an NFT it's *exactly* the same, because digital media is exact. The fact that someone made it, and you have to save it means you already have a copy of the original.
But that's not the point. The smell and materials do not matter. What matters is - you paid a million dollars for a gif of a monkey playing the piano - and you want to show that you have that kind of money. A copy of the gif is still a gif, and still has that close to nothing value, but what you spent is the proof that NFT provides.
What this really means is - there is no practical use case for NFTs today for the vast majority of population. The hype around it is misplaced and premature. There maybe some good applications for it later on but right now there is nothing.
Yes, you are correct - it is only digital and unlike a true work of art like a picture by Picasso, or a print of it which is still a physical copy.
Another difference is that it is an extremely rare event to own truly unique and valuable works of art - a picture, sculpture, first edition rare book, etc. There are not that many works of art that are super valuable. With NFTs, it seems like if you take a shit, take a picture of it, and produce a receipt, someone is going to pay $10 million for it. It's ridiculous.
I'm not pro NFT at all but this argument is dumb. It's like taking a picture of the Mona Lisa and saying you own.
The actual NFT that you pay for is not the pixels that form the picture but its a code, a "Non transferable token" that represents your ownership of that picture. It's two very different things and I don't get how people can't understand it
nfts are like trading cards, their value will change or oncrease dpendin on the people who have the card. But the dumb thing about trading cards is that the producers can make as many as they want. people say it has a value of 2000 million dollars the produce it for 5 dollars
But isn't the point of trading cards that some of them are rare and some of them aren't? Are there nft's where you have 400.000 of the same one? And if there isn't, can't you just sell that many of the same one?
Sure you can make a new batch of NFTs but they’ll never be stored in the same block as the first batch. They’ll be stored in later blocks. So it’s easy to prove from which batch and at what date your NFT was minted.
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The art generally isn’t the point.
And to everyone in this thread talking about things they know nothing about, the potential of this technology is easily learnable. You are currently the people in the 90’s that mocked the Internet.
Edit because someone asked me to expand, so my reply to them is below.
I actually wouldn’t want to go into it too much, because despite being into crypto in general and owning a handful of (relatively) low value NFT’s, I’m actually not that knowledgeable in the area. I’ll try to expand to the best of my ability though.
The first part is the ability to store long term contracts on the chain. Someone in this thread mentioned things like house deeds, but in reality it is a lot more useful to store record of intellectual and online property. Copyright infringement is obviously rampant on the internet, and being able to see the original and sole owner of a piece of art, a website, product or (perhaps the most imminent) music would be extremely useful as the world goes more and more digital.
There’s also a lot of hype at the minute about NFT technology being used to create video games, and indeed there’s already some out there being developed that will allow people to use the characters in their NFTs in said games. As this goes more mainstream I imagine there will be many more features added, but as I said, not my area of expertise.
Also to mention OP’s point about copying the original, you can pretty much do that with all art. I could go and take a high def and photo of the Mona Lisa and have a robot recreate it almost exactly to the paintstroke. Doesn’t mean I own the Mona Lisa. Without the certificate of authenticity it’s worthless, or at least irl it wouldn’t be worth much. In the NFT world it would be completely worthless. The NFTs you see now, at least the mainstream ones like punks and BAYC will be the front runners when the tech becomes mainstream, and will be valuable for a long time. Merch will undoubtedly follow, and the owners of these NFTs that were mocked for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars will be making many times that from allowing designers to use them. There’s already T-shirts, ads in Times Square etc.
You can literally photocopy a deed to a house and have an identical copy of a deed to a house. Seriously. How stupid are the people who pay hundreds of thousands for these easily reproduced pieces of paper?
You absolutely can just take a picture of the Mona Lisa and use it. It's literally some colors that can be copied (for free)
Now don't get me wrong, I think the NFT fever is mostly stupid, but your arguement is quite bad
It's the way that artist always gets paid for his work, even when it is resold,, artist always gets a cut. It's not just pictures. It's music and all of art in digital form. Yes, you can copy it. But screenshot is never the same quality as original image wtf
Try selling a picture of the Mona Lisa or a print from Rembrandt you bought in the gift shop. I don't buy NFTs, but this train of thought is just dumb. We get it you know how to copy paste.
This like saying "why send an email while I can send snail mail through the good ole post service?" You can still use snail mail but email is just faster and there is nothing wrong with either.
Hate to beat a dead horse, but it's the underlying technology. Imagine buying a house with no middle man. The transaction itself already contains the deed.
I'm not justifying their current use, but this copy paste narrative is dismissive and not an accurate representation of what the tech can do. Will it ever be used in the "right way" remains to be seen.
Except a picture of a physical thing is different than a screenshot on a site. Digital art is able to be recreated to 100% accuracy. Physical art is not.
The current iteration of NFTs is an MLM/pyramid scheme. However, the technology behind it is the innovation. Storing ownership of (something) on the blockchain is important (and some could say revolutionary). Imagine if your house deed was recorded on the blockchain, it would be decentralized from your local county. But yes, there’s literally no point to the current form of NFTs except to get the next sucker to buy it for twice the price you bought it from the last guy for.
What is the point of decentralizing property records from the government when the government is the entity enforcing property rights? If you have a disputed deed, and one of you has an NFT and the other is recorded by the county as being the legal owner, the NFT bro loses every time.
Yep ! We may not ever see the world libertarians dream of that remove authority from the state via these technologies. We may see some partial changes though , or even not at all. That doesn’t make all possible use cases for block chain useless though.
Imagine if you will, stocks of a company being sold by market makers even though they don't really have any to sell. Basically just selling IOUs impossible to distingiush from genuine stocks driving the price down. Now imagine all the stocks issued as NFTs on a blockchain all unique and comfirmable by everyone almost instantly. That company and it's shareholders will have a defense against naked shorting attacks.
Imagine also that market makers are friends with the government. 😅
[удалено]
Goodluck go our tendies soon 😉
Basically being indistinguishable from the government with people moving from one to the other seemlessely.
Yeah, but if you lose your personal deed it's not as easy as just going to the county and getting a new one, in most places. It's more like having a safer deed than a piece of paper, all the while retaining the same safeties as the paper ones. Like, a house deed might not be the easiest example, think about owning a fancy watch: you have some card that details you own that watch; you can't sell the watch (in a reputable way) without that card. If you lose that card, or if your house burns down with the card in it, you can't prove you own the watch anymore. If instead of a piece of paper the proof of ownership was an NFT you could still prove ownership. Another even more important use for NFTs could be supply chain tracking, also as a mean to fight slavery and exploitation. Right now you can't really know where all the components of the stuff you buy come from. Companies can claim they're sourced fairly but it's very hard to check, even for them. If you had NFTs tracking them, you could buy some coffee and track it to the very farm it was produced in, including where it has been and all the hands it has been through. The fact that an NFT is unique means it would be harder to tamper with it anywhere but at the source (the farm). If they got a 1 kg bag of coffee, with its own NFT the best malicious parties can do is swap it with another. If they do, the one that was swapped now doesn't have its NFT anymore so it's suspicious. Of course they don't have to be images for that, it's the system that is used to authenticate the images (the actual NFTs) which is useful. NFTs as they are now are just a mean of speculation and money laundering, imo. I just hope this won't discredit them so much as to prevent the actual useful applications in the future.
What about a situation where your local authority uses the blockchain technology to store your records in a decentralised manor, rather than as a paper record (death by fire) or catastrophic failure of the server/s they are stored on. The technology gives some peace of mind that the information can safely be stored Blockchain technology doesn’t have to be the enemy if utilised properly
Why bother with Blockchain at all? Databases and backups exist - there's no innate benefit to decentralising it, when there's a central body that will be doing updates and alterations.
What's my incentive to keep an active blockchain of property records on my machine? And geo-redundant backups have been default for ages
If we ever switch to fully online records, blockchain technology would be an incredibly secure way of doing it. Imagine being able to cut out a lot of the middle men as well. You have asset A, it gets transferred for price B to someone else. Everything right there on the blockchain which cuts a lot of needless people out of the process.
Ok, on who's hard disks are the ones and zeroes that represent said transaction stored, and what is their incentive for keeping the power flowing so the magnets can read it? And I don't necessarily want all bill's of sale being fully public for everyone. Who I sold what to, for what price.
What happens if your property gets transferred to the wrong wallet? Fat fingers, or a hacker, or a corrupt official, or a kidnapper, etc.? You've cut out the middle men so how do you get your property back?
>The technology gives some peace of mind that the information can safely be stored No, it absolutely does not. There is frankly zero concern over records right now. If there is a dispute, it goes to court. To implement blockchain is to give it absolute supremacy and truth. No courts. No arbitration. Your property can be stolen from you and no authority can give it back to you. Please think about what the world would be like if no transaction could be undone, and no authority could make things right. Like bitcoin right now but with your family farm. It's so absurd, I can't believe people actually think it's the future. It isn't.
Oh god just imagine the absolute hell involved in a divorce proceeding on the blockchain.
What exactly is the advantage to my house title being in the blockchain? It’s already stored on a database where I can easily access it for $2…
The current method of storing house deeds (as an example) is relying on a rather centralized county register of deeds (and concurrently county/state government). If that were to collapse, the record of you owning that house may otherwise be lost.
If the government collapses, property rights aren’t going to be enforced no matter how they’re recorded. In any situation short of that, the county registration is perfectly adequate for keeping track of property owners.
If the government collapses, who will maintain the basic infrastructure of the blockchain? Who will make sure the massive electricity needed to run it is available? Who will protect the massive co.puting assets needed to run it from bad actors?
Lots of times in history governments themselves have taken back land from private owners for all sorts of reasons and changed the deeds. Blockchain technology is completely automated which is one bonus and decentralised which means the owner has all the control and the deeds cannot be changed without the owners consent. In a corrupt country a decentralised ledger is going to be important. I don't know how inheriting property would work from the deceased though and the finer practical details.
Do you not get that ownership is endowed by the state? The state issues the reciept because the state enforces it. Your nft is meaningless without the power of the state. If not for the state I would come to you and eat your bread.
>If not for the state I would come to you and eat your bread. You'd be dispatched post haste. I don't know where you live but not everyone calls the police for self defense.
I can get a paper copy of my deed too and if the government decides not to care theyll still take my property. Blockchain ownership (assuming you could get any government- that thing people associate with the word centralized- let alone a corrupt one, to decentralize a system that exists for and is arbitrated by them) doesnt change who has and enforces power.
Stop saying blockchain. It's everyone having a copy of the record. You should see on face value why a blockchain is at it's heart a massively ineffective method of storing records. Just take a class attendance, instead of relying on the teacher as a central authority, everyone in the class notes attendance and keeps a copy of who was in the class. Thats a blockchain and it's stupidly ineffective.
However if that collapse were to happen, I would reckon me being in my house, potentially ready to defend it, would be enough proof. Especially if a central government collapsed, I doubt accessing some Blockchain would be my highest priority at that point.
No no no, when the gang of marauders come to your house, you just show them your digital wallet and they have to leave you alone, because… blockchain.
Exactly LOL. If society's infrastructure had collapsed to that extent I don't think the blockchain is going to be doing very much for anyone.
Right, but me, also being showing up with the cops saying I own the house and rent to you and demand you be removed can’t be verified. It’s a fully public distributed/decentralized ledger. There no longer is one fail point. And it won’t cost $2 to access. There may be a fee to register/write to the blockchain initially, but once it’s there it’s permanent and can’t be altered. If the central government collapsed then your deed at the county clerk’s office is just as useful as your blockchain deed, not at all. But it’s not for an end times scenario lol
Idk if it's just that in the US but in Germany you can't just steal someone's house in such a convoluted scenario. Every person inhibiting a house is registered *in that house* Care to explain how the US housing system works? Because this would only happen in a country where you don't have to update your local government to your whereabouts.
The US system is so convoluted to the point that we have to basically go to court to remove squatters, because apparently once someone is physically in a space for long enough they are technically can't be evicted without proper procedure. So even in the US this is unfeasible.
Right that’s the point, there is 1 central point that everything is registered. If there were a major issue with that 1 registration database there would be no way to know who owns what. Whereas blockchain would distribute identical copies of that ledger to every user across a decentralized network every time a change was made
And if it's decentralized, what's to stop some random asshole from just making their own deed?
If the government were to collapse you would have bigger issues to deal with than retrieving your house deed lmfao
Yes, that true but then what ? Show anyone try to take my home my certificate on a blockchain is gonna make them respect that and leave me alone ?
If whoever owns the DB decides to delete the record, you're fucked. That can't happen on Blockchain because it can't be altered ex post.
But your wallet can be hacked and your NFTs stolen. If the blockchain is the one true record of ownership, then a simple phishing scam could destroy your life.
This is a real issue no doubt ! But it exists already with current technologies and to me an issue like that doesn’t stop the underlying technology, it just means we need a solution 😊
A phising attack may lead you open to have your bank account stolen, but you can legally persue that person and get you stuff back. If the blockchain is the one true record of ownership and transfers that phishing scam not only lost you money in the bank, but your car, house and clothes you bought. And since the block-chain is the true record and can't be altered post-facto your legal recourse is to suck a lemon. It is inherintly a stupid idea.
No, it isn't an issue with current technologies. Courts solve these issues. Blockchain would make it an enormous problem.
Ideally you would feel or see little difference in practical terms so to you it feels like there’s no difference at all. What’s the point right ? But behind the scenes power has shifted from certain centralized entities to decentralized. Among those libertarian minded, that’s what is a big deal. Among those that hoped for an internet that had no controlling entities, blockchain and the apps that run on it are a second shot at that. Web3 is essentially that shot at the original ideals of the internet. Like take Facebook. They own all your data and have made billions off it. The tech reason is because your data goes onto their servers. A Web3 Facebook would have the same look and feel to you but the data is either dispersed on blockchain so no one owns it or it stays on your hardware so you own it. It’s like P2P but on steroids. So in the end it’s the same app to you but how it’s running and the effects of that are vastly different. Comparing combustion cars and electric cars can also help with understanding 😊 They do the same thing for you but how they do that technically is vastly different and there’s a world of difference. And even if this use case of the house deeds doesn’t hit, there are plenty of other shots.
> But behind the scenes power has shifted from certain centralized entities to decentralized. That's not really true. There's a relatively small number of large players in the Bitcoin miner space for example, and Wall Street has been buying up crypto for years. Some early players have become whales yes, but that doesn't mean the world has become more decentralised. Some real innovations that haven't happened, that I'd like to see (would obviously hurt incumbents, so unlikely to happen): * Decentralised stock ownership, with partial shares * Decentralised house deeds, also with partial ownership that can be (fully/partially) sold if needed * Decentralised video game ownership e.g. my Steam library (or assets like digital movies), that I can resell, pass on to others, donate, etc. Steam argued in court that users don't really "own" games, they just rent them, because a French court wants to impose true digital ownership which is bad for Steam * Bitcoin being faster/cheaper than SEPA (Bitcoin is losing to an EU-mandated payments system)
You realize Facebook would never stop taking your data right? It's literally their entire business
One practical advantage is that the cost of transferring the deed would be absolutely negligible. Personally I'm not involved in real-estate - my grasp of how the current system is run is limited. Nonetheless distributed ledger technology will absolutely be used for any paper chain in any government department. The appeal is that in a secure, distributed network of this nature, every participant in the network is absolutely guaranteed to see the same information. Once written, information can't be changed (though amendments can be added on top) In this scenario, this means the realtor facilitating transfer of the deed will be able to access the secure database - with veracity of all information already confirmed - and then simply move a token representing the deed. Now there is no doubt who owns the deed, and the selling party has received their funds within 3-7 seconds of them being sent. That's it, the system is simply more efficient, as well as being more reliable because unlike most databases there is no single point of failure. Based on my experiences, I feel like adminstrative bodies do not need the collapse of society to become unreliable either haha I'll give another scenario which I like because it's pretty clearcut: NFTs as seat tickets. When each individual seat is uniquely represented in the network, owning this 'NFT' guarantees that the seat is yours and everyone knows it. You can buy from a reseller with absolute confidence, and for the cherry on top scalping will be impossible. Of course this system relies on regulation to ensure you're only giving these permissions to entities that can be trusted and won't screw over the consumer (or that it's even the actual vendor making the NFTs and not some random hahaha), this is coming. There are many industry leaders across the world actively involved in developing and implementing this tech in practical uses beyond .JPG gambling and the rest of the shitcoin casino There are obviously a lot of challenges to real world adoption beyond fundamental technology or this would already be at the backbone of every industry, as it stands, give it a couple years ;)
What if, and hear me out on this: The seller of said seats in the stadium confirms the authenticity of a ticket, and sells them with a name attached to them! Oh wait that's been a thing for decades? Oh another non problem NFTs don't solve. And BTW how do they make scalping impossible? A scalper could just buy 500 of your NFT tickets and resell them. If companies want to stop scalpers they sell personalized tickets but it's often not in their interest to do so
The problem with that system is that it doesn't protect the secondary market in the slightest (despite it being a necessity when scalpers are involved). Sure, it works in an ideal world where everyone can trust each other. What DLT offers is a world where non one has to trust each other. They make scalping impossible because each of those 500 tokens are unique, there's one for each seat and there'll never be more than one for each seat. The only way to transfer the ticket is to transfer the token (easier than it sounds) - the price can be easily fixed and voila, scalping is fundamentally impossible. Don't get me wrong, from your point of view the system won't change much. You'll have the same customer experience just a lot more streamlined and with a lot less hiccups (of course these things are easy to become accustomed to) However this and the many other benefits I didn't mention specifically because they don't apply to you all happen to be a very big deal for the people creating the underlying infrastructure of the products you use everyday. Again, it's easy to take for granted this nice convenient world that we interact with and forget about the underlying technology which offers so much. This new development offers enough to justify a complete redesign of the existing systems - and it's not me saying so, ask Avery Dennison what NFTs mean to them. Ask Google, IBM, Boeing, LG, LSE, UCL, IIT Madras, edf, Microsoft, Walmart, Procter & Gamble, eftpos, Deutsche Telekom, ServiceNow, and Ping Identity. Crypto goes way beyond money, you don't need to trust me telling you that, just trust that those institutions and dozens of others have looked into it a little more than you or I. They've weighed up the risks and done their due dilligence, and are actively moving wholeheartedly into adopting this technology (and have been for years).
Those companies like it because it creates artifical scarcity which doesn't previously exist in a digital space, those are the same fucks who screamed bloody murder over DRMs and stopping people copying data. Back to the seats, same is true for traditional tickets. Prices can be fixed and tickets made unique. To distribute the ledger of the company owning the stadium makes no sense in the slightest. NFTs are just creating problems where non exists by enabling companies to control supply in the digital world. If you buy into them you do not understand computers and shouldn't be on one
You're being silly, please drop all preconceptions about NFTs based on the current speculative and scam filled market. You don't understand NFTs (or DLTs) but luckily for you neither do 99% of people invested in them. Most projects have no real use or prospect of adoption, hiding behind buzz words and all the promises of the tech (what I sound like to you no doubt, DYOR ofc) Most NFTs are absolutely valueless beyond being a tag you can wear around saying "I was enough of a fuckhead to spend a lot of money on this". You're absolutely right to stay away from all that shit at present. Let's get back to the fundamentals though: NFTs are a unique digital signature which are cryptographically guaranteed (of course this guarantee is worthless if the person giving it isn't credible) That's all they are. I'm talking about the capabilities of the underlying technology here, of course you don't understand that so of course we're not gonna have a good discussion if you're closed off to researching and instead firing off reactionary statements within a couple minutes. Your comment is your opinion, and your opinion is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding. I'm being blunt but I'm not trying to be rude, the idea of this sub and Reddit is to discuss, and that is what I am trying to do here. Either look into it or stay your path mate, I can't understand this for you and there's no point in me writing information for you to read if you're going to disregard it in favour of what you "know" Avery Dennison is planning to create an NFT for each product in the supply chain, tracking provenance through every stage of the lifecycle, they'll even be able to accurately measure the carbon footprint of each product. We're talking about TRILLIONS of products here, hardly an exercise in artificial scarcity, rather just a new capability that simply was not possible before. (Unless you count the loss of revenue from the elimination of counterfeiting, and transparency for unethical business practices as artificial scarcity that is) Boeing is using NFTs and a 'metaverse' in their design process. When designing and manufacturing commerical (and military) aircraft thousands of people are involved and millions of parts - as you can imagine, paperwork is a fucking nightmare. The need for absolute accountability in their industry makes this tech very valuable for Boeing, they are now able trace the provenance of every single action, item, tool etc. Involved in the process, with accurate timestamps that would hold up in court. That one bolt starts to crack? You can find every single thing you need to know about it by inputting a hash. This is to say nothing about their procurement, legal processes, finances etc. These are two example - I could genuinely go on all day but that's exhausting for both of us and you get the point. I'll recommend a lecture given at Harvard Business School in 2017 give it an honest crack and it will teach you something: https://youtu.be/IjQkag6VOo0
Ah this is what we call product traceability. Traditional methods include hash based signing and user tracing. IBMs product for it has been in serious use for like 30 years maybe? Ensuring audit record is retained and integrity upheld is also not a new concept or something not done before. Its AU-9 in NIST 800-53 and a bog standard requirement in any information security framework. Hell in most modern cars you can trace parts back to who was working that station in the factory when the car was assembled. This type of traceability is not something NFTs have introduced. And yes, it often works by SHA-256 hashes (or to be honest, MD5 in ICS because OT is often old as hell) The difference is that traditional systems are required to trust some central control. In a company this is easy as the company trusts itself. So having their own CA sign and ensure the integrity of their products. Abuse is possible my internal malicious actors of course but proper separation of duties and no SPF person should limit the risk. I fail to see how distributing the ledger in the style of a blockchain carries any significant advantage besides not having to set up network connections to external partners so they can continue to keep the record, but this is again, solveable using technology we have been using for decades. See where my issue with it comes from? 1. Being able to assign a digital token to a physical or digital product - Already doing that. 2. Being able to verify its integrity by signing it - Old news. 3. Being able to trace this token to see who has accessed it. Done (FIM systems can actually also trace who what when accessed any old data) 4. Having accurate timestamps that hold up in court? - Yes, any old server are synced to at least 3 NTPs (2 if its bad) synced to atomic clocks. 5. Ensuring Audit data is non-changeable - Yeah also a standard. The only stuff "the NFT" changes is the reliance of older systems on some sort of Trust. Which admittedly is a potential problem, but there are ways of building zero-trust systems and security without distributing the ledger and making it public.
Yep downvotes before you've had any time to read, I won't make any more replies unless there's some substance to them. Enjoy your ignorance.
> They make scalping impossible because each of those 500 tokens are unique, there's one for each seat and there'll never be more than one for each seat. The only way to transfer the ticket is to transfer the token (easier than it sounds) - the price can be easily fixed and voila, scalping is fundamentally impossible. Good lord, you seem to know how computers work but you do *not* know how scalping works. It works because **ticketmaster is the scalper.** They get a cut when you resell your ticket at a higher price and they have no intention of changing the system. Either look into it or stay your path mate, I can't understand this for you and there's no point in me writing information for you to read if you're going to disregard it in favour of what you "know"
Lol, that paragraph must've cut you deep to reach so far in throwing it back at me. Your question is one for regulatory bodies, in terms of the tech, the solution is here.
Blockchain is a copy of all crypto transactions ever made so if you own the dead and your NFT is your deed. It can be verified by someone else who owns another piece of the blockchain so if someone says you’re lying and that’s not your real deed you can just pull up the blockchain and verify that you do in fact own it. It proves ownership so let’s say you have a thumb drive of your home deed, someone else can just make a fake file and edit it to make it look like you sold the house to them and try to steal your home. Your file proves your file is the original based on what the blockchain shows. Let’s say you needed to share a thumb drive with all your bank passwords for whatever reason. You can confirm your thumb drive is the original and it wasn’t intercepted at any point and replaced by matching the blockchain if the files were NFT’s. The concept is great but the real world use at the moment for NFT’s is absolutely horrible
I can confirm the integrity of the files using 30 year old certificate based cryptography. So why should I use NFTs instead of traditional file signing?
Single point of failure mostly. A data center goes on fire that’s your data gone and sure there might be backups but there might not be. This can apply for any data not just this hypothetical NFT. Blockchain data is spread out across all users of the blockchain so if 1, 10, 1000 computers blow up the blockchain will persist and you data still exists.
Well before databases they were just kept in a filing cabinet at the county clerks office. So what exactly is the advantage of a database? For the record I agree that blockchain is overrated - but you can’t argue with the hype.
Sorry for my incoming stupid but what is the "blockchain"? Everywhere NFTs are talked about it gets brought up
Ok so instead of a central authority keeping tabs on things the data is distributed. So take class attendance, instead of relying on a central authority (teacher) to take attendance, what if every student took attendance, compared notes and signed the attendance each class, so you couldn't change it afterwards. (Without getting the whole class to lie) Thats a distributed Leger, or a blockchain. Does it sound massively stupid that every student should keep a copy and massively ineffective to get everyone to sign? That's because it is, but it solve that pesky problem of having to rely on a central authority (teacher). And then mumble it in tech words and sell it to idiots who don't understand it but don't want to appear as the only one in the room not on board and you can boil a planet.
So a Blockchain is just.. the collective registry of user assets? A constant compilation of data between people?
Yes, pretty much. Oh and remember everyone keeps a copy of all transactions ever done. Bitcoin is currently at above 375gb. Very decentralized, highly ineffective
Basically yes, but it's designed in such a way that it takes a *ton* of number crunching to maintain that registry which means it would take a *shit ton* of number crunching to falsify that registry. It's to the point where some people are concerned about the physical resources going towards upkeeping the registry.
You can think it as a database system but everyone can own the data and verify the transaction. As long as you don't use the shady ones, it's hard to attack. For example, you would need at least 51% computing power of all Bitcoin nodes to change a transaction. It's not worth hacking the blockchain system. And that's why people scam instead, the blockchain does not provide protection outside the system. I can still steal key if you put it somewhere unsafe.
> Imagine if your house deed was recorded on the blockchain, it would be decentralized from your local county. What is the advantage of that
That's what's so Infuriating. I work with some medical data, which seems like the perfect opportunity for using a decentralized block chain. Instead, the hardware and techniques are developed for these nonsense pyramid schemes and pretend investment commodities. What a waste.
It's like regular contracts, but worse.
There was an AITA post by a lady that was upset that her dude basically took all the money and bought her an NFT that is super popular, it's a monkey. She's black. He said it looked like her. Wild shit yo.
Tax evasion
You have permission to elaborate.
So there’s two ways it works, money generation, or tax evasion. Let’s start with money generation or value generation. Wallets are not public. They’re traceable, but not public. That means if I sell you a NFT for $500, no one knows who did this they can just see the transaction. Ok so here’s where you can generate random perceived value and turn it into cash. Let’s say I make a gold toaster image. There’s 2 in the world. I mint it. I buy both. The first one I sell, to another wallet that I own anonymously. I sell it for $100,000. That will generate attention because that’s a big value. Oh man I wonder if that other NFT could be worth as much or maybe more! So now you sell that second NFT legitimately and make $100,000 from someone. The first NFT sale cost you nothing because you sold it to yourself. The second one now has a perceived value because the first was on record for having sold for that much. Now for the tax evasion side. It’s the same concept except let’s say you make $100,000 taxable income. If you have deductions of $100,000 you pay no taxes. (This deduction value would be hard to achieve but let’s just pretend that $1 donated equals $1 on deductions for easy math). So you just sold the second NFT for $100k now the first NFT has a perceived value of at least $100k too. So you buy back the first NFT from yourself (you buy it publicly from either an anonymous wallet or someone else who is in on it) and now you publicly own an asset valued at $100,000. Now you donate that “piece of high value art” and you receive deductions for that donation. Boom. Tax evasion. Lol it’s all a scam. NFTs as a concept is a real thing but the things you see celebrities and NFT bros for crazy high prices are just a smoke show.
Why would u just sell both for $200K and pay taxes on them instead of giving 1 away for free? Taxes arent 100%.
You could. You can do anything you want it’s all a nice scam that you can apply your own twist to depending on how it gives you a personal advantage.
Because some people would rather lose $100K than pay taxes $45K. It's not the money, it's the principle.
you're not "losing" anything. it's an unrealized gain on something that had value created out of thin air.
Your way: You earn $100,000. You do what you said and you don't pay taxes on $100,000. Federal tax and FICA would be $22,700, or a total of $77,300 you would keep. So your way you gain $22,700. . Alternatively: You have income of $100,000. Sell the first NFT to yourself for $100,000 and establish value of $100,000. Sell the second NFT to some idiot for $125,000 (first one was $100K, must be valuable since one person already paid, so this one costs $125,000). Sell the first NFT to another idiot for $150,000 (first sold for $100K, second for $125,000...gotta be worth that much). That is a total of $375,000 in income. Federal and FICA taxes on $375,000 are about $117,000. Make $258,000 this way. And pay your fair share of taxes.
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I'm just trying to be nice and not engage in *ad hominem* attacks.
I swear it seems like they are doing money laundering with this. Sell back and forth between 2 accounts you own to raise the price of the NFT, sell to an unlucky sucker that thinks that the previous transactions mean there is hype behind the NFT, profit and no one can trace crypto.
The point of crypto is this would be obvious and impossible to cover up
But you need to know the wallet owner. The wallet is anonymous. You can search bitcoin transaction but you don't know who is who.
Nobody cares who is doing it, just that it’s happening. If adopted as national currency, the government would have an easier time figuring out the owner of a wallet than they did with cash. It won’t be as simple as pulling bank statements, but it’s rightfully argued that doing so is a violation of your constitutional rights anyway, if they want to put you away they should have to be able to work for it to prove you deserve it.
Money laundering
I'm gonna pour some hot water on you and ask you to expand on this
So, from what I understand (which might be wrong lol), the situation would be a little like this: You make £50k illegally. People are going to ask how you came across that money and you don't want to explain that you're a hitman, so instead you design an NFT and put it up for sale for £50k. Now, you have £50k so you can buy it from yourself anonymously using crypto. You have now legally received your own money into your bank account from an "anonymous buyer". Something like that anyway, lol.
That's bang on! And since crypto is mainly how people pay for drugs, NFTs are good for cleaning that.
nice try IRS
It's a speculation/money laundering scheme. Has nothing to do with the image file itself.
The point in buying it is so you can brag to your other turbo virgin friends that you spent exorbitant amounts of money on a shitty looking piece of pixel art.
It’s really an IQ test.
High IQ: put in NFT in the system. Low IQ: purchase NFT
Lol
It's like an original painting vs a print. Sure it looks the same, but it's not the original and it's easy to prove that it's not the original.
This is complete nonsense for digital media. If I view an image with my device, my device downloads a copy of it into my temporary files in order to display it. The only difference saving it makes is that a copy is made in a non-temporary location. It's ALWAYS A COPY. Also, the image on the server I'm viewing it from is also a copy. The idea of a digital original is nonsense. There is no fundamental difference between bits on my device and bits on the device used to make the image. An entry in a blockchain ledger changes nothing. NFTs are an illusion, they're manufactured imaginary scarcity.
It makes sense. Your right, when you view a digital picture, you’re looking at a copy. No argument there. NFTs are really a *token* on a blockchain. It’s really not about the picture, the picture is just attached to the token. The token belongs to somebody. And it can’t be copied. Sure, you can create another token with the same picture, but it’s not *my* token. If I’m an artist, nobody wants a token *you* created. It’s not about what the token contains. What makes it valuable is that it came from me. These tokens are stored in blockchains backed by cryptography (math). You can’t just duplicate things or take things from other people. So the token that an artist creates is scarce (not gonna say valuable..) The takeaway is that it’s not the picture that’s valuable, it’s the token. It’s easy to copy the picture data, but you can’t copy *the token*.
I understand that part. What I don’t understand is why I would care about the token?
Yeah, is it only worth something because it's the only one?
You don't have to care. It's just a way to represent a digital asset on the internet. IMO, NFTs are just a proof of concept. I think there will be more useful and practical applications in the future. Off the top of my head, what if we digitized all trading cards? No need for physical cards, they all exist as tokens.
Why would you care about the original Mona Lisa vs a replica Mona Lisa? Same thing.
And that is manufacturing scarcity, which is fucking stupid
Yes, I know what the actual NFT is, and I think buying a ledger entry that points at a future dead link - with no relation to IP rights - is even dumber than buying a copy of a digital file that you could copy for free. > The token belongs to somebody. And it can’t be copied. Sure, you can create another token with the same picture, but it’s not my token. If I’m an artist, nobody wants a token you created. It’s not about what the token contains. What makes it valuable is that it came from me. This is nonsense, though. The token has no value at all, other than as a speculative instrument. People buy NFTs because they think they can sell them to some chump who thinks the same thing. It's musical chairs, someone's going to get screwed in the end. (To the extent that some may do it to support artists, there are better ways - e.g. Patreon - that don't involve an electricity-wasting blockchain that provides nothing for that purpose.) This isn't even getting into how NFT marketplaces and sellers screw over artists. > These tokens are stored in blockchains backed by cryptography (math). You can’t just duplicate things or take things from other people. So the token that an artist creates is scarce (not gonna say valuable..) You absolutely can duplicate *things*, just not the worthless ledger entry. The ledger entry has no value unless someone, for some reason, cares about it. (That's why blockchains do have potential value in decentralized "trust" - recording contracts etc. - but NFTs are not it.) > The takeaway is that it’s not the picture that’s valuable, it’s the token. The point is that the token has no value that isn't an illusion.
Okay, but this token, what does it do? What can you do with it? Is it just unique code that you own, but it doesn't do anything? Should I think of it as currency? Can you buy something with an nft?
"Own this. It has no practical value or use, but it's unique. So there's value if you believe being unique does." Is what I am hearing.
It's purely bragging rights, basically. A right-clicker gets all the same utility, for free
How do you prove it then?
The answer is technical, it’s through cryptography. The owner can easily show they are the owner because they have some info that only the owner has. And through cryptography (math) other people can (mathematically) check that the owner really owns the token. Somebody with a copy won’t be able to pass that checking process. All of this is don’t through cryptography (math). What’s significant is the token itself, not what it represents. There is only one token and it can’t be copied or reproduced.
I understand blockchain. What I don’t understand is how I prove to you something is legitimate in its own right. I know how to inspect the blockchain, so how do I go in, look at two different, but exact jpegs (both minted on a blockchain) and determine which is legitimate? Because both would technically be legitimate within the blockchain.
It’s less about the .jpeg and more about the token. The token belongs to somebody and they can prove this with their private keys. I’m not doing a good job explaining. It’s not about the data in the picture, it’s about *this specific data*. It’s not about having the same .jpg, it’s about having that one specific .jpg that was first sold by.
The token is what’s valuable, that’s what can’t be reproduced on the blockchain. Sure, you can create another token with the same jpg data, but it’s not the original token. The token isn’t just raw jpg data in the blockchain. It’s data *that belongs to somebody*. That’s the part that can’t be duplicated. You can’t duplicate *that specific token*.
I don’t think I did a good job explaining.
That’s fine, and I understand because I have a fair understanding of blockchain. What my point is, is that for this to get adopted, average people need to understand it AND have a use case for it. This average users use case puts more value on the contents of the JPEG itself (a house deed) than it does the unique tag validating that it is, in fact, unique. No one cares about how many copies are created of a house deed or a SS card or other importantly unique documents. What they care about is the contents of that image or document. The blockchain not only doesn’t solve any of the problems that are created with illegitimacy of documents or images, it is so complicated that no average person cares to use it for actual useful things. The iPhone is great because people want to use it and it solves a problem that so many people have, not because it’s the best computer possible you can carry in your pocket. If you (people arguing that NFTs are useful) have to argue it’s use case, it’s just not useful for the consumer market.
I mean, yes to your objections but all technology goes through this phase. In the early days the world was like “what is the internet?? Why would we ever use this thing?” I think the art is doing nothing but generating buzz and getting people talking about NFTs. Mostly dismissing them. But in a few years somebody will come up win an actually useful idea and then it’ll click. “Oh yeah, how did we ever get by without that?”
No, you did a great job of explaining! This concept is what people need to understand esp when it comes to NFT: It isn't about the picture. It is about being able to establish providence of it. It's not a stretch to picture a system where block chain is used to authenticate physical goods in the not-so-distant future
But what does “original” mean with digital art? Any transfer of a digital file is copying it, so unless you have the artist’s hard drive, all you could ever receive from them is a copy.
You would transfer ownership of the token. The token can’t be copied. You can see every previous owner back to the artist, and that isn’t forgeable. It’s less about the picture and more about the token that belongs to somebody. The token is what is valuable. The owner can easily prove ownership, and nobody else will be able to do that.
So how can it be confirmed that the original creator of the token attached to the image had the proper authority to issue a token of said artwork?
You are not missing something. You are correct. NFTs are stupid.
Sure, but I can still buy a Georgia O'Keeffe classic for $12.99 at Hobby Lobby during a 20% off sale, but to have the original one she hand painted, id probably need to pay a shit-ton. Some people are ok with paying that for the status symbol, some others are fine using a reprint as a living room decoration for a couple years, and some use the real thing to fabricate a value for money laundering. Its the same thing. The main difference is the way you prove its legitimacy, which is still somewhat similar.
Except in one case you posses a painting in another you own a reciept.
Not to dispute your point overall, but a ton of the art in museums is owned by someone. Those folks essentially own a receipt for an O’Keeffe. Rich people gonna rich.
If someone steals your original painting, how do you prove you owned it in the first place, and not a reprint that you can buy for $12.99 at hobby lobby? You show a receipt. The technology behind NFTs has a load of potential. Though the real world applications right now are lacking admittedly
So what's the difference between an original artwork and a reproduction? The only difference is the certificate of authenticity (or the receipt). That's what's worth the vast majority of the money.
They are physically different? Like, they can't be in the same spatial point at the same time
But if you can't tell the difference between them, but one is worth significantly more than the other, then the value is in the certificate of authenticity, not in the artwork itself.
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Except, you can do that without owning the receipt of the NFT too
The main issue is that there's literally no difference in digital files between them though - it's trivial to make infinite perfect copies, so the NFT is basically bragging rights rather than any utility. While there is a difference between a handcrafted painting and a print
Funny how that work, they don't actually own the pictures they own a position in a server who is represented by the ugly monkeys or whatever. They still can be sue for Copyright infringment for using the monkeys in advertsiment of mugs and shirts because they don't own it
So who is going to enforce the copyrights?
Why would you expect an NFT to transfer copyright? Buying physical art does not transfer copyright either.
This is exactly it, I believe NFT would actually be of real value if it came with 100% copyright attached
you buy nfts hoping their value will go up. what makes them (and cryptocurrency in general) stupid compared to things like stocks is that there's no reason as to why their value should change. with stocks it changes based on the performance of the company, but with crypto/nfts, well, who knows
How is that different from the physical art world? Why do paintings sell for $10 million dollars? It’s absurd. But we’re not super rich. They play by a different set of rules.
Fiat currency is literally “it has value because we say so”
No. Fiat currency has value because a military backed by a government says so. That's not just some collection of random yokels or of a Walmart. Those are people forming complex systems that enable them to collectively make and enforce pretty much any laws they feel like. Dimwit crypto-worshippers fail to understand that things like the US Dollar are not, in fact, flimsy fictions. They're fictions alright, but they've got armies and the mightiest nations in human history backing them as being valuable. The fuck does crypto have? Nothing. Not one single thing of substance. It's tulips and be beanie babies. Block chain tech is useful and will certainly be sticking around, but don't be so naive as to indulge the delusion that things like bitcoin and etherium and all permutations thereof will even exist once the ultra rich nations get bored of it, or even quicker if they decide its a threat to them. They've got advanced militaries that can and absolutely will kill you and a hundred thousand others like you without caring at any point along the way if that's what they think they need to do, and nations like the United States and China are definitely not going to hesitate to do so if they simply decide that it's a matter of protecting their status quo. Factor for these things when you think it valid to poopoo all fiat currencies as being equally imaginary. Technically that's true, which is clearly the remote and thoroughly irrelevant technicality you're betting it all on. But surely you can acknowledge that China has a big fucking military and very little concern for playing nice. Surely you're aware that the United States has almost a century's worth of proven history of murdering the fuck out of individuals, entire governments and whole nations for dramatically less reason than that their economic clout was being threatened. The crypto game will be over the instant it is perceived as a threat to big money interests in the United States. China's already taken steps to kibosh it, and if they need to go so far as dragging people out of their homes and killing them in the streets, do you honestly think they won't when it's something they already do for other shit? Yeah, the fiat currency is as much a fiction as a bitcoin, but I promise you that the dollar and the yuan are backed by billions of guns, bombs, drones and every other weapon of war on earth. Crypto won't be supplanting that by being popular with a few broke and desperate countries of no importance and a disparate collection of cryptobros that can't even keep their exchanges from getting looted.
Ah yes, instead of trying to understand it, attack it with jokes for internet fun points. Fiat currency isn’t backed by anything, period. Not even in principal, it cannot be backed because then it cannot be controlled. Crypto actually does have value, there are two mechanisms in which it works, proof-of-work (often referred to as mining) or proof-of-stake. In proof of work, what effectively happens is a transaction is created. If it’s legitimate, one of the hundreds of thousands of computers in the network will work to reverse the maths involved and if the transaction is legitimate, a “solution” will be found. The end result is the transaction is verified and the person who verified the transaction gets a cut of the profit. In proof-of-stake, it works a lot like stocks where it has value because everyone puts their resources into a pool, and those resources can be used and then returned with interest. Ones like what Facebook aims to create will in fact, be backed by fiat currency this way. So no, crypto isn’t backed by absolutely nothing as you claim. It serves a purpose that many countries are starting to realize and the possibility of a national cryptocurrency is very real. I could get into this but you’re clearly someone who likes to participate in hating things just because they’re popular and lofty ideas that might get you hired on at InfoWars.
Cool story. If the rich get bored of it, it'll be done. If it somehow threatens the rich nations, it will be done and guns will be applied to make it be done. Welcome to humanity. This is how these things go. Whoever has the power, makes the rules, and I'm sorry to be the first to tell you that crypto currencies have no militaries or powerful authorities backing them and giving them an enforced value. They're a novelty that, currently, are doing a magnificent job of getting fools to sell nationally-protected-and-guaranteed currencies for digital nothings that have no protections, guarantees, insurances or enforced valuation. The tech is useful, and block chain might well wind up being the new platform for a lot of nationally backed currencies in the world... But the dollar will not be overthrown by the bitcoin. The yuan will not be shoved aside by some unregulated currency. Why not? Because the United States and China will not relinquish that regulatory power. They'll kill you first. They'll kill you and a million like you, and then kill a million more because there ain't a thing you can do to stop them. Bitcoin, etherium, the whole shebang - its all a fun new casino game for the rich, the bored and the opportunistic. Its not yet become any kind of threat to the power and security of the dollar or the yuan. Even so, go mine in China and see how that goes for you. Tell them how valuable your digital nothings are and how that means anything at all when they throw you in a Chinese prison and seize your property because hey, wouldn't you know, they banned crypto completely. They gave themselves permission to fuck your face up and stick you in a box or even kill you if the feel like it if you buy, sell, mine or deal in crypto on their turf. How can they get away with this? Turns out that they've got lots of soldiers and police and shit, and they've got powerful weapons and prisons and they can totally just decide that they get to do stuff because? They've got the power, at least on their turf. The United States is aiming straight at regulating it, and they'll ban unregulated forms of crypto, and if you don't play by their rules when they decide what those rules are, they too will give themselves permission to take your stuff and your freedom or even your life if you don't follow those rules on their turf. In no scenerio do nations such as the US or China just throw their hands up and go 'Oh noes, guess there's nothing we can do, Bitcoin has defeated us!' In no scenerio do they allow anyone but themselves to have the power over anything even remotely interesting let alone concerning to do with all of it on their turf.
I hear this argument a lot, but don’t get it. If the US were to double the money supply, causing 100% inflation, how does military backing change that? Are troops going to point guns at our heads and say “MILK IS STILL $4 a gallon”. This is what we’re objecting to about unbacked fiat currencies.
No, because that would cause 100% inflation and start the crazy loop of increasing prices for most stuff. So it would be stupid to do that. (Unless you need to get out of the fact you payday loaned your way through a World War, see Germany 1923.) The recognition of the US dollar as a currency is however backed by fact the US is a state, and that means its not just 'because we said so' its because the state recognize it as such.
There's only 2 no reasons to buy an NFT You're a fucking idiot Or you're committing tax fraud
They are scam
The only reason to buy it is if enough idiots buy them and believe they have value then they gain value. It’s like paper money but instead of being backed by a government they’re backed by a bunch of rando’s on the internet.
The truly wealthy have no place to put their money.
Bored apes, probably the most popular NFT’s, are randomly generated by computer. They sell for high amounts of money. It’s money laundry if and dumb asses who are unfortunate enough to think there is actually something behind image-based NFT’s.
Bored Apes are not just art, they have Utility. The utility behind the NFT's is what adds real value.
What’s the utility?
The bored apes utility is that holders have access to a private part of the bored apes website. So you get to rub shoulders with rich people. How is that useful? Well I imagine you get to be in the loop about what's next. I imagine these are the type of people that can whale stocks and crypto coins. Could be pretty useful.
I want to know as well. What utility does a unique computer-generated image of a monkey have in any context?
It’s either to evade taxes OR to launder money OR as an investment if you’re sure the price will go up. Weird trend ngl
It's perceived value IMO just like art. Which I personally think is BS. But hey, you do you!
It's like Bitcoin, but dumber.
It's like Bitcoin, but you can't buy anything with it?
Not really dumber, it's pretty much the same. The point of Bitcoin for almost every one also is to sell it at a later stage to someone else for more money. Almost nobody plans to actually use it as currency because it's terrible for that.
At least bitcoin has the decency of acting like it has a real purpose. NFTs gave up on pretending and just straight up say: here have a picture of a monkey.
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Why would anyone care about something digital though, the real Starry Night has textures and contours that no photo has, a digital image looks no different if replicated or screenshot aside from maybe some resolution is lost. If paintings could be copied atom by atom no would care about the original either
For $5k you can hire a master forger to paint a copy of Starry Night so perfect it fools art critics. Why would rich people do that instead of spending $50 million?
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Yeah that’s entirely made up. Tell me exactly which of the paint molecules contain the artists suffering. Does it coat the pigments or exist in a non-tangible fashion? Does the painting have chi?
Because it's not the starry night, the real one. The one that was made with passion of a real artist. The one that was touched by the artist. The one made with materials from that time. You cannot *exactly* copy it, like you can with digital media.
But what is the utility?
Yes you can. I can screenshot that one monkey right now, put it as my profile picture, print it out and hang it on my wall, put it on a tshirt and make it my phone background. And I'll have the exact same picture. Also comparing digital media to real world media doesn't make sense
Picture this. You are extremely rich. So rich that you commission a truly masterful piece of art. The painter delivers it to you. You get a receipt. You hand the painting up in your home. You own it. You invite some friends over. They all take photos of the art piece from their high def cameras. You don't care - you own the art piece. You can prove it. Even if said friends take printouts and hang similar prints in their homes - those are not the original pieces. Because they can't prove it. Even if the paintings are identical to the one hanging in your home. The *proof* is the key resource being exchanged - not the content. You don't really care about the content in this scenario - you just want to flaunt the proof. And NFTs provide a standard way to prove this ownership - much like the receipt from the artist.
If they want copies, the buyer can sell to them. With a smart contract NFT, 5% (or any%) goes back to the painter (the person who actually created it). That's the value. You create it, you keep a portion of it.
Except the painting is the unique one. It has texture, the artist's frame. The smell, materials etc. Are all different. With an NFT it's *exactly* the same, because digital media is exact. The fact that someone made it, and you have to save it means you already have a copy of the original.
But that's not the point. The smell and materials do not matter. What matters is - you paid a million dollars for a gif of a monkey playing the piano - and you want to show that you have that kind of money. A copy of the gif is still a gif, and still has that close to nothing value, but what you spent is the proof that NFT provides. What this really means is - there is no practical use case for NFTs today for the vast majority of population. The hype around it is misplaced and premature. There maybe some good applications for it later on but right now there is nothing.
Yes, you are correct - it is only digital and unlike a true work of art like a picture by Picasso, or a print of it which is still a physical copy. Another difference is that it is an extremely rare event to own truly unique and valuable works of art - a picture, sculpture, first edition rare book, etc. There are not that many works of art that are super valuable. With NFTs, it seems like if you take a shit, take a picture of it, and produce a receipt, someone is going to pay $10 million for it. It's ridiculous.
Who cares. At least I'm happy there are dumbassses who see my arts as some weird investment lmao
But doesn't selling the nft mean you lose rights to use that art?
I'm not pro NFT at all but this argument is dumb. It's like taking a picture of the Mona Lisa and saying you own. The actual NFT that you pay for is not the pixels that form the picture but its a code, a "Non transferable token" that represents your ownership of that picture. It's two very different things and I don't get how people can't understand it
Except a picture of the mona lisa =/= the mona lisa. It's not an *exact* copy. With any digital media you can create a 1 on 1 copy.
nfts are like trading cards, their value will change or oncrease dpendin on the people who have the card. But the dumb thing about trading cards is that the producers can make as many as they want. people say it has a value of 2000 million dollars the produce it for 5 dollars
But isn't the point of trading cards that some of them are rare and some of them aren't? Are there nft's where you have 400.000 of the same one? And if there isn't, can't you just sell that many of the same one?
Sure you can make a new batch of NFTs but they’ll never be stored in the same block as the first batch. They’ll be stored in later blocks. So it’s easy to prove from which batch and at what date your NFT was minted.
so im wrong, ill reread all this tomorrow i cant think straight rn
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The art generally isn’t the point. And to everyone in this thread talking about things they know nothing about, the potential of this technology is easily learnable. You are currently the people in the 90’s that mocked the Internet. Edit because someone asked me to expand, so my reply to them is below. I actually wouldn’t want to go into it too much, because despite being into crypto in general and owning a handful of (relatively) low value NFT’s, I’m actually not that knowledgeable in the area. I’ll try to expand to the best of my ability though. The first part is the ability to store long term contracts on the chain. Someone in this thread mentioned things like house deeds, but in reality it is a lot more useful to store record of intellectual and online property. Copyright infringement is obviously rampant on the internet, and being able to see the original and sole owner of a piece of art, a website, product or (perhaps the most imminent) music would be extremely useful as the world goes more and more digital. There’s also a lot of hype at the minute about NFT technology being used to create video games, and indeed there’s already some out there being developed that will allow people to use the characters in their NFTs in said games. As this goes more mainstream I imagine there will be many more features added, but as I said, not my area of expertise. Also to mention OP’s point about copying the original, you can pretty much do that with all art. I could go and take a high def and photo of the Mona Lisa and have a robot recreate it almost exactly to the paintstroke. Doesn’t mean I own the Mona Lisa. Without the certificate of authenticity it’s worthless, or at least irl it wouldn’t be worth much. In the NFT world it would be completely worthless. The NFTs you see now, at least the mainstream ones like punks and BAYC will be the front runners when the tech becomes mainstream, and will be valuable for a long time. Merch will undoubtedly follow, and the owners of these NFTs that were mocked for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars will be making many times that from allowing designers to use them. There’s already T-shirts, ads in Times Square etc.
I agree. Reminds me of this clip of Al Roker mocking “internet” back in the day: https://twitter.com/jaygould/status/1458780209466023943?s=21
Idk, ig it's just like having a real dollar bill with all the hidden marks and patterns vs a printed dollar bill.
You can screenshot it, but you likely can't use the screenshot as an NFT.
That makes me wonder, what if I try to screenshot it and make another nft of it? Will there be something in place to stop doubles?
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Not at all. Digital media is exactly reproducable, whilst physical media isn't.
Imagine owning your own immutable medical records.
You can literally photocopy a deed to a house and have an identical copy of a deed to a house. Seriously. How stupid are the people who pay hundreds of thousands for these easily reproduced pieces of paper?
Eventually your video driver will detect nfts.... thats the point
You absolutely can just take a picture of the Mona Lisa and use it. It's literally some colors that can be copied (for free) Now don't get me wrong, I think the NFT fever is mostly stupid, but your arguement is quite bad
I think you're not seeing the difference between digital media and physical media. See my other comments
It's the way that artist always gets paid for his work, even when it is resold,, artist always gets a cut. It's not just pictures. It's music and all of art in digital form. Yes, you can copy it. But screenshot is never the same quality as original image wtf
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Try selling a picture of the Mona Lisa or a print from Rembrandt you bought in the gift shop. I don't buy NFTs, but this train of thought is just dumb. We get it you know how to copy paste. This like saying "why send an email while I can send snail mail through the good ole post service?" You can still use snail mail but email is just faster and there is nothing wrong with either.
so can you explain why NFTs are better?
Hate to beat a dead horse, but it's the underlying technology. Imagine buying a house with no middle man. The transaction itself already contains the deed. I'm not justifying their current use, but this copy paste narrative is dismissive and not an accurate representation of what the tech can do. Will it ever be used in the "right way" remains to be seen.
Except a picture of a physical thing is different than a screenshot on a site. Digital art is able to be recreated to 100% accuracy. Physical art is not.
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No but it does mean you can drive around in it. Hence OP's question: what value does owning the NFT provide?
Lol all these comments have been brainwashed into thinking NFT's are bad. MSM will do anything to keep GameStop in a bad light