Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
- Thread starter Snarf
- Start date
aeliron
Senior Member
All I know is: my nephew-in-law wrote an essay about crytpocurrency, whereupon his professor promptly sold all his Bitcoin.
Me, I don't know how "safe" or "unsafe" it all is. On the one hand a lot of very smart people are involved. Not a guarantee of anything, of course, but someone will make money somehow ... and some will lose it, and have.
But if people will buy NFTs, why not sell some? Like a lot of other things, including smartphone apps and posters of ducks playing soccer, value is what potential buyers are willing to pay for something, based on what they perceive. That's why wealth is not a zero-sum game - it can be created. I mean ... look at Flappy Bird. And "art" that goes missing because it looks like trash and was carted off to the dump, because most "modern art" is a grift.
As long as it's wealthy folks buying them and not poor shmucks treating it like an investment and ending up broke.
Last edited:
Tim_Wells
Tim Wells
Yeah, buyer beware and all that. But I think, at least in part, it's wealthy folks and some scam artists hyping a product to pump and dump it onto people who are financially illiterate; people who don't understand it but believe it's a way out of their crappy situation. After all, so many "smart" people are buying it.
Elon Musk pushing Dogecoin is unconscionable to me
I realize I'm painting with a broad brush and there are plenty of good folks involved with crypto. But there are going to be a lot of poor shmucks who loose their shirts.
Land of Missing Parts
Grumpy Monkey
It's telling that the talk about crypto always seems to come back to making or losing good old fashioned normal money. "So-and-so made money off crypto", "so-and-so lost money on crypto".
Not talk about crypto as something inherently valuable or useful in and of itself, but something that people can get into and out of solely because it can make them money.
rgames
Collapsing the Wavefunction
OK maybe I missed something. They sold NFTs for music they don't own rights to, correct? If so, everything I said applies.
Regarding the White House, it's not about the copyright. It's whether someone granting someone else ownership of something in the form of an NFT has any meaning, copyright or otherwise.
It does not. You can grant someone ownership of music through an NFT but that transaction is meaningless in any court of law as far as I can tell. Likewise, I can grant you ownership of the White House through a forum post, also meaningless in a court of law. So that forum post carries as much legal weight as the NFT - i.e. they're both meaningless from a legal standpoint.
So I don't understand how the example is unrelated. They're both examples of transfers of ownership that carry no legal weight.
rgames
Stephen Limbaugh
aka Stephen Limbaugh
They copied artist images, names, likenesses, album art etc to coax people into buying their NFTs…
That is not different than putting a picture of Led Zeppelin on a T shirt and selling it without permission. lol…
That is not different than putting a picture of Led Zeppelin on a T shirt and selling it without permission. lol…
rgames
Collapsing the Wavefunction
Yes, but that's not what the linked article is about. The linked article is about somebody selling NFTs that claim to transfer ownership of someone else's music. From the article:
"Each HitPiece NFT is a One of One NFT for each unique song recording,"
It doesn't say anything about names and likenesses.
If you're saying they used names and likenesses to drive the sale then yes, clearly a copyright violation. But that's not what I see being discussed in this thread. Here and in the article (I think?) we're talking about whether someone can convey ownership simply by creating an NFT. They cannot, which is also what the article says.
rgames
Stephen Limbaugh
aka Stephen Limbaugh
Yes exactly!
Got it… I was referring strictly to the Hitpiece scheme being illegal, responding to what I thought was a specific comment about that.
JoelS
Active Member
Bolded emphasis added by me, and selectively quoted because I want to address some specific things here. First, though, since it's the topic of this thread:
The Folding Ideas video was a well-researched, skillfully delivered one-sided hit piece. He cites a lot of very valid problems with the behavior of participants in the crypto/NFT space, and... that's it. Take any issue, present only the problems, editorialize with venomous mockery, and you'll get a lot of plaudits from people already on your side and sway others who have a superficial 'just curious' stance.
Back to commenting on the quote I cherry picked:
Financially illiterate people should seek to become financially literate.
Is it too much to ask of people, that if they are going to 'invest' a significant chunk of their net worth in a thing, that they seek to understand what they are doing? Why is that not the baseline requirement in anyone's internal decision making process? I don't want to see scammers succeed, and I do want to see 'regular' people succeed at finding financial security and stability. I spend a fairly significant amount of my time educating people about the basics of the crypto market (though I pointedly do not offer financial advice, as I am not a financial advisor).
Nearly anyone, presently, can learn about crypto and participate in that market. They can learn risk mitigation techniques. They can apply various approaches towards their participation in the market, with different time horizons and behaviors of investing, trading, and speculating (which require specific strategies and mindsets, and are all very valid ways to make money). There is an enormous amount of opportunity for average, non-wealthy people to learn about that market and participate in it responsibly.
No 'investment' in a financial market is guaranteed to be safe. Have you looked at the equities markets lately? How safe are they in the short term? Are they safe in the long term? (probably yes) Is the dollar safe? How deeply have you looked into global finance? Do you trust banks to act in your interest?
Imo, the entirety of global finance is a bunch of handwavey nonsense where the power players at the government level make up the rules as they go along and tilt the playing field to suit their agendas.
That doesn't mean you can't learn to navigate the markets in a pragmatic, informed, responsible way and benefit substantially from that participation. Demonizing the whole space and scaring people away from looking at how it can benefit them in a way that doesn't put them at great risk is, to me, the wrong approach.
Land of Missing Parts
Grumpy Monkey
I trust regular old dollars and keep it in banks and invest in boring index funds.
Longstanding institutions aren't perfect, but they're the product of many generations past who fought to establish norms, protections, regulations, all of which is too easy to take for granted and glibly talk of throwing away because they still aren't perfect.
It's not so much that I think banks are perfect or act in my interest as I think banks aren't the wild west, and I trust that they won't just disappear overnight with my money.
Longstanding institutions aren't perfect, but they're the product of many generations past who fought to establish norms, protections, regulations, all of which is too easy to take for granted and glibly talk of throwing away because they still aren't perfect.
It's not so much that I think banks are perfect or act in my interest as I think banks aren't the wild west, and I trust that they won't just disappear overnight with my money.
GtrString
Senior Member
And if you accepted cookies to read it, they now also own your house, and will sell it as real estate information to highest bidder!If you have music on Spotify you might want to check this news:
Musicians are furious at website HitPiece, which listed their music as NFTs without permission
"Obviously, I didn’t approve this."mashable.com
I may be old, but I fail to see the need for crypto, nft’s ect. I have regular investments, and they add up over the years without much of a risk. There is just no need to take bigger risks imo, I see it as much more ethical to own part of a real company of choice with hard working employees.
If you invest in real stocks, you contribute to the economy, and it will benefit you for a minimum of effort. But the more speculative games is not really a good deal. The house always wins in gambling. Common sense will save your a$$
Fyi, I both watched the video and answered hell no. Polls are unreliable
Last edited:
JoelS
Active Member
I have no argument against boring index funds. They largely do what they're intended to do, which is provide a low-risk investment that gradually moves upwards over a long period of time.
Regulation will benefit the crypto space, if it's done right... which is a really big topic, but in general having sensible, clear regulatory guidelines (which should have been worked on years ago) will likely be a good thing. I certainly don't see crypto as being in a zero-sum competition with traditional finance where it's all or nothing. There's no need to align with one extreme or the other. Participation in crypto markets doesn't require zealotry. Most of the big exchanges are basically aiming at being 'Banks 2.0,' but with better financial products with higher yield. US regulated exchanges have FDIC insurance on their accounts. It's not so fringe as a lot of people think.
NoamL
Winter <3
Those are exactly the things I don't want in a public ledger.
We already have secure, trusted, ledgers they're called databases. Trustless ledgers aren't really a problem that needs solving. My bank isn't going into my account and stealing $5 every month hoping I don't notice. My physician isn't forging my electronic medical records to make himself look better.
Last edited:
Cheezus
Active Member
Wouldn't it actually be more dishonest if he went out of his way to make arguments in favor of something he's genuinely against in order to appease people who disagree with him? What's wrong with just presenting your well-researched opinion on something? "Say good things about thing you don't like instead." I don't get this argument.
JoelS
Active Member
Does some degree of objectivity have to equal appeasement? I already watched the whole thing once, and don't really intend to go back to cite specific parts. There was plenty of solid, factual accounting of stuff that is legitimately bad behavior. There was also a whole lot of invective, mockery and demonization of the entire space and people who participate in it, and when that is presented as an unquestionable truth, for me it diminishes the more factual critique and leads to incoherent echo-chamber noise that makes actual discussion impossible.
The more 'burn it all down' a take is, the less it invites or suffers any real discourse. His take was rather incendiary, and I felt he presented a lot of opinion as fact. In my view, it was misleading and the fact that he did a lot of research gives him an air of authority that many people (judging by the comments) accepted uncritically.
One of the subtleties that tends to get trashed in discussions of blockchains and the like is that they don't have to be entirely trust-free or entirely open systems. There is a case to be made for using so-called permissioned digital ledgers (PDL) for handling things like medical records or rather metadata that's associated with those records.
The disadvantage of a conventional database is that it needs to be maintained by a single agency or supplier – moving things from one supplier to another is a PITA. In the blockchain-type system, you keep data or metadata that needs to be shared, such as who is responsible for what, but the contents of the records stay in private databases unless they need to be transferred to a new supplier. What you don't do is put actual medical records on the blockchain, which would violate various privacy laws in the first place. That could be a public blockchain with encrypted contents or a PDL where only accredited members have access and have to obey rules on how blocks are added (which overcomes much of the need for some energy-hungry cryptographic update mechanism).
As with most things, you can design a shared database to do the job but the shared nature of blockchains makes it easier to implement if for some reason it is hard to assign one agency to manage the thing.
Medical records may be a poor application, full stop. Something like an Ebay for widget suppliers to manage shipments to factories would arguably be a lot more suitable.
marclawsonmusic
Senior Moment
Great points, @gsilbers, and exactly what I found after spending 3-4 weeks on some music-related DAO Discord servers.
There are a number of folks trying to tackle the music licensing problem, but all have the same problems discussed in the video re: the web3/DAO model.
In the end, it's all great ideas. Fantastic ideas. Revolutionary, in fact. And they use this rhetoric to get folks like me (coders and musicians) to invest time (and $$$) to join their team and build their software. And for what? Maybe I can be part of the 'ground floor' of something 'that will change the music business'. It's all fairytale stuff and honestly very enchanting - because I can see the potential value if these problems are solved.
But I know it's just appealing to my Robin Hood nature (and TBH some ruthless capitalism - after all, I could make millions if it 'goes to the moon'). It just all feels too much like 'get rich quick' or Ponzi and also very cultish. So alarm bells are going off and eventually I left those Discord servers and will keep my money and time.
Maybe I am missing out
Tim_Wells
Tim Wells
A hit-piece? Possibly. Though in this case, I believe it's warranted. I applaud him for providing a sorely needed reality check in a space that's full of hype and BS.
Plus, I haven't seen anyone refute any of the facts he lays out other than nitpicks.
Of course, they should. But fact is, not many will.
My point is, crypto is a very poor investment choice for the financially illiterate. But that's often who it appeals to the most. Crypto is an unregulated Disneyland for scammers and con men who know exactly how to prey on those who are poorly equipped to protect themselves.
Now.... again... I'm not saying everyone involved with crypto is bad or dumb. Far from it. I'm sure the vast majority are intelligent, well-meaning folks.
I honestly wish you and your associates the very best and have no problem with it, as long as you're doing it wisely and carefully.
I love new technology and have seriously considered putting some money in crypto. But as I've learned more about it, I've come to believe it's a lousy investment. I'm not alone. Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon agree.
Could Bit Coin go to $500,000? Sure. But someday, the air is going to come out of it, because it doesn't do anything functional. It's purely a speculative instrument. It has no utility other than buying NFTs and stuff in video games.
To me, it's an investment in the same way that highly-leveraged stock options are an investment, or the lowest rated junk-bonds are an investment. It's probably not going to end well.
I think people get wowed by the technology and all the machinations of the crypto marketplace. They don't realize they're buying pixie dust.
Some compare it to gold because of the scarcity issue with Bit Coin and certain other coins. But no-one is going come along and make a new, better Gold 2.0 in six months and leave you stuck with version 1.0. Plus, gold is highly regulated, and it can actually be used in real products. Anyway, gold has turned out to be a pretty crappy long-term investment. Returning around 1% over the past 50 years.
The whole space reminds me of Multi-Level Marketing. But at least with Herbalife, you end up with a garage full of sh!tty vitamins.
Will the blockchain and crypto currencies play an important role in the future? Very possibly. I truly wish the technology and all the well-meaning folks involved the very best. I'll be watching closely from the sidelines.
Last edited:
JoelS
Active Member
The factual parts of the video are not ones I dispute. Separating the facts from his opinion, presented as fact, is difficult. I don't particularly care to take the time to point-by-point address it all. He very clearly thinks crypto has not achieved anything positive, and won't. I disagree.
If I made a two hour long video about being a composer in the music industry, and presented nothing but the worst excesses and failures, I could certainly make it sound like a horrible industry to be in and convince 'outsiders' that it is not worth anyone's time or consideration... and that it needs regulation! Would that be fair, or an accurate depiction of the industry?
I'll assume you meant 'illiterate' there. I could give a lengthy examination of that statement, though this may not be the thread for it. Since I try quite hard to increase people's financial literacy in regards to crypto, that probably gives away my viewpoint. I don't feel anyone should invest, trade, or speculate on anything with their money unless they learn about what they are doing.
Crypto, at this point, is not unregulated depending on where you live. US participants in crypto are prohibited from using exchanges that are not regulated under US law. For basic participation in crypto, anyone who is buying or trading on Coinbase, Gemini, FTX US, Binance US, or Kraken is on an FDIC insured platform that complies with US regulatory structures. More regulation is on the way, possibly even this week in the form of an Executive Action from Biden (I've heard it variously stated as an Action and an Order, which are two different things, but we'll see what it is when it drops).
If you're using decentralized exchanges or use a VPN to skirt around geoblocking from exchanges outside US jurisdiction, or just live in other parts of the world, well... you are responsible for your own actions.
More regulation and clarity are needed, but it's not hard to figure out how to participate in as safe a manner as anyone can participate safely in a financial market.
Jamie Dimon is... perhaps the worst example to cite. I'll keep my own opinions of his very inconsistent stances on crypto to a minimum, save to say I believe he has been deliberately misleading through his public statements. In 2017, Dimon said "If a JPMorgan trader began trading in bitcoin, I'd fire them in a second. For two reasons: It's against our rules, and they're stupid. And both are dangerous." A few years later, JPMorgan offers its clients access to crypto, and is 'the first bank in the metaverse.' Oh, and Dimon recently called it worthless again, while JPMorgan -the bank- sees a bullish outlook and makes very grand price predictions. And they made their own crypto. So, the CEO thinks it's a scam and worthless, but his bank thinks it's extremely valuable and is neck deep in the industry. Ok.
Warren Buffet just bought $1B worth of stock in a crypto bank. Make of it what you will.
Paul Tudor Jones, who does not suck at investing, thinks crypto is pretty good.
These people are out to make money, and will say whatever puts more money in their pockets or moves people towards (or away from) things that impact their profits. By the time they say something publicly, they have already made their moves in the market.
I prefer looking at price action charts rather than divining the true intent of billionaires.
So, I don't mean to get pedantic here, but I guess I will since this is factually incorrect on basically all levels. I'll also note that I'm not here trying to convince anyone to buy anything. I do want people to have correct information to use in evaluating their own decisions.
Nobody generally speaking buys NFTs with Bitcoin. NFTs are primarily bought and sold with ETH (Ethereum) which is quite different from Bitcoin. NFTs are also bought and sold with SOL (Solana) and other smaller networks. ETH and SOL are smart contract platforms, whereas Bitcoin is not. They have much more functionality than BTC, including but not limited to various financial practices like staking for interest and lending.
BTC is indeed used as a speculative instrument, but it is not without utility. One case to cite is that it is a borderless system of transferring money almost instantly. International remittances and money transfers have become faster and easier even through traditional channels recently, but traditional channels can be swiftly frozen and blocked by government entities. Wherever you stand on that issue, without debating the politics of it, BTC has utility in that case that is unavailable to traditional finance.
At least my bags of devalued altcoins aren't taking up the physical space that I'm using to store my CD collection, comic books, and sports cards.
Crypto is a big sprawling, mutating, evolving messy entity that nonetheless can be interacted with in safe, responsible, and profitable ways.
NFTs -the technology- imo have potential and interesting applications.
NFTs -the cultural zeitgeist based phenomenon- are... uh... very open for valid criticism, but there are elements and participants that are not problematic in amid the ones that definitely are.
Last edited:
I have a slightly different view - it is not a system of transferring money almost instantly …. It’s a system of transferring BTC almost instantly. If you owed me $100 and insisted on paying me in BTC, the exchange rate I would be happy with would be several percent away from any rate that you would see online at that moment to allow for the insane level of volatility in the price.
BTC will never be accepted as a store of value or as means to purchase and sell items (i.e the traditional definition of “money”) until the price stabilises, and it gains universal trust from potential users. Nobody really prices any goods or services purely in terms of BTC - they price those goods and services in fiat money with a constantly changing price expressed in BTC, depending on the “exchange rate”.
If I advertised a nice guitar on Reverb for $3,780, I would happily leave the advert there for a month while I went on holiday…. and if it sold that’s great !! Would I price that guitar for 0.1 BTC (current price is 1 BTC = $37,800 USD) and happily leave the advert for a month while I went in holiday ? Hell no…. !!
