JPG File Sells for $69 Million, as ‘NFT Mania’ Gathers Pace

[Air_Delivery]

50 minutes ago, Jason said:

LOL, disappearing records is definitely what you want for land titling.

 

 

People's Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why

WWW.VICE.COM

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“There was no history of my ever purchasing it, or ever owning it,” said one confused NFT buyer. “Now there’s nothing. My money’s gone.”

 

If you thought the modern times couldn't get any dumber than MAGA retards, I present you this.

[Ghost_MH]

8 hours ago, Jason said:

LOL, disappearing records is definitely what you want for land titling.

 

 

People's Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why

WWW.VICE.COM

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“There was no history of my ever purchasing it, or ever owning it,” said one confused NFT buyer. “Now there’s nothing. My money’s gone.”

 

In fairness, this is just a dumb part of NFTs. You can't store images and tweets in the blockchain. You can only store links to these images and tweets and whatever. If Elon Musk sells a tweet, the NFT token only keeps record of the link to his tweet. If Musk then decided to delete that tweet, the NFT remains, but it goes nowhere since the link is now dead. It would appear that this is happening a lot on NFT market places.

 

I would imagine that the ownership of physical goods wouldn't be tied back to another website that could go down at any time. Rather than a link to something else, the blockchain could store GPS data or a simple street address or like the VIN of a car. Since every change is committed everywhere across the entire blockchain you wouldn't want to do something like store property lines, because that would just be way to much to keep in sync across the entire network.

 

Think of it like a QR code. While you could store an entire image in a QR code, the QR codes that do this are far too huge and complex to be of any use for the vast majority of situations. Instead, most QR codes are simple redirects to something else. NFTs operate in the same way.

 

This tech is great for keeping track of changes and transactions, but not really great for storing anything more than simple data.

[Ghost_MH]

If anyone really wants to know how terrible of an idea NFTs are...

 

Tom Brady is launching an NFT company - CNN

AMP.CNN.COM

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Tom Brady is joining the NFT party.

Like, I love Tom Brady on the football field, but I could do without him off of it.

[Ghost_MH]

@sblfilms 

 

 

An actual house is an NFT now

WWW.THEVERGE.COM

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The artwork and house are just 48 ETH.

 

[MarSolo]

I want to make an NFT and be rich.

 

Login • Instagram

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Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

 

Make Fat Beagle an NFT.

[Jason]

 

[thewhyteboar]

Anyone who spends money on this shit needs to have all their assets seized and be placed on a government watch list. 

[johnny]

NFT is dumb /conversation 

[Fizzzzle]

I mean, it is dumb, and I have plenty of reservations about the environmental impact of blockchain, but outside of that is it any more dumb than paying millions of dollars for an or original art piece that can easily be reprinted?

 

People don't buy these things for any kind of functional value, they buy them to be able to say "I own this." Rich people have been doing that with paintings for centuries, it's really not much different to me.

[Kal-El814]

18 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

I mean, it is dumb, and I have plenty of reservations about the environmental impact of blockchain, but outside of that is it any more dumb than paying millions of dollars for an or original art piece that can easily be reprinted?

 

Yes.

[Jason]

22 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Yes.

 

[Fizzzzle]

45 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Yes.

I don't understand that. It's still just people buying things to prove they can. You just don't get to keep a physical painting with an NFT. The whole thing is still just a flex.

[Kal-El814]

6 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

I don't understand that. It's still just people buying things to prove they can. You just don't get to keep a physical painting with an NFT. The whole thing is still just a flex.

An NFT is just a receipt. It’s different from spending a shitload if money on art that you could buy a print of because at the end of the transaction you own the art. 
 

When you spend money on an NFT all you bought is the receipt saying you bought the NFT. 
 

Yes both are flexes, but they’re still meaningfully different. 

[Anathema-]

A print is not the same thing as an original piece.

[Air_Delivery]

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

An NFT is just a receipt. It’s different from spending a shitload if money on art that you could buy a print of because at the end of the transaction you own the art. 
 

When you spend money on an NFT all you bought is the receipt saying you bought the NFT. 
 

Yes both are flexes, but they’re still meaningfully different. 

It akin to getting a certificate that says you own a star..

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

Yes both are flexes, but they’re still meaningfully different. 

All goods and service are arbitrary in value, so I would argue on a fundamental level they really aren’t  

[Keyser_Soze]

8 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

All goods and service are arbitrary in value, so I would argue on a fundamental level they really aren’t  

 

It's like going to your movie theater to sit down and watch a movie or just getting a ticket from your movie theater to see a movie and not going to see the movie. Both cost money, you both get the money, one guy flexes for spending the money the other person has the sense in valuing actually seeing the thing they spent money on.

[Kal-El814]

55 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

All goods and service are arbitrary in value, so I would argue on a fundamental level they really aren’t  

 

I feel like this is adjacent to saying all Americans are African Americans because humanity started in Africa.  Yes, goods and services have arbitrary value, but there’s still a difference between spending money on a thing and spending money on something that proves you bought a thing, and I think that different is more than semantic.

 

I appreciate that it’s 2021 and this is a video game forum; we all spend money on games and digital content that we don’t “own” all the time.  

[LazyPiranha]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

All goods and service are arbitrary in value, so I would argue on a fundamental level they really aren’t  

There’s a fundamental difference here in that regardless of arbitrary value there is only one original piece of art.  If I own a Picasso, whether or not it’s value goes up and down I still have a Picasso and everyone else has a print of it.  I can put it on a wall, lend it to a museum, eat it, whatever the hell I want.  If I own an NFT of a Picasso, I’m the exact same as any other person who has a jpeg of the same painting, I just have a random string of code that may, or may not, point to a jpeg representing that painting.  
 

The only reason to purchase an NFT for artwork is market speculation.  While a lot of rich people buy original artwork for that reason as well, it’s not the reason it exists in the first place.  

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

There's nothing that says you can't set up another nft network and have another nft of that same physical object.

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

There’s a fundamental difference here in that regardless of arbitrary value there is only one original piece of art.  If I own a Picasso, whether or not it’s value goes up and down I still have a Picasso and everyone else has a print of it.  I can put it on a wall, lend it to a museum, eat it, whatever the hell I want.  If I own an NFT of a Picasso, I’m the exact same as any other person who has a jpeg of the same painting, I just have a random string of code that may, or may not, point to a jpeg representing that painting.  
 

The only reason to purchase an NFT for artwork is market speculation.  While a lot of rich people buy original artwork for that reason as well, it’s not the reason it exists in the first place.  

Why does a Picasso have value?

[thewhyteboar]

3 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Why does a Picasso have value?

I think the argument he is making is that the value if beside the point. If you own a Picasso, you own a painting. A thing, an object. If you own an NFT you own...what exactly? How is owning an NFT of a painting any different from me going to wikipedia and downloading the largest jpeg they have? 

[Kal-El814]

21 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Why does a Picasso have value?

 

I feel like this conversation is adjacent to the Justice Stewart quote about pornography… I know it when I see it. THIS is a picture of naked people and THAT is also a picture of naked people. THAT one is pornographic and THIS one isn’t.

 

It’s the same with NFTs. I appreciate that Guernica is unique and that on this specific NFT exchange this specific NFT for this specific image of Guernica is unique. I appreciate that the concepts that give both of them value are similar and that they are indeed arbitrary. But one is a fucking scam and the other is not.

 

I appreciate this doesn’t make sense. I stand by it.

[Anathema-]

27 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Why does a Picasso have value?

 

Because it's an actual thing, a piece of history number one. Number two is the skill involved that a picture or copy can't replicate. 

[Keyser_Soze]

@sblfilms is painting a Picasso of an argument here.

[LazyPiranha]

27 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Why does a Picasso have value?

I’m not arguing value though.  A painting is a painting, I can enjoy the painting and never sell it.  I have art I made in my house that is absolutely worthless to anyone who isn’t me, I have it because I like it and I’m proud of how it turned out.  A print, no matter how well done, is not a painting.  I can’t see the dimensions of the strokes, I can’t view it from different angles and see the perspective change, I can’t touch it if I’m that sort of person and feel the texture of the canvas and paint.  Monetary value or not, a true original painting has a material history and presence no duplication can have.  
 

An NFT pointing at a jpeg is no different functionally than a link pointing to the same jpeg.  Your use of the NFT is functionally no different than someone who didn’t pay 500k for it.  The only purpose to “own” an NFT of a piece of art is because you think it will increase in value and you can sell it for a profit.  

[Guest]

If a person gets joy out of being the owner of an NFT of the Picasso, how is that different than your enjoyment over looking at brush strokes on canvas?

 

It is all arbitrary.

[Keyser_Soze]

Could they get joy out of giving tons of money to people who need it? You can't see that either but it's a lot more beneficial.

[LazyPiranha]

36 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

If a person gets joy out of being the owner of an NFT of the Picasso, how is that different than your enjoyment over looking at brush strokes on canvas?

 

It is all arbitrary.

We’re discussing two different things now.  I was discussing the functional difference between owning art and owning an NFT regardless of value.  Now we’re discussing personal enjoyment.  If you get some sort of joy out of owning an NFT then so be it, that has nothing to do with the functional difference between owning an NFT and having a link saved to your clipboard being nil.

 

All value is relative.  All enjoyment is subjective.  A person who owns an NFT objectively can’t do anything a person who has the image saved on their hard drive can’t also do other than sell the NFT to someone else.  The same is not true of an original piece of art.  

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

We’re discussing two different things now.  I was discussing the functional difference between owning art and owning an NFT regardless of value.  Now we’re discussing personal enjoyment.  If you get some sort of joy out of owning an NFT then so be it, that has nothing to do with the functional difference between owning an NFT and having a link saved to your clipboard being nil.

Your supposed functional difference is itself arbitrary. The underlying notion is that seeing brush strokes is better than not. And what is that based on?

[LazyPiranha]

55 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Your supposed functional difference is itself arbitrary. The underlying notion is that seeing brush strokes is better than not. And what is that based on?

You keeping bringing value into this when I’m intentionally putting all value aside.

 

Objectively, a painting is different than a jpeg.  The objective act of seeing a painting and seeing a digital image of a painting are different.  There is no denying that.  What value you place on that difference is subjective, the fact that there is a difference is not.  The objective act of viewing a jpeg and viewing a jpeg of an NFT you own is identical.  
 

You own theaters, there is an objectively different experience between watching a movie with an audience in a theater versus seeing it at a drive in versus watching it on my phone.  My subjective enjoyment of each experience will differ, but you cannot deny that they are different things.  

[Ghost_MH]

What's silly here is that disaster meme girl would not have been able to sell a unique print of her picture for $500k. She's not even selling the ownership/copyright of her picture and the terms of the sale dictate she retains 10% of any further sales of the copy of the image. Again, she's literally just selling a copy of the picture that isn't any different than anything else you can find when you Google "disaster girl meme".

 

Every article says she's selling the original image, but that's not even true unless the NFT comes with the SD card the original image was taken on.

 

That's the difference here. If I own a Picasso, I own the actual original. If it's an original, assigns and limited print, there is still great value but not as much as the original.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

You keeping bringing value into this when I’m intentionally putting all value aside.

 

Objectively, a painting is different than a jpeg.  The objective act of seeing a painting and seeing a digital image of a painting are different.  There is no denying that.  What value you place on that difference is subjective, the fact that there is a difference is not.  The objective act of viewing a jpeg and viewing a jpeg of an NFT you own is identical.  
 

You own theaters, there is an objectively different experience between watching a movie with an audience in a theater versus seeing it at a drive in versus watching it on my phone.  My subjective enjoyment of each experience will differ, but you cannot deny that they are different things.  

They are different, yes. To what end? Why do the differences matter other than to the individual making a decision on whether or not to purchase?
 

3 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

That's the difference here. If I own a Picasso, I own the actual original. If it's an original, assigns and limited print, there is still great value but not as much as the original.

The original having more value than a copy is completely arbitrary! We just collectively have decided so. What if in the future we view physical goods as less valuable than high res digital versions of the same thing?

[CitizenVectron]

I think the argument fails once you consider an NFT a link to a thing, not the thing itself. Sure, there is "value" in having the link, just like there is value in anything we assign value to. But having a digital copy of the image on your own computer is a different thing than having an NFT that points to that image, because the NFT won't point to it forever. In that sense, NFTs are stupid. 

[Ghost_MH]

8 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

The original having more value than a copy is completely arbitrary! We just collectively have decided so. What if in the future we view physical goods as less valuable than high res digital versions of the same thing?

 

It's not arbitrary. Ownership gives you control over the item until that time when you no longer own it. You're arguing that there's no difference between having all the Beetles' albums you bought on iTunes versus owning publishing rights to their catalog. They aren't valued the same and they shouldn't be. What's the difference between renting a house and owning a house if you get to live in it either way? I'm not saying digital goods can't be highly valuable. Stocks are basically just digital goods that represent ownership of something else, so this isn't some new theory. There's just a fundamental difference between ownership of an original and buying a copy of something. These NFTs are mostly scams because the artists aren't usually giving up rights copyrights to their images. Cool for those artists that are, but not for anyone that spent $500k on a copy of the disaster girl meme when disaster girl gets to keep ownership of the copyright and a portion of the profits of future sales of the copy they just sold.