Who wants NFTs?

[robkelk]

Apparently, Ubisoft's and Square-Enix's customers don't.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the metaverse/blockchain/NFT news we'll be hearing all throughout 2022. Buckle up, folks, because it's going to get worse.

[Labster]

The people who are most into NFTs are people looking to make money.  That basically means asset speculators, crypto bros, and corporations.  Corporations that already sell virtual goods are especially interested, as it may make their imaginary property more valuable.

But, like, why NFTs for that?  It's not like you can take a skin from Halo and drop it into a Neptunia game.  It's not like they even have a common graphics API.  Meta wants to make a metaverse, but no one has financial incentives to do that, let alone practicality.  So for now, NFTs are another asset bubble in an era of nearly free money from national banks.

Here's a write-up of thoughts on "crypto" by a cryptographer, Moxie Marlinspike: My first impressions of web3.  All of this effort into making a blockchain showing immutable ownership on a decentralized network... and an NFT he that made gets removed from his own wallet  by the marketplace service for being too weird.  It's still on the blockchain somewhere of course, he just can't sell it or view it in his wallet.  So much for decentralization.

[Dartz]

This is a solution in need of a problem if ever I saw one.

Maybe, as some form of digital software license or digital image license - something horrific like that.


Thus far, the only practical use I can see for this crypto stuff is filling a few wall panels with PC or graphics cards and sending them to the mines when winter gets particularly cold out and at least offset the electricity you're burning to heat your house. But then you've the capital investment in the hardware to account for.

[Matrix Dragon]

NFTs. Better known by their traditional name. Money Laundering.

[nocarename]

Hey now! They're not just money laundering, they're also penny stock pump and dumps.

[Matrix Dragon]

And art theft, can't forget that part.

[robkelk]

Speaking of "art", I see that DAZ3D is now selling NFTs. They appear to be custom characters that people can use as avatars, or in ... oh, surprise, ... in DAZ3D software.

[LynnInDenver]

Speaking of "art", I see that DAZ3D is now selling NFTs. They appear to be custom characters that people can use as avatars, or in ... oh, surprise, ... in DAZ3D software.

I've been trying my best to ignore that they're doing it - partly because it seems like everyone's wanting to dip their toes into this toxic sludge, but that any attempt at a boycott for me means just not dealing with technology anymore.

[GethN7]

NFTs strike me as an asinine money pit and a copyright nightmare given it revolves heavily around digital art for profit. I've always considered most to all crypto money a fool's investment and this is just a glaringly bad example of it.

[Norgarth]

I saw 1 person compare it to the old fad of buying a star for a loved one. Those companies (and their records) have disappeared, along with all the money they were paid.

[robkelk]

There's also a lot of speculation going on...

In the 17th century, it was unimaginable to most people that something as common as a flower could be worth so much more money than most people earned in a year.

Source

In the 21st century, I find it unimaginable that something as common as a digital file could be worth so much more money than most people earn in a month.

Or maybe I just don't understand NFTs. Which, by Warren Buffett's often-repeated rule, means I shouldn't invest in them.

[Labster]

Oh I understand them fully. People want a way to make digital assets, which can be copied for a virtually nil marginal cost, to become scarce so money can be made selling it. So they invent artificial scarcity for digital assets using mathematics, except the original asset still has a nil copying cost unless everyone pretends it doesn't. Only the mathematics is scarce.

Cryptocurrency is exactly the same. Everyone agrees the math is scarce and there is only one of each coin. Unless... you copy all the coins. And then you get forks of Bitcoins like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV (all of these are real). And now you have two copies of the same mathematical asset that both have some value. A totally scarce asset unless you can convince enough people to fork, and now you have more assets. But with the invisible hand of the market, wouldn't the net value be the same, because the utility is split? Nope. Not if the utility is market speculation.

The problem I have is that I think I could make a lot of money on these speculative assets. It just feels distasteful. Putting aside all of the environmental concerns of BTC for a minute, and aside all of the money laundering, and aside all the theft, bitcoins are a pretty cool idea. But even with those gone, the whole speculation feels stupid, because people are not buying cryptocurrencies for their utility, they are buying for speculation, because the asset is untethered to any physical good and can therefore cost as much as anything. NFTs at this moment are basically an art project except you add back in the concerns about theft and money laundering.

I'm honestly at the point where I could be making more money on investments, but I feel like most of the things I could make money on are distasteful to me. I don't want to make money by pretending like a cryptographic hash in a blockchain is worth something. I don't want to make money by investing in stocks of companies that treat their employees like shit, and for publicly traded companies that's almost all of them. I think it's fairly hard to be rich and be a moral person.

[GethN7]

Oh I understand them fully.  People want a way to make digital assets, which can be copied for a virtually nil marginal cost, to become scarce so money can be made selling it.  So they invent artificial scarcity for digital assets using mathematics, except the original asset still has a nil copying cost unless everyone pretends it doesn't.  Only the mathematics is scarce.

Cryptocurrency is exactly the same.  Everyone agrees the math is scarce and there is only one of each coin.  Unless... you copy all the coins.  And then you get forks of Bitcoins like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV (all of these are real).  And now you have two copies of the same mathematical asset that both have some value.  A totally scarce asset unless you can convince enough people to fork, and now you have more assets.  But with the invisible hand of the market, wouldn't the net value be the same, because the utility is split?  Nope.  Not if the utility is market speculation.

Like I've always believed, cryptocurrency is simply a digital gold standard, only worse, because gold is tangible and does have real-world uses.

[Black Aeronaut]

I think it's fairly hard to be rich and be a moral person.

There's a very simple reason for this.

Being wealthy has never had any good moral implications.

Becoming wealthy is all about exploitation, and how you can work around the currently established rules in order to do so.  It's a bit like safety regulations - every time some ass-clown finds some new way around the rules (and in the process of doing so, hurts/kills themselves and/or other people), they make a new rule to close up that loop hole.  Or at least one that makes the process safe (in the cases of "Great idea, horrible execution").

And the biggest issue with people like this is that nothing is ever really enough for them.  They always want more.  So they keep on raising the standard of what it means to be "wealthy".  Which, in turn, means they keep on looking for new ways to skirt the rules - to exploit people and resources in ways that are morally ambiguous or even outright evil, but are not technically violations of the established rules.  They'll gladly use these newfound loopholes to their advantage any way they can.

Until someone closes up that loophole to make it fair for everyone else.  Or at least give it the appearance of being "fair".

Example:
"Yeah, sure.  We got this rule about minimum wage, but since it depends on politicians to increase the minimum wage, let's buy off as many of them as we can to keep that from happening."
"But isn't that against the rules, too?"
"Oh, I got this great idea about a loop hole.  You know that thing about corporate personhood?  Well..."

And so it goes, where you have people like this driving the system and continually setting the bar higher and higher.  And they've gotten their way for long enough now that even the ability for us to close those loopholes in the rules is being stunted and stymied.  And why?  Well, just so they can have it all to themselves.  After all, in any economic system, if others have the ability to become wealthy, then that means that there's less to go around.

And why would they want that when they're never satisfied with what they already have?  They always want more, and letting others get up to their level means the exact opposite of "more".

I don't know if this loophole will be closed up any time soon because the only ones that are really profiting off this are the tech industries and energy industries.  Those that seem to be making money off of NFTs directly aren't really.  By comparison to the Rockefellers and Peabodys of this modern age, they're small potatoes.  And once this particular bubble pops, it will be of no consequence to them at all.  Sure, the economy will have a hiccup from it, but it will bounce back, just like the housing market did after the Great Recession.

[robkelk]

Source

Francis always has been impulsive and short-sighted, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was an editorial position of the PvP creative team.