[HN Gopher] A Beginner's Guide to NFTs
___________________________________________________________________
A Beginner's Guide to NFTs
Author : donohoe
Score : 29 points
Date : 2021-02-09 04:42 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (linda.mirror.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (linda.mirror.xyz)
| denisnazarov wrote:
| Best explanation of NFTs and virtual goods I heard was from
| pmarca and bhorowitz on Clubhouse yesterday:
|
| - The Honus Wagner baseball card is $0.50 of physical goods
| (cardboard/ink) and $3M of virtual goods
|
| - A Basquiat painting is $100 of physical goods (paint and
| canvas) and $1M of virtual goods
|
| - A rare Nike sneaker is $5 of physical goods (plastic/rubber)
| and $500 of virtual goods
|
| NFTs are going to take this phenomenon to Internet scale.
|
| We made the conceptual leap from physical gold to digital gold
| with Bitcoin. We will do the same for all other objects with
| cultural value with NFTs.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This sounds like "crypto-babble" to me (sorry, but if I had a
| bitcoin for every time I've heard "take this phenomenon to
| Internet scale" I'd be a bitcoin billionaire, which I guess
| would either make me very rich or bankrupt depending on one's
| point of view).
|
| I fully understand how the value of highly in-demand assets are
| a function of their restricted supply. And yes, at present,
| that can apply to crypto as well. I see nothing in your post to
| make the leap from how rare physical goods are valued that
| somehow NFTs can replace that.
| centimeter wrote:
| Two reasons this is not likely to succeed:
|
| 1. Reality is a schelling point. Owning a physically, globally
| unique version of an object is more universally appreciable
| than owning a virtual title that only has significance insofar
| as the NFT shitcoin platform you "own" it on has significance.
| There are probably going to be dozens of these NFT platforms,
| and I don't see many natural dynamics that would cause one to
| come out ahead (unlike with money).
|
| 2. Owning the physical version of something gives you a
| meaningful monopoly over certain uses of the item (exhibiting
| the painting, wearing the shoes, etc.) whereas NFTs only give
| you access to one monopoly (bragging rights). It's not nothing,
| but it's not much either.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| > A common skepticism is that someone can just take a screenshot
| of the image or get a digital file so it's not really scarce.
| However, the same argument could apply to physical items as well.
| Anyone can take a photo of the Mona Lisa or create a replica of
| it, but it isn't the real item from the artist. People are
| willing to pay a premium for the original work. Another
| interesting aspect of digital art or collectibles is that you can
| easily verify the item's ownership history. Some digital items
| might be worth more depending on who owned it in the past.
|
| The copy of a digital image is 1:1 with the original.
|
| A print of the Mona Lisa wasn't painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
| It's a completely different painting.
|
| It's possible to take their argument even farther though. You
| don't actually own the original digital image unless you have the
| hard drive it was originally saved on in your possession.
| detaro wrote:
| Paintings are not the best example (although even there: plenty
| of paintings that can be forged perfectly, and some where the
| originals have not actually been painted by "the artist"), but
| lots of Art can be perfectly reproduced and the generally
| accepted value is still in "the original(s)", not any of the
| reproduction. Some installation pieces literally only exist as
| instructions on how to create them - and still the right to
| make "the one" is a valuable thing sold. Film works might exist
| as a limited set of perfectly copyable DVDs - pretty much the
| hard drive concept you propose. That it works like that is in
| many ways convention - and copyright law.
|
| NFTs are pretty much the same: of course you can copy the
| pixels or source code, but the presumed value is in holding the
| token that has been defined as representing ownership of it -
| with the additional argument that that is harder to fake.
|
| If that is something you consider valuable and want to spend on
| is a personal thing (I personally don't), but it works as long
| as enough people agree that that's how it works. And blockchain
| stuff has right now lots of money floating around, and Art can
| even provide additional perceived legitimacy, so the market of
| people to agree on that is there.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Isn't the distinction that da Vinci put his brush to wood on
| the original Mona Lisa? How do you duplicate that?
| detaro wrote:
| Right, you can't. But you can make (in principle, again, a
| classic painting like the Mona Lisa is not the best
| example) an indistinguishable copy - and that copy does not
| have the distinction of da Vinci's touch and thus is not
| equal to the original. And similarly, you can define an
| equivalent of the "creators touch" for a digital file and
| agree with others that that's what makes it an original and
| valuable over a mere bit-identical copy.
|
| And the examples in between do the same to varying degrees,
| to show that the idea of not actually requiring a direct
| "touch" is not new in the Art world, with originality more
| treated as what in software we'd call a "license": rules
| the artist decided.
| nipponese wrote:
| I have heard the NFT art narrative many times and I still can't
| understand how it makes sense except in the one exception where
| the platform for displaying the art is a walled garden (yes,
| permissioned). For example, maybe there are a few virtual world
| platforms that agree they will accept NFTs that adhere to a
| specific protocol, or the digital picture frame is authorized
| to display the art.
| ahnick wrote:
| I think it's easier to understand in the analogy of signed vs
| unsigned baseball cards. The images on the baseball cards are
| identical, but the only difference is the baseball player's
| signature is on one and not the other. This is just the digital
| equivalent.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Are NFT's actually desirable when not paired to a major platform?
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Is it just me or does everything in the DeFi space these days
| sound like a really flimsy response to a money laundering
| investigation?
|
| No really, officer, I wasn't laundering those drug proceeds, I
| was just buying a non-fungible token from Pablo Escobar in order
| to resell it to El Chapo. NFTs are just like artwork, officer.
| You know, the kind of artwork that billionaires use to launder
| money? We're just doing the same thing they do, but on the
| blockchain!
|
| Come on folks. It's getting ridiculous. I'm as critical of the
| AML/KYC insanity as anybody else, but the answer definitely is
| _not_ to invent new ways to make cryptocurrencies attractive to
| _real_ money launderers. The latest goofiness is pretty
| transparent.
| s5300 wrote:
| Having been in cryptocurrency since 2010
|
| I can't wait to start selling virtual bridges to all of these
| people who so eagerly want to give away their money.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-09 23:00 UTC)