[HN Gopher] Nyan Cat on the Blockchain
___________________________________________________________________
Nyan Cat on the Blockchain
Author : awaxman11
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-02-19 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (foundation.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (foundation.app)
| joshenders wrote:
| I remain bearish on crypto but will shamelessly shill for an
| artist friend outside of the Silicon Valley tech community who
| was an early adopter and has been quite successful with NFT,
| https://app.rarible.com/elfjtrul
| Hamuko wrote:
| If one wanted to sell magic beans on the blockchain, how would
| they go about it?
| stunt wrote:
| > I am the original artist behind the iconic GIF
|
| Who can validate that?
| Retr0spectrum wrote:
| I've long suspected that many high-value art sales are a form of
| money laundering, so it does not surprise me at all to see the
| idea become blockchain-ified. I wish I'd thought of it first! I
| expect it will continue to be a resounding success.
| anonisko wrote:
| Money laundering for sure. But also just a store of value.
|
| A Picasso is like a savings account. You can hold one for
| decades and it will preserve value relative to inflation so
| long as people still value them the same.
|
| Another way to think about rare art, is that it is a game. It's
| a game of trying to predict (or promote) which art will stick
| long term in some collective consciousness. The Mona Lisa is
| valuable because literally everyone in the western world knows
| it. Nyan cat is a modern example. It's a piece of art that is
| locked into the consciousness of at least tens of millions of
| younger people who are now starting to have money. If a piece
| of popular art exists in a form that is ownable and verifyably
| original, then it will trade for tons of money.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > The Mona Lisa is valuable because literally everyone in the
| western world knows it.
|
| While true, reproductions of the Mona Lisa would be far less
| valuable, even if they were indistinguishable.
| firloop wrote:
| The creator of Nyan Cat just made almost $600k for a NFT of their
| work. Incredible.
| berniemadoff69 wrote:
| it is always possible that someone with deep pockets,
| tangentially connected with the creator of Nyan Cat, is
| injecting money into the site to create the illusion of a large
| sale. the eBay equivalent of bidding on your own item. there is
| a huge incentive to do this, because of the hype it creates
| (large sales = 'art world' news), leading to more people
| wanting to 'get in on the action'.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Precisely. People have been doing this with plain ol' trading
| too. But then CMC started cleaning up the volumes and there
| were transparency reports on exchanges. Before this happened
| some exchange you never heard of was claiming to be a leader
| in volume.
| _jal wrote:
| NFTs are perfect for the art world.
|
| There are already so many... call them information games,
| ranging from ego puffery to outright cons, that I'm surprised
| bitcoin hadn't infected it already.
|
| Should anyone wish to trade their fungible tokens for my
| nonfugible, but very pretty, buckets of bits, please hit me up.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| https://etherscan.io/address/0x7Eb28B2f14A59789ec4c782A5DD95...
|
| Notice there isn't much transaction history. We can speculate
| on what that _might_ mean.
| [deleted]
| petecooper wrote:
| NFT = non-fungible token
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token
|
| (Today I learned.)
| mullingitover wrote:
| I think the obvious question this raises is what happens when we
| start embedding someone else's intellectual property or illegal
| content in the blockchain. Can the blockchain be DMCA'd?
| nemothekid wrote:
| Why would you buy crypto-artwork from someone who couldn't
| provide a cryptographically signed message that they were in
| fact the original creator?
| mullingitover wrote:
| Digital artwork always reduces to an integer, what's the
| point of buying a number? If you want to give money to the
| creator, just give money to the creator. Not sure I
| understand the value of adding a rube goldberg machine to the
| mix.
| woko wrote:
| The way I understand the appeal is that there is a notion
| of (virtual) authenticity. It is like paying for the
| signature. Imagine you own a copy of a painting by Van
| Gogh, or a painting which cannot be authenticated, then it
| is suddenly worth a lot less than a painting with a
| certificate that it is an authentic one and another
| certificate that you obtained it through legal means.
| seany wrote:
| This 100% already happens just because of jurisdiction issues.
| saagarjha wrote:
| https://gizmodo.com/someone-uploaded-child-pornography-to-a-...
| nemothekid wrote:
| Content aside - the whole concept and presentation of this
| website is so futuristic. Like I'm imagining a 90s-00s sci-fi
| cartoon where rich patrons frequent a virtual museum to bid on
| very avant garde digital artwork.
|
| If this was a movie, I'd be like "this guy doesn't get how the
| internet works."
| whatshisface wrote:
| Does this mean USD are not worth anything anymore?
|
| (Also, how does anyone know whether or not this is the true
| original artist?)
| nightfly wrote:
| More that crypt-rich people have a lot of money to burn.
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| the rich always had a use for "art". This just bridges the
| gap now that the rich is also in kleptocurrencies.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Does the owner of an NFT have a way to limit others from posting
| a fake? i.e. some code to embed the 'real' version in a
| verifiable way?
|
| And is there a way to lend a piece for a defined amount of time
| before getting it back?
| zemnmez wrote:
| No. The original art either has to be gated by a central source
| of truth (not decentralised), or entirely made public by
| uploading it in full to the blockchain. There is also not much
| of a concept of 'lending' the data, as owning the token and not
| owning the token are effectively the same thing, and there's no
| 'proof of deletion'. Opinion, but NFTs are a bubble. As soon as
| someone publishes a site that makes it easy to download them
| without paying the market will crash.
| jaredtn wrote:
| Here is a site that makes it easy to download the GIF:
| https://www.deviantart.com/minecraftrulz2017/art/Nyan-Cat-
| HD.... Please let me know when the crash is expected, now
| that your condition has been met :)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The owner of this NFT doesn't own anything other than this NFT.
|
| As far as I can tell, they don't even have any contractual
| claims to prevent the author from selling another Nyan Cat.
|
| They can, however, show that they were the first blockchain
| address to have blown $600K on Nyan Cat (if you ignore the
| previous transactions, which were presumably related to the
| auction itself?)
| suprfsat wrote:
| Ask the guy who painted the Mona Lisa
| https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi...
| boltzmann_ wrote:
| I still don't understand this. Who is buying art at this
| ridiculous prices? My only explanation is money laundering but if
| someone has another explanation please comment
| alistairSH wrote:
| You aren't the only one.
|
| The nyan cat image is out there, copied all over the place. The
| buyer isn't getting a commercial license or anything like that.
|
| I'm really not sure what the buyer is getting here.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| Do you understand art in general? It is valuable because there
| are people that believe it is valuable. The NFT advancement is
| that it proves some sort of proof of ownership. Yes, it can be
| copied, but someone can also take a picture of a famous
| painting, or buy a cheap print. But they can't claim ownership.
| Only one person can do that, and people attribute value to
| that.
|
| Also there are a lot of crypto-millionaires that believe this
| is the future. So that's why they are going for large sums so
| soon. I am not one, but I do think they are right.
| AlanYx wrote:
| >The NFT advancement is that it proves some sort of proof of
| ownership.
|
| It's not even ownership, at least in the classic art
| collector sense or in the sense of having a meaningful degree
| of control over the work. Torres retains ownership of the
| copyrighted work. What he's selling is a transferable limited
| license that doesn't even include any commercial use rights.
|
| What's a little mind-blowing to me is that the terms of the
| site don't indicate that the license is an exclusive license.
| The buyer gets no legal guarantee that Torres won't sell
| another such license in the future.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| Agreed, there are many issues, and I believe that many will
| be taking advantage of this system. But it will all be
| sorted in time, and I do think there is a huge future here.
| eli wrote:
| A big dollar sale of an NFT like this makes headlines and is a
| shot in the arm to the whole concept of NFTs. I wonder if one
| or perhaps both parties to this sale somehow stand to gain much
| more than the final sale price if NFTs become seen as a hot
| commodity.
| enko123 wrote:
| The idea in general is that you will own some digital asset and
| then use a smart-contract to license it out in a trustless
| manner. Reminds me of CryptoKitties where ETH whales were
| buying cats for huge sums.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| Why is the market not already flooded with the digital equivalent
| of knock-offs on Amazon?
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| Regardless of being paid for with ethereum, aren't you just
| purchasing this _on the foundation platform_? (i.e no foundation,
| no art /ownership?)
| meowkit wrote:
| No, Foundation seems to be a dapp, so its more like an
| interface to see the art and transact on it. Its functioning
| like a brokerage.
|
| The art/payment/ownership is all on Ethereum. They claim to be
| completely noncustodial https://foundation.app/terms
| soheil wrote:
| Most likely what's happening is that both parties to the
| transaction have an agreement to return funds after the sale and
| this is done for publicity reasons.
| viro wrote:
| I hope so.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's possible that someone was so crypto-rich that spending $600K
| USD just to say they "owned" Nyan cat was worth it for the lulz,
| or for the flex.
|
| However, paying $600K for a blockchain meme is also the ideal way
| to manufacture the illusion of demand for blockchain memes. If
| you're part of a business that wants to make money by selling
| memes on the blockchain, seeding the frenzy with a very public
| $600K purchase of an iconic meme is a great way to get the party
| started.
|
| If you want to take it to the next level, you could re-list the
| Nyan Cat NFT and then re-buy it from yourself using a second
| wallet that isn't obviously linked to the first. Now the "price"
| of Nyan Cat looks like it has gone up, as recorded publicly in
| the Blockchain, even though nothing changed hands. A well
| capitalized individual could continue re-selling Nyan cat to
| themselves from different wallets at increasingly high values to
| create the illusion of a bidding war: "Nyan Cat value rises 10x
| in a week!" This creates demand from others who want in on the
| action.
|
| I guarantee NFT sellers will be using this sale to lend
| credibility to their ventures. Plenty of people will rush to
| "buy" other memes with expectations of flipping them to someone
| else.
|
| Expensive meme, cheap advertising.
| philipyoungg wrote:
| You just basically describe how paintings and art got so
| expensive.
| koboll wrote:
| Interesting. I'd like to read more. Any good books on this?
| raziel2701 wrote:
| I think it's just money laundering via art purchases.
| mike_d wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-
| laundering...
| number6 wrote:
| Did you ever here of rare pepe coins?
| https://rarepepewallet.com/
| rmorey wrote:
| > If you want to take it to the next level, you could re-list
| the Nyan Cat NFT and then re-buy it from yourself using a
| second wallet that isn't obviously linked to the first.
|
| pretty sure this would be securities fraud
| xur17 wrote:
| Is the Nyan Cat a security?
| eljee wrote:
| It's called wash trading and for securities, it is illegal.
| I dont think the Nyan Cat NFT is a security. Its more like
| a commodity. And yes, wash trading and money laundering via
| art is an age-old practice.
| xur17 wrote:
| My point was that the Nyan Cat NFT likely isn't a
| security, and hence wash trading might not be illegal.
| rmorey wrote:
| IANAL so I'm probably misusing the term. But it definitely
| feels like buying and selling the asset secretly to inflate
| it's market value is _some_ sort of fraud
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Definitely. Blockchain is incredibly attractive for this type
| of fraud because wallet addresses aren't bank accounts.
| Anyone can create new wallets or even use tricks to hide the
| source of funds (send to exchange, withdraw from exchange to
| different wallet).
|
| Cryptocurrencies are a dream come true for perpetrators of
| fraud like this. Buyer beware.
| [deleted]
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| This is amusing, and has a whiff of grift but if you are
| familiar with the real estate title business you'll see that
| NFT's would be a vastly superior and more transparent solution
| than what happens today. Title insurance is also a needless
| racket given NFT's.
|
| Once the real-estate title business adopted NFT's DeFi
| mortgages would become obvious.
|
| Today if you restructure your mortgage you actually have to
| file paperwork with the county clerk. County courthouses are
| the gatekeeper to residential liens. The County/District clerk
| could use a key to sign liens, etc...
| xur17 wrote:
| There's a company that purchases properties and rents them
| out, wraps them in an LLC, and then assigns ownership of the
| LLC via crypto tokens (this ownership is written into the LLC
| docs). Owners of the tokens then receive monthly payments for
| rent.
|
| I'm wondering if it would be possible to do something similar
| to accomplish what you are talking about - advantage being
| that no laws need to be modified to make it possible. The LLC
| acts as a thin proxy layer between the US legal system and
| the NFT that assigns ownership. Essentially there could be a
| legal service that would allow wrapping and unwrapping of
| these properties, and once they are wrapped, DeFi mortgages
| would become possible, split ownership, transfer of ownership
| within DeFi, etc. I could imagine a whole ecosystem
| developing around this that people could buy and sell houses
| inside of.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Just curious, do you recall what the name of this company
| is?
| xur17 wrote:
| RealT.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The missing piece of the puzzle is the cost of recourse for
| things like non-payment.
|
| If I buy fractional ownership of your rental LLC via
| traditional means, it's not hard to get those well-
| understand contracts enforced by courts. Not necessarily
| cheap depending on your lawyer, but it's well understood.
|
| If I instead buy fractional ownership via some sort of
| crypto transaction from another country and suddenly the
| payments stop, it becomes difficult to work with a foreign
| legal system to understand essentially computer code.
|
| Worse yet, what do you do if someone loses the private keys
| to their crypto tokens? Or they're stolen? Does the new
| holder simply get to collect the rent from that point
| forward? Does a hacker get to own the house because the
| owner's account was compromised?
| vmception wrote:
| With NFT's because the provenance and price history is so
| easily visible, platforms allow the NFT owner to borrow against
| them instantly so people can use NFT art and property as a
| store of value much easier than fine art collectors or other
| property holders can.
|
| This alters a lot of assumptions and behavior about the market.
| Efficient up to the second price history of one NFT and a
| basket of other NFTs is always available. Removes the need for
| appraisals and the discretion of lenders. Liquidity pools and
| dynamic rates are just available.
|
| Obvious rebuttal: "But what if the market dries up and everyone
| is overlevered and lenders can't liquidate the NFTs"
|
| Okay. No different than any other art and property market. For
| anyone passing by, don't create a fictional higher standard
| just because you don't want to respect the existence of this
| market.
| eli wrote:
| Why would I need an appraisal of a painting I bought at an
| old fashioned auction? Doesn't everyone know its market price
| at that moment?
|
| So compared to owning a physical painting, an advantage here
| is I can do fancy financial maneuvers with it more easily?
| And a disadvantage is that I don't actually get to own a
| painting.
|
| What happens when there's a competing blockchain that also
| claims to represent digital ownership of this artwork? A
| physical painting is either in your possession or it isn't,
| but "owning" Nyan Cat is only valuable so long as people want
| Nyan Cat AND agree that the chain it's on is a valuable way
| to represent ownership.
| vmception wrote:
| The NFT market is only providing scarcity to digital
| collectibles. There is no NFT market for physical assets,
| markets might exist but "the market" is not choosing them,
| so therefore that's not really an argument because we
| aren't talking about those. The remainder of this post is
| referring to digital-native collectibles:
|
| > Why would I need an appraisal of a painting I bought at
| an old fashioned auction? Doesn't everyone know its market
| price at that moment?
|
| Because of the structure of that market, the purchasers are
| not seeking liquidity at the time of purchase. The
| available lenders are not there as soon as a purchase
| occurred, and are lending to the universe of fine art not
| just yours, so the price history is not available. Between
| private sales, theft, duplicates, inheritances and
| liquidations, the appraisals are necessary to prove
| provenance and price history. If you had a banking
| relationship with the banker right there with you at the
| auction, you may be able to get liquidity for your purchase
| very quickly in the matter of a few business days. Such
| "privilege" is not necessary in the NFT market, making it
| faster and more efficient.
|
| > So compared to owning a physical painting, an advantage
| here is I can do fancy financial maneuvers with it more
| easily?
|
| Royalties to the original artist are accomplished more
| easily. There are a lot of NFTs coded to pay X% to the
| original artist upon transfer and other use cases. This is
| a world's apart better for artists and shifts the
| incentives of that whole market, and so the "market of
| artists" is immediately choosing that because its a new
| century with better options. They are also people more
| aligned to "support living artists", so the market is
| forming rapidly as artists get liquid. There are also a lot
| of other creative people that have been doing other things
| with their life, that are finding it economically viable to
| be a creative now.
|
| They all inherit the same financial infrastructure.
|
| > What happens when there's a competing blockchain that
| also claims to represent digital ownership of this artwork?
|
| The earlier date proves earlier original existence.
| Consensus can also be managed by the market and the issuer
| as a fallback. And then of course the courts are a further
| fallback. The existing art world relies on issuers to not
| dilute their market and trust of it (if they say its a
| limited edition, we have to trust that well after the
| artist is dead). This world provides efficiencies that
| don't have to be a cure all, but will function as such most
| of the time any way.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > platforms allow the NFT owner to borrow against them
| instantly so people can use NFT art and property as a store
| of value
|
| Presumably the lenders are aware of the high risk of wash
| trading in these securities.
|
| If someone takes an NFT and "buys" it from themselves with
| 100% of their crypto cash, they are now "worth" 2X: They have
| their original cash, and an NFT that was last priced at 100%
| of their original cash.
| vmception wrote:
| This is factored in the Loan to Value ratios.
| marcell wrote:
| Can you point me to some sites where I can use NFT's to
| get loans?
| jjb123 wrote:
| The comments in this thread so far, imo, resemble comments at the
| beginning of dismissing BTC (just an observation, and I was one
| of those making similar observations in 2011/2012).
| eli wrote:
| At that time the claim was that BTC was a payments solution
| that would replace credit cards and cash. I feel OK for having
| dismissed that. It turns out that BTC has little inherent
| value, and is mostly just a tool for speculation. It's
| desirable to hold only so long as you think someone else will
| buy it off you for more later.
|
| I think it's the the same with these NFT art tokens. They are
| not particularly useful as a thing to own, but if enough people
| believe they're worth something, then I guess they're worth
| something.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _It 's desirable to hold only so long as you think someone
| else will buy it off you for more later._
|
| Of course, that's also true of all world currencies.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Bitcoin is very clearly a speculative investment.
| Practically speaking, very few people have any interest in
| using it as a currency.
|
| The narrative is "HODL" for a reason, not because everyone
| wants to use it as a currency.
| gheathwave wrote:
| No it isn't... You can buy just about anything with any of
| the world reserve currencies. You can also pay taxes in the
| applicable jurisdiction with any government currency.
|
| You can do neither with BTC.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Buying something with a currency, and paying taxes, are
| both other people buying the currency off of you. In one
| case they're buying your currency with goods and
| services, in the other they're buying it in exchange for
| protection. McDonalds gives you burgers because they want
| your USD. They want your USD because everyone wants their
| USD. That's how fiat works; the biggest difference
| between Bitcoin and USD is that Bitcoin is deflationary,
| while USD is managed by a central bank.
|
| World currencies regularly collapse. What people fear
| might happen to BTC has already happened to the
| Zimbabwean dollar, the Argentine peso, and many others.
| It even happened to the denarius during the crisis of the
| third century. Even with stable currencies, there is
| plenty of risk to be had in FOREX trading. So... saying
| that BTC is a lot like every other fiat currency is not
| so much a complement as it is a neutral observation.
| gheathwave wrote:
| It isn't about potential for collapse, and even if it was
| it is far less likely that the USD collapses tomorrow
| than BTC does...
|
| USD, Euro, Yen, etc. are all far more useful as a medium
| of exchange than BTC. I would argue that their primary
| usage is just that - a medium of exchange.
|
| Until you can buy most useful things easily with BTC it
| is not like fiat.
|
| Lastly, if BTC or any other crypto was to grow to the
| extent that most people were willing to accept it in
| exchange for goods or services, I believe that
| governments would be incentivized to shut it down.
| codehalo wrote:
| Try buying a something like a can of milk in the US using
| euros or yen and get back to me on how successful you
| were.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I promise you, if I showed up at my corner store with a
| EU50 note and said "Would you give me a gallon of milk
| for this" the dude would take it.
|
| He probably wouldn't give me change, so my effective
| exchange rate for Euro->USD would be something like 20x
| reality, but you gotta pay for convenience.
| Geee wrote:
| Same with bitcoin. They wouldn't accept a currency that
| is very inflationary or very hard to exchange.
| gheathwave wrote:
| Try buying something like a can of milk anywhere on
| planet earth with BTC and get back to me on how
| successful you were.
| zackkitzmiller wrote:
| The grocery store across from my apartment takes BTC. QR
| code you scan on the POS when you checkout.
| eli wrote:
| True of GameStop stock too. Neither is likely to be the
| currency of the future.
| whatshisface wrote:
| GameStop stock has a larger underlying value than USD or
| BTC, believe it or not!
| patrickthebold wrote:
| Usually there's some inflation (or risk of inflation) that
| makes holding cash a bad investment opportunity.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Too much inflation is obviously bad, but it's also bad if
| the most attractive investment in an economy is the
| currency itself. If a system actively discourages people
| from investing or spending their currency, things grind
| to a halt. The people who benefit the most are those with
| the most idle cash. The people who suffer the worst are
| those who are forced to spend their limited cash on basic
| necessities.
|
| To be clear: I'm not advocating for unchecked inflation
| or runaway spending. I think the current US inflation
| rate is too high and excessive stimulus spending is ill-
| advised. However, investors have been investing their
| cash in assets and investments to avoid inflation long
| before Bitcoin was invented.
| CraigRood wrote:
| There's a big difference here in that NFTs as currently
| implemented are nothing more than an a trend. They don't have
| any actual value, or function. At least with BTC you could buy
| drugs.
|
| What can you actually do with Nyan cat other than just sell it
| on to the next person. I can enjoy the image and I don't even
| own it.
|
| NFTs are neat, don't get me wrong, but to have any value or
| use, they require an element of trust behind it.
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