[HN Gopher] Beeple Mania
___________________________________________________________________
Beeple Mania
Author : dadt
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-02-23 21:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esquire.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esquire.com)
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| Using blockchain to identify ownership of digital art is imo the
| first use case that makes sense. Who would want to own a coin
| number when you can own a masterpiece.
| adamch wrote:
| How do you "own" something that everyone else can consume and
| replicate? Owning a physical item implies a degree of control
| over it. Owning a public digital item doesn't seem to grant any
| kind of control.
|
| I feel like this is a classic case of "tree falls in a forest,
| does anyone hear it?" where the confusion relies on the word
| "hear" being used in two ways (objective sound waves travelling
| through air, vs subjective perception). Is the word "own" being
| used in two ways here?
| CptFribble wrote:
| I think the point is that NFTs are a way to verifiably prove
| ownership of a digital asset - i.e. the most recent position
| on a verified chain of purchases.
|
| It's like, imagine if you bought an original Picasso, but a
| device existed where someone walking past your house could
| magic a copy of your painting right into their hands, down to
| the molecule. Sure, you'd still have the original, but the
| only way to prove it is by referencing the paper trail from
| the auction house that you're the last person who purchased
| it through "official" channels. Same for these NFTs - the
| blockchain is the irrefutable source of who "officially" owns
| the art.
|
| Personally, I think this is only a thing because people
| generally want to show off the fact that they "own" something
| rather than "just" having it in their house. Like, why bother
| spending $XX millions on an original painting when you could
| just pay a talented artist to copy it for you with real
| paints for a fraction of the cost? As long as you're not
| trying to pass it off as an original for sale, no one would
| care if you cloned a famous painting.
|
| It's because being able to show off your name on the "who
| owns this" line is more important than the actual thing.
| fb03 wrote:
| I have stories :-)
|
| We held a Digital Art Conference down here in Brazil and we
| brought Beeple in for a keynote, and it was an amazing
| experience, he's super bright.
|
| But yeah the guy is always dressed to kill, impeccably, almost
| too serious -- so it's quite contrasting when you see the real
| artist and his likeness compared to how wild his art is.
|
| He also was quite curious about Renoise (a tracker software I was
| using to play live music at one point), and asked "What software
| is that?!". That was a fun moment.
| binarymax wrote:
| I don't know anything about NFTs but Beeple is an absolutely
| amazing artist who's been working hard at it for years, and I'm
| glad to see his success.
| tomg wrote:
| More Beeple art: https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap/
| Fraterkes wrote:
| One of the interesting things I got out of this article is that
| Beeple and his wife actually ended up creating physical artifacts
| to send out to the people who bought their art. In a way that
| feels like the more salient (and obvious) innovation: it gives
| buyers of digital art a way to show lay-people that they actually
| own the piece itself and not just a print.
|
| It's also interesting that these nfts are rarely presented as
| solutions to prove the ownership of non-digital art. There are
| millions of people who own (very convincing) prints of Mondrians,
| and yet when we enter the home of someone rich enough to buy an
| actual Mondrian we usually just assume all the art hanging on
| their walls are originals.
|
| That's what seems counterintuitive about all this: In a sense
| this is the most successfull instance of NFTs being used to sell
| digital art yet, but also the most unnecessary. If you are a
| crypto millionaire from Singapore you don't need NFTs to convince
| anyone you actually own the Beeple piece you say you own.
|
| (Although an obvious use of all this is that it turns digital art
| into a store of value that buyers can potentially sell at a
| higher price.)
| samvher wrote:
| Huh. I did not see this coming but I think this actually kind of
| makes sense. I think many people see being a "patron of the arts"
| as something very high status, and having your ownership encoded
| publicly seems much more status-enhancing than just having
| something hanging in your home. Sure, you could brag that you
| just bought a piece of physical art on Facebook or Instagram, but
| that seems a bit like showing off - maybe a difference here is
| that there is no escaping from the public element, so no-one can
| judge you for it.
|
| If a piece takes off in popularity, I can imagine that there is
| also extra status to being the _first_ to own that particular
| piece, which will forever be visible on the blockchain. [Edit -
| it does seem kind of strange to be the second or later owner
| though, I wonder if that could actually hurt resale value.]
|
| Very curious to see how this develops. If it opens up new
| possibilities for artists to get their work funded and it can
| lead to a flourishing of the arts I'm all for it.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing the point, but doesn't this then only apply
| to the blockchain, and not necessarily the art? Therefore this
| status symbol can be applied to anything (supposedly) sacred:
| books, movies, sexual partners, etc.
|
| To me it may devalue art, seeing how I feel it's the NFT and
| not the art that people value.
| samvher wrote:
| I'm not sure I see the same point as others. But the way I
| imagine it would work is that you buy art from the artist and
| the artist confirms (on the blockchain) that you bought it
| from them, thereby supporting them. So (a) you "own" it, (b)
| you signal being a patron of the arts and (c) the thing you
| paid for can be enjoyed right next to this confirmation.
|
| Yes I guess it can apply to other things as well. I would
| indeed expect books and movies to possibly fit the same
| pattern. And I guess you could set up a public sexual
| partners log as well where both participants can use their
| private key to sign a statement that they did indeed engage
| in intercourse but I'm not sure that that would take off :)
|
| I think the point is still being discovered and it also seems
| totally possible that this is just a fad. It's the first
| practical application of cryptocurrency that I can somehow
| see making sense (if I squint).
| donbrae wrote:
| Been a fan of his work for a few years now. He let me use a
| couple of his pieces as album art. Seems like a cool guy and it's
| great to see his continued success.
| jadams5 wrote:
| NBA Top Shot is major sports' entry into NFTs and is already
| dominating by market cap while it's still in beta. I've only been
| following it for a few weeks, but collectors are going nuts, but
| not quite to the point of some other NFTs yet. It still seems to
| be a fairly small crowd doing most of the buying and selling
| compared to the NBA's broad reach.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I follow NFTs closely and it seems like of the present crop of
| projects, Top Shot has the most obvious path to a sustainable
| future. Sports collectibles are already a thing, and official
| league-sanctioned digital collectibles are a natural growth.
| MLB dipped a toe in with virtual bobbleheads, but collecting
| video clips of plays makes more sense.
|
| I don't know that the 5 figure prices will last forever, but
| the market probably will.
|
| Cryptopunks is the only "native" NFT I feel will likely keep a
| market. Again, maybe not at present levels, but it's got enough
| of a cool factor to last.
|
| And Beeple as the artist with the brightest future, obviously.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Was just looking at NFTs last week, and what I do know about the
| art market is it provides a high volatility, potentially high
| value, portable asset with an opaque market that is great for
| moving money around, and worst case acts as a volatility hedge.
|
| Are NFT's effectively cryptocurrency mixers? If I've got $100k in
| bitcoin it doesn't matter where I move it from an audit
| perspective because it's going to be on the blockchain, whereas
| if I buy an NFT, I have an asset of that notional value assigned
| to an arbitrary anonymous wallet of my choice after paying the
| art owner.
| IHLayman wrote:
| Seems like they took a page from non-digital money
| laundering... art auctions have always been a vessel for hiding
| cash, and only recently have been targeted by AML laws that
| seem to be ill-fitting for the industry, seemingly by design:
| https://www.natlawreview.com/article/art-and-money-launderin...
| ArtWomb wrote:
| "Why would you spend $5,000 on an MP4?"
|
| That's the $64k question. Who, exactly, is buying rare digital
| art? It doesn't seem to be traditional collectors, dealers or
| major institutions. But the same contingent of crypto "whales"
| speculating in alt-coin assets. A simple bot could even be
| employed to track auction prices and automate trades. In a sense
| its not dissimilar to inter-market dealing among art galleries.
| Without the actual physical objects.
|
| Beeple's Opus
|
| https://www.christies.com/features/Monumental-collage-by-Bee...
| casi wrote:
| Would you spend $5k for the streaming rights to an mp4? Thats
| generally where people see NFTs going.
|
| Mark Cuban was talking about this yesterday on bankless
| podcast, how an NFT can contain all the royalty payments for
| e.g. a film or tv show, director/producer/actors/editors, and
| when someone wants to show it they rent it for a period of time
| (or buy it to rent to others), their rent payment instantly
| divided across everyone involved. That utility saves a lot of
| time and money. His comparison is to how he still receives
| physical checks for $1 from some episode of a tv show he did
| that are barely worth cashing, saving time/money in that
| process is potentially big business.
| iamben wrote:
| What rights do you own with an NFT? Say I bought a digital
| piece, can I print it on a million t-shirts and sell them? Or
| does the artist still retain the copyright etc.?
|
| I've seen people minting tweets as NFTs - again, how does the
| copyright work here.
|
| Genuine question - seen NFTs come up a lot over the last
| fortnight - don't really understand it at all (which makes me
| feel old!).
| kobasa wrote:
| Hashmasks for example gave everyone copyright to their
| specific piece. And they're quite visually appealing too.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| These largely remain open questions.
|
| Or rather, as far as I can tell the default off-chain
| answers apply in the absence of explicit directions
| otherwise.
|
| Physical fine art has come up with answers (you don't get
| the copyright just because you bought the original),
| though, and I'm sure NFTs will eventually.
|
| There's also the possibility of putting code into the smart
| contracts to explicitly give you the royalties earned on-
| chain. Not really a thing yet, but it's obviously possible
| to do.
| iamben wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| So assuming this followed the physical art model, and in
| the absence of any kind of 'on chain' royalties, you're
| literally just buying to say "I own this"? Except you
| don't own the copyright, and, being a digital file,
| thousands of other people _could have_ an identical copy?
|
| Am I correct in thinking this is kind of 'digital
| bragging rights'? Like - without a physical copy, short
| of us all living in a 'Ready Player One' style virtual
| world that someone made it explicit that "XYZ owns this
| art by ABC" - there's not actually much you can do other
| than _own it_ (and maybe sell it later)?
| acomjean wrote:
| Its probably people with Crypto currency thats way up in value
| and a need to do something with it.
| cma wrote:
| So... money laundering? Or just people with too many gains
| looking for something to spend it on?
| lancesells wrote:
| I really enjoy his work. It's digital art that's meant to look
| digital in every way without trying being nostalgic to some era
| of computer art.
| egypturnash wrote:
| This morning I had a dream where someone named "Beepliani" was
| trying to talk to a lady who was tired of being hit on while she
| was just trying to make a train journey. And then I wake up and
| write that down in my dream journal and pick up the tablet next
| to my bed, and here's... this.
|
| Well okay, fuck it, I got rent to pay and I got a bunch of art
| lying around that's had a lot more love put into it than what I'm
| seeing on the front page of Nifty. I'm hitting that signup button
| despite my general misgivings about the huge energy cost of
| crypto.
| px43 wrote:
| > despite my general misgivings about the huge energy cost of
| crypto.
|
| Are you really concerned about people utilizing electricity, or
| are you _actually_ concerned about carbon footprint? If the
| carbon thing, look where crypto-mining happens. It 's almost
| exclusively with overflow power from areas that get their
| energy from hydro, wind, geothermal etc, so the additional
| carbon produced by mining is negligible.
|
| Second, Ethereum, on which all serious NFT activity is based,
| is midway through a transition from PoW to PoS (proof-of-work
| to proof-of-stake) where people demonstrate their commitment to
| validating transactions by locking up their funds rather than
| burning electricity. There are over 3 million ETH locked, which
| is over 6 billion dollars at the moment, and growing, all to
| validate transactions on this new PoS network.
|
| https://www.duneanalytics.com/hagaetc/eth2-0-deposits
| egypturnash wrote:
| More the carbon footprint, yeah. But also general concerns
| about how much the crypto industry is about "converting
| energy into value and an asston of waste heat".
| Animats wrote:
| There's getting to be a whole industry of this stuff. There's
| "virtual land on a blockchain". That's Decentraland, Sominium
| Space, and Upland. Decentraland and Sominium Space have 3D worlds
| you can visit on line, and you can build stuff on your virtual
| land. Upland didn't bother. They just have trading cards.
|
| Non-fungible tokens look a lot like initial coin offerings 2.0.
| There are going to be a lot of sucker bets.
|
| _" If you've been in the game for half an hour and you don't
| know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."_
| madjin wrote:
| It gets pretty specialized, there's a few virtual construction
| companies already that build content on blockchain land. For
| the land owners, building cool stuff on the land can increase
| the value of the real estate which they can choose to resell
| later on the secondary market. Voxelarchitects are one example
| doing such in cryptovoxels.
|
| I'm interested when the things you own in one place can be used
| in other places. Cryptoart has been at the spear tip for
| interoperability since every world wants to support artists in
| having a gallery on their platform.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| I submitted this a few days ago without any traction:
| https://joanielemercier.com/the-problem-of-cryptoart/
|
| Honestly I can't do anything but shake my head in disapproval
| about crypto-art (and crypto currency in general) when it
| involves wasting so much energy.
| christiansakai wrote:
| PoS blockchain like Cardano network now only consumes an energy
| as big as a household. They already have NFT implemented.
| casi wrote:
| Cardano doesnt even have smart contracts yet, how have they
| implemented nfts?
|
| otherwise yes, energy usage will be dropping massively on
| most networks with pos upgrades.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Cardano has a different approach of smart contract than
| Ethereum. For example, in Cardano, any tokens will be
| treated as native assets (except with the ability to vote
| in Cardano network, which you need ADA), so no need smart
| contract.
| rkalla wrote:
| This is all coming this month/next, but at the time of
| posting this it is not live.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Sorry I guess I have to clarify, it is implemented on
| test net.
| CositaS wrote:
| I always see people point to 'just round the corner' future
| Proof of Stake systems when the energy waste topic comes up,
| but it seems like there are still a lot of big unsolved
| challenges with that, as well as new problems introduced by
| it.
|
| As long as there's no actual widespread fully working
| currency using only PoS, it's a bit like justifying the
| emissions from flying by pointing to experimental solar
| powered aircraft, and saying all flights will be solar
| powered any day now.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Not sure what you mean, there are already blockchains out
| there using only PoS...
|
| Cardano already uses PoS
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| Celo is the EVM and uses proof-of-stake, has actual ERC721 and
| ERC1155 capabilities, but the market hasn't built the frontends
| to it (opensea, rarible, zora, foundation, etc.) and is still
| entirely on top of Ethereum.
| traeregan wrote:
| > Hal Finney calling the NFT/CryptoArt movement in 1993.
| https://twitter.com/justintrimble/status/1357098395110952964
| Igelau wrote:
| I don't understand NFT. Why would I care that there's an entry in
| a blockchain that says "$USER owns the thing at $TOKEN_URI,
| here's its $HASH"
|
| I could say "I have dibs on Lake Louise" and make a blockchain
| entry that echoes this claim via some token... and so what?
| That's supposed to be worth something?
|
| I'm not grokking this. If anyone can explain how NFTs are a thing
| at all or worth anything? Heads up: if you use the word "fiat"
| I'll know you're a hustler.
| nic_wilson wrote:
| I remember reading about Crytpo Kitties in the NYT in 2018. How
| much are Crypto kitties worth today?
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/cryptokitty-auction...
| libertine wrote:
| Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine to try to wrap our
| heads around what's happening, and we can't help but feel that a
| lot of this NFT hype is based on FOMO and the craving for having
| something unique with high perceived value: like, everyone wants
| a Black Lotus, without having to wait 30 years to find out that
| there's actually people that have also some emotional investment
| into these items, and are willing to pay some big money to have a
| piece of that...
|
| ... yet apparently there are "Black Lotuses" everywhere, because
| people are making them left and right (not literal black lotus
| ofc).
|
| And we left it here:
|
| - are people mistaking something "unique" with something that's
| "rare"?
|
| - is money really that much inflated?
|
| - is crypto that much inflated?
|
| - are these transactions being done among the same "kind of
| people", and it will reach a cap eventually with no one to dump
| these NFTs to?
|
| It's like people want collectibles but seem to have decided to
| cut off a big part of what makes a collectible valuable. Everyone
| want's to get rich with the next big rare item, without having to
| go through years of cultural shifts.
|
| For example, some MTG cards/sets represent a time and a place for
| many people, they were part of a culture. The rareness comes from
| the fact that a lot of these items had limited (some were
| literally alpha and beta versions of the game), and few endured
| the weight of time and life.
|
| It's not because they have a unique id.
|
| Cryptopunks represent the early move of the NFT... but is that
| such a noteworthy valuable thing? Maybe it is.
|
| I'm not saying that Beeple isn't a good digital artist, he is.
| Neither I'm saying his art isn't worth what people paid for,
| probably it's worth it.
|
| Yet, some how, can't help but feeling that something is off. Or
| it's just me that I'm just not getting "the thing"?
| swang wrote:
| i agree. i have the same feeling of not getting it.. but they
| are skipping a step
|
| look at what happened to baseball sports cards in the late 90s
| and still continue today
|
| holograms, refractors, patch cards, "printing plates" cards.
| these cards are "valuable" because of the perceived scarcity
| but the issue is trying to get one is completely random and
| based on luck whereas the original value of baseball cards was
| people didn't keep them in mint condition and kids put them on
| their bikes to make cool sounds.
|
| same thing with comic books. the comic book makers produced the
| scarcity or collectible, and then produced too much of that
| scarcity and the whole comic book market imploded.
|
| this guy's art is cool, and good for him for making tons of
| money off it. but it does feel like partly FOMO and also some
| people have too much money during the pandemic that they don't
| know where to park so they dump it into stuff like this.
|
| i think the biggest issue with this stuff is it's already
| skyrocketed well outside the range of even relatively well off
| individuals. i certainly don't have the money to outbid someone
| who put in nearly $800K for basically a blockchain entry. like
| how are you going to get normal people to care about this other
| than, "it sold for a lot of money" which is basically the only
| reason this stuff got an article in esquire.
| 3np wrote:
| I think that, just like the first NFT craze (Cryptokitties), a
| lot of it is conscious money down the drain from people who
| already got dirty rich and now care less about $100k than about
| stimulating the market and promoting the growth of
| cryptocurrencies in general. They'll throw money at anything
| they perceive as aligning with their vision of what should
| come.
|
| Consider the case that this truly is here to stay. Kind of cool
| to be able to flair one of the first really pricey NFTs, which
| also happens to be an art piece you think is kind of rad.
| libertine wrote:
| I understand that, but those are the wrong motivations in my
| point of view. That's just overbloated hyped, I don't see it
| stick.
|
| >Kind of cool to be able to flair one of the first really
| pricey NFTs, which also happens to be an art piece you think
| is kind of rad.
|
| Which you nailed here, it's like they are pricey for the sake
| of being pricey. Or they're unique for the sake of being
| unique, not being unique because there were restrains that
| make it rare.
|
| If some of these pieces are going to millions of USD, then we
| might be at a point where any Picasso painting reached the
| billion dollar mark, that circles back to one of my
| questions: is there so much money in circulation? Or this is
| just fake money being thrown around?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| If we use the Dow Jones index with dividends reinvested as
| a proxy for inflation, instead of the phony official stats,
| then we can see that Picasso's self portrait, which was
| sold in May 1989 for 98.7m usd, would be worth 1.2 billion
| in today's dollars.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I am completely on board with normal cryptocurrencies, smart
| contracts and what have you. With NFT art I just get the
| feeling that people are trying too hard to find "the next big
| thing" in the space, and they have latched onto this for some
| strange reason. Might be nothing more than that it makes for a
| good story. I guess now I know how nocoiners feel about any
| kind of cryptocurrency..
|
| But it does make sense, in a way, to explore the complete
| opposite of the (almost) perfect fungibility of normal
| cryptocurrency, even if only in a "what if we flip one of our
| basic assumptions on its head" kind of way.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| It reminds me of the beanie baby craze of the 90s. Same thing,
| different tech. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this
| may happen again with some yet unimagined tech in the future.
| libertine wrote:
| Funny enough I just used the Beanie Baby example in a reply
| to other user: it's the closest analogy I found in modern
| history.
|
| Something that was designed to be scarce, for the sake of
| being scarce. Serves no other goal: it's not a balancing
| mechanism to game (overpowered cards are rare), it's not
| promoting something that people love and want to be a part of
| (like baseball cards), hell it's not even a celebration of
| some success with the fans, nothing that holds people
| emotionally attached to any of it other then those that want
| to hope on something to resell later - this is completely the
| wrong motivation.
| furyofantares wrote:
| > It's like people want collectibles but seem to have decided
| to cut off a big part of what makes a collectible valuable.
|
| What makes a collectible valuable? I think it's just scarcity
| plus a group choice to value that scarcity.
|
| I don't think this is new or unique to non-physical
| collectibles, other collectibles also follow a pattern of
| increased demand for scarcity.
|
| Take baseball cards. We know that better players have more
| expensive cards, and the more scarce the card the higher the
| value, along with other characteristics of the card. Makes some
| intuitive sense.
|
| But that's not enough for collectors who want some cards to
| have a very high value. So then there's this collective
| agreement that rookie cards are going to be worth a lot more,
| not just based on print run, but based on the ability of the
| whole group to point at it and say that's a thing we value.
|
| Then we have condition of the card, mint or near mint or worn,
| those are all different values. Again it makes intuitive sense
| because it's based on quality in some way. But it's not enough,
| so ever more sophisticated grading mechanisms are invented,
| well beyond any actual value to someone observing the card.
| It's a difference the naked eye can't perceive, only experts
| with sophisticated tools. But once they inspect it and give
| their mark of approval, it's a new point of scarcity that
| everyone can value.
|
| It's all just invented value for the sake of value, the main
| thing is that the group can collectively point at something
| scarce and call it valuable. Misprints are another example,
| where the value is obvious not coming from quality and only
| from scarcity.
| libertine wrote:
| I understand that in the great scheme of things is just a
| group of people that values scarcity, but you don't need to
| go deeper to see it's more then that.
|
| People don't just value baseball cards because there's a
| designed scarcity for particular players and there's a
| consensus that a specific card is valuable.
|
| You're missing the history of a game that took many years to
| establish themselves and grew a base of followers and fans
| over decades. It's a competitive game, with different
| leagues, with teams that have fans.
|
| This is why the cards have value, and there's no consensual
| agreement that X and Y card is valuable, it's something so
| simple and intuitive that even children understand this. Even
| if it's just by the transactions in their playground among
| colleagues and friends (not because many people have some
| card, and everyone seems to want it, but because it's
| represents a popular player and it's a rare card - that's why
| they want it).
|
| Then there's plenty of sub sections of this, like you said:
| misprints, particular years, etc.
|
| But it all revolves around a cultural event.
|
| What you're seeing with NFTs are assets created for the sake
| of being unique - it's not consequential of anything. It's
| designed to be that way.
|
| It's like they turned the baseball card analogy upside down -
| they created NFTs for the sake of being NFTs, it's not
| serving any purpose and scarcity has no logic behind it. I
| think the closest analogy would be the Beanie Babies, that
| were trying to hack this mechanic with nothing else to
| support it no other then "they are scarce".
|
| There's no emotional bond to it, it doesn't serve the purpose
| of a game (like balance wise), it's not even merchandising to
| promote something that's eventually going to become popular
| and that's popular to a specific niche.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I think another way to think about it is to think about
| poker.
|
| You've got the blinds or the antes, and fundamentally,
| every pot is about fighting for that money. Without the
| ante, nobody should put any money into the pot.
|
| But once you have a penny ante, the pot size can grow
| exponentially, and you can find yourself fighting over a
| many-thousand dollar pot, even if the truth is the fight
| started over a fight for a penny, and the game is about
| fighting for a penny every hand.
|
| What I'm saying is, sure, with baseball cards the ante
| might be an emotional bond to the subject matter. But it
| quickly spirals and becomes about the collectible,
| primarily. I can go look at amazing pictures of famous
| baseball players I love all day, I don't need to own the
| cards.
|
| I don't think NFTs are really skipping a step, Top Shots is
| selling you an MP4 of a basketball player you love sinking
| a shot. It's just the absurdity of it is more apparent when
| the ante is something you could press Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V to
| copy.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| > Yet, some how, can't help but feeling that something is off.
| Or it's just me that I'm just not getting "the thing"?
|
| This is (or will be) one of "the next big things" in this
| century; I'm fairly confident about that. What's off is that
| it's very new and so people don't know how to talk about it
| yet.
|
| Witness this article, which seems to deliberately confuse the
| predictable weirdness of the art style (it's not that weird...
| it's just neo-Dadaism for our times) with the unpredictable
| emergence of NFTs.
|
| I think NFTs are yet another interesting (perhaps local) maxima
| of the search space, which is "ways to get back some of that
| old-fashioned tangible value from digital goods". Looked at
| this way, it's not really surprising that something like NFTs
| would become a thing.
|
| What's silly (and cynical, in my opinion) is when tech writers
| bury the lede by associating the technology with the avant
| garde uses of it. This is similar to the bizarre obsession by
| many legacy mainstream car manufacturers for making their
| electric cars look like hippie pretentious toys. The tech is
| obviously useful. The fashion is the trojan horse for the tech.
| But it gets old when people realize the almost banal usefulness
| of the tech itself. Then you don't need the silly-looking horse
| anymore.
| nzmsv wrote:
| The way I think about this stuff (maybe my mental model will
| prove useful to you): imagine a parallel economy that only a
| small subset of people are plugged into. These people happen to
| belong to the top 5% of the "real world" economy. The lowest
| ranking member of this economy is your average software engineer.
|
| So if you imagine a FAANG salary as being just slightly above
| minimum wage in this alternate universe you can derive all the
| consequences of what happens in crypto markets from there,
| including the new top 5% who can casually pay these sums for art.
| qixxiq wrote:
| I bought one of his "Into the Ether" NFTs[1] but now I'm in a
| fairly interesting position. If I prove ownership of the artwork
| (via a signed message from the address) then Beeple will send the
| physical artwork to me _but_ it 'll immediately lose a high
| percentage of its value (currently trading at ~$90,000 from $969
| original).
|
| Right now it's owned/stored by the artist and someone buying the
| piece from me would be able to get it delivered directly from
| Beeple. That's a new level of unboxed where the piece of art is
| basically unseen at this point in time and can easily be
| guaranteed original.
|
| [1]
| https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0xd92e44ac213b9e...
| fumblebee wrote:
| Out of curiosity, when did you buy the artwork? $969 ->
| ~$90,000 is astounding, and I'm assuming it happened within a
| short time frame.
| qixxiq wrote:
| Was released early December, was pretty confident about it--
| probably should have bought more than one ;)
| Pulcinella wrote:
| What "physical" art? Doesn't he do digital art? Anyone can just
| make more prints.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| If you read the article it says that Beeple is sending
| winners of auction items with a physical titanium framed lcd
| screen, complete with a serial number and QR code linking to
| the ownership registrar, showcasing the artwork they now own.
| libertine wrote:
| >Right now it's owned/stored by the artist and someone buying
| the piece from me would be able to get it delivered directly
| from Beeple. That's a new level of unboxed where the piece of
| art is basically unseen at this point in time and can easily be
| guaranteed original.
|
| But doesn't this defeat the goal of NFT? If you are the owner,
| then if it's stored by the creator or not it's irrelevant,
| right?
|
| It's just like buying anything from an artist, save the receipt
| and ask him to store it from you, the difference is that
| storage of a, let's say painting, requires more space and
| controlled humidity/temp.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > But doesn't this defeat the goal of NFT? If you are the
| owner, then if it's stored by the creator or not it's
| irrelevant, right?
|
| Assuming the creator is trustworthy, then I don't think so.
| Isn't this common in the art world? I thought lots of
| expensive art is stored in expensive secured vaults. Or maybe
| I'm thinking of the film Tenet (I don't actually know
| anything about the art world).
| trhway wrote:
| >lots of expensive art is stored in expensive secured
| vaults
|
| in tariff/tax free zones between jurisdictions, in a kind
| of customs limbo - exported from one jurisdiction, yet not
| imported into another (and thus no need to pay
| taxes/tariffs). The bill of sale is basically your NFT.
| [deleted]
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| He appeared in a Corridor Digital video if I recall correctly.
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