[HN Gopher] John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT
___________________________________________________________________
John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT
Author : jshprentz
Score : 320 points
Date : 2021-03-21 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Given the logical progression, I think I'll wait until someone
| sells a NFT of a NFT before being surprised.
| craz8 wrote:
| NFT derivatives will be the next big thing for the '20s -
| perhaps a NFT ETF I can put in my IRA?
| throw5throw5 wrote:
| Collateralized NFT Obligations!
| schoen wrote:
| The original conceptual framework for NFT-like instruments is
| Nick Szabo's "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority":
|
| https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/
|
| At the very end he says:
|
| > Largely unaddressed above is the problem of divergence between
| actual conditions and directory rights. [...] When divergence
| becomes too great, a solution to address the unreality of the
| title registry is needed.
|
| Almost nobody selling NFTs today has even bothered to address
| Szabo's final "correspondence to ground" point, i.e., why anyone
| should think that the ownership of a particular NFT _means
| anything_!
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| In the case of real property the clearinghouse for this is the
| local courthouse. Deeds, liens, etc... all flow through the
| local (city/county) clerk. If you can create NFT's such that
| transfer requires two signatures (one of those being the
| jurisdiction of the real property) then it would function
| little different than how property transfers happen today.
| Furthermore NFT transfers signed by the court could reduce or
| eliminate the costly need for title searches and title
| insurance. If real property moves to the block chain in this
| manner all you need is one final title search, then signed by
| the court, from then on out title can be ensured by the
| blockchain. If you can do fractional ownership of an NFT then
| it greatly simplifies land development, mineral rights, and
| other more complex transfers such as sub-division of a tract.
|
| Having knowledge of this business for some time now I believe
| it's an issue of when, not if, real property will move to a
| blockchain of some sort.
| defen wrote:
| > If real property moves to the block chain in this manner
| all you need is one final title search, then signed by the
| court, from then on out title can be ensured by the
| blockchain.
|
| Just because your "final" title search doesn't produce
| anything doesn't mean a future one won't, so I don't see how
| the blockchain solves anything here.
| jjnoakes wrote:
| In the case of hacks (someone gets the court's private key
| and signs fraudulent transfers), mistakes (bugs, human error,
| etc), and other such scenarios, there would still need to be
| some kind of title insurance and human oversight.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Right, even if you come up with a clean, secure way to
| publish attestations onto a blockchain, you've got a
| problem when they are transferred to an invalid or
| inaccessible destination.
|
| That a title can be contested is actually a _feature_ of
| the existing system, not simply a problem.
| viraptor wrote:
| What does would this improve and/or simplify compared to
| publishing the existing database online?
|
| What are the obvious solutions for stolen keys or people
| dying with access lost? (which don't translate to the
| blockchain not mattering at all)
| koonsolo wrote:
| This NFT is not "The Brooklyn Bridge", this NFT is "Remember
| when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge NFT". Do you think
| nobody wants the bragging rights of owning that? I certainly
| do, but not for $50k, which it already has.
| remram wrote:
| I will remember this. I even bookmarked that tweet, and it
| cost me nothing.
| koolba wrote:
| I've created an NFT of a bookmark to the tweet. Starting
| bid is 1000 Doge.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > Do you think nobody wants the bragging rights of owning
| that?
|
| It would be nice to believe that eventually we evolve beyond
| bragging about being an idiot.
|
| > I certainly do
|
| ...
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Maybe NFTs will not endure, which is a risk for anyone
| playing a pioneering role in a new genre. That is why the
| price was not $200 million or more. In any case, this is a
| world in which Marcel Duchamp's urinal sculpture still is
| exhibited in major museums, regarded by many critics as a
| masterpiece of the 20th century, and it sold at auction for
| $1.6 million in 2002. Canvases painted a single color, and
| other forms of abstract and conceptual art, remain a major
| part of recent art history and can sell for tens of
| millions.
|
| > The point is not to argue over what qualifies as "art."
| It is simply that it is a mistake to assume that NFTs will
| fail in the art world.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-17/the-
| nf...
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| People doubting that a thing is actually art at all seems
| to be a fairly consistent marker of something being good
| art.
|
| It's fresh, it's pushing boundaries, it's making people
| think and wonder, it's generating snark and discussion.
|
| If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art
| is just a scam!
|
| Not sure if it will stand the test of time though (I mean
| technically in terms of the artifacts persisting, and
| conceptually, aka whether it will still be interesting in
| 10 years or seen as a fad).
| leokennis wrote:
| Exactly. There's little I'd like less than bragging about
| having spent my life savings on a JPEG that everyone has
| but that I "own"...
| koonsolo wrote:
| I don't think the person spending $50k does it with his
| lifes saving.
|
| You don't buy a jpeg, you buy the unique item that John
| Cleese sold.
|
| Same for movie props. You can buy a nice lightsaber below
| $200. The ones that were used in the movies... a bit
| more.
| [deleted]
| mypalmike wrote:
| *Edit: Too late to delete, but my sarcastic comment is likely
| against site rules. Apologies
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| moistly wrote:
| I suppose one can "brag" about most anything. Seems to me,
| though, that a brag about "owning" an arbitrary sequence of
| bytes is pretty damn empty.
|
| Overcome a challenge that presses your personal limitations?
| Worthy of a brag: you took up the task, persevered, and
| conquered.
|
| Open your wallet to purchase something? I just don't see that
| there's any legitimate boasting to be had there: any damn
| fool with the same money could do it. There is no challenge,
| there is no accomplishment, there is nothing to be proud of
| at all. It's such _empty_ bragging.
|
| IMO people who brag about owning things have deep personal
| insecurities and would be better off putting the money spent
| towards therapy.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Having a unique and quirky item is worth a brag.
|
| Bragging with an expensive Rolex is very different than
| bragging with the NFT of a terrible image of the Brooklyn
| Bridge by John Cleese who sold it as a joke.
| lisper wrote:
| c.f.: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
| m463 wrote:
| That's what I remember. At some point is all of this
| advertising? a well-known property that people are aware
| of?
| enneff wrote:
| At least those who bought pixels on that page got something
| for it.
| samatman wrote:
| I disagree, but this is a common objection which is worth
| addressing. Specifically I disagree that NFTs are grounded in
| that particular conceptual framework.
|
| NFTs aren't attempting to be bearer instruments which convey
| ownership of some physical good, or even of a piece of
| intellectual property. Those require a corresponding Ricardian
| contract. This remains a good idea, but, to put it mildly,
| there are unsolved problems associated with it.
|
| A NFT is just a baseball card, what you're proposing is more
| like a baseball player packaging up 10% of his lifetime
| earnings into 5000 instruments and selling those.
|
| Baseball cards have provenance, scarcity, and IP protection of
| their appearance: that is, they're demonstrably produced by a
| company with a right to do it, there are only so many in
| existence, and it's illegal to make identical copies of the
| baseball card.
|
| NFTs have two of these properties and an adequate substitute
| for the third. They're signed, giving provenance, and scarce,
| due to blockchain-verified artificial scarcity. It's not
| illegal to make copies of the referenced digital artifact,
| because what fun would that be? No one could load the image or
| whatever in a browser.
|
| Nor is copyright currently assigned. I don't believe it's
| conventional to purchase copyright for an artwork along with
| the artwork itself, but I could be wrong about that, and it
| doesn't matter: this would be a cool thing to add to some NFTs,
| but we can just agree that it isn't a part of the package right
| now and move on.
|
| But it is _impossible_ to make an actual copy of the NFT
| _itself_ , even with the private key used to sign the original.
| That makes IP protection an inferior good: it's fraud to make a
| forgery of a rare baseball card, but it's quite profitable
| fraud if one happens to get away with it.
|
| Disclosure: I own no NFTs in the usual sense of the term, and
| don't intend to.
| Igelau wrote:
| > A NFT is just a baseball card
|
| It's more like a pointer to a JPEG of a baseball card.
| monkeydreams wrote:
| IMO NFT are a path to the commoditisation of belief and the
| communities which spring up around shared beliefs. Imagine if
| QAnon were to launch their own, with the proof of patriotism
| baked in to your online in or if some religion reinvented the
| indulgence. These would probably be done on their own coinbase.
| multjoy wrote:
| Don't give them ideas!
| monkeydreams wrote:
| I haven't even mentioned intangible secessionist states
| setting up auto-resolving contracts systems and laws,
| taxation, etc.
| SMAAART wrote:
| John Cleese is brilliant. Period.
| skeletonjelly wrote:
| Pity about his views. Wish I could agree, his past stuff is
| genius.
| daenz wrote:
| Brilliant move by John Cleese. The sale is the performance, and
| the performance aligns perfectly with his genre.
| theptip wrote:
| The obvious follow-up is to mint an NFT of the promo
| announcement/performance and sell that too. Obviously that
| would require its own performative announcement post...
| jcwayne wrote:
| "It's NFTs all the way down."
| cs702 wrote:
| Please consider changing the OP link to Cleese's actual post on
| Twitter, which embeds a video of him describing this "work of
| art":
|
| https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1372944852325789704
|
| It's brilliant parody, as usual, from Cleese. Regardless of what
| you think of NFTs, you will get a good laugh.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I don't have a Twitter account. Is there another way to see the
| video?
| gertlex wrote:
| I got "This is not available to you" or something like that,
| which I've never seen before. A few refreshes later (I also
| don't have a twitter) it worked though.
| brianush1 wrote:
| For me, this was caused by a buggy service worker;
| unregistering the service worker (from about:debugging >
| "This Firefox" > "Service Workers" on Firefox, dunno how on
| Chrome) should fix the issue
| jonny_eh wrote:
| You don't need a Twitter account to enjoy a tweet.
| C19is20 wrote:
| ...but I enjoy enjoying not having Twitter.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, changed from https://decrypt.co/62217/monty-pythons-john-
| cleese-mints-bro....
| dylan604 wrote:
| No need, I just bought it now.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Apparently there's Fuck You money, and then there's having "I buy
| NFTs" money.
|
| (But you have to say it in Forrest Gump's voice.)
| raverbashing wrote:
| I wonder if there are NFTs of fruit companies.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| *a Drawing of the Brooklyn Bridge
| rvz wrote:
| They don't call it 'contemporary art' for no reason. We all
| know that the drawing itself is worthless but the signature is
| what is 'valued'.
|
| NFTs are just giving life to 'contemporary art' again which can
| be shortened to 'con-art'. Allowing celebrities a get rich
| quick route with their signatures. Heck, even an AI can paint
| something and auction it at Christie's and then re-auction it
| as an NFT.
|
| As for this NFT and the rest of them, No thanks and no deal.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I think this an unfair characterization of contemporary art.
| I don't consider myself an expert by any means, but I've been
| to a couple of contemporary art museums (Mass MoCA and one in
| Kanazawa) and enjoyed both experiences. I believe that the
| bulk of artists producing contemporary art work very hard at
| their craft for very little reward. Certainly most of the
| works I saw featured looked like they required a lot of
| effort to think up and execute. There were also certainly
| some pieces that raised an eyebrow and made me think "that's
| art?", but that's part of the fun IMO.
|
| The art collector market is where things tend to go sideways.
| Collectors do often seem to value the name on the signature
| over everything else. But in most cases when you see those
| crazy high sale prices at auction, the money is not going to
| the artist but rather to some other collector. So I don't
| think it's fair to call an entire genre of art a "con" just
| because of how rich art collectors behave.
| skybrian wrote:
| If you're looking for a discount, you could get this one instead:
| https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200...
| runeks wrote:
| The top bid is currently quoted at 0.015. Which currency is
| this? Why don't they specify this?
|
| I see a dollar equivalent, but I don't see how they translate
| from the 0.015 figure.
|
| _EDIT:_ Never mind. Apparently, the symbol Ks refers to the
| Ether cryptocurrency.
| lupire wrote:
| It's the greek letter Xi, used because it's looks like an E.
| Nice metaphor for NFT, which look like a real thing but
| aren't.
| simplecto wrote:
| The internet is just a fad.
|
| Only nerds want a smartphone
|
| Bitcoin is a scam
|
| NFTs are just stupid
|
| Just because I don't like the aesthetic qualities of NFTs does
| not mean the whole space is bunk.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Remember when everything would be nanobots?
| benjohnson wrote:
| Sometimes the doubters are correct.
|
| AOL keywords, WAP phones, pets.com stock, self driving cars are
| two years away, X.25, VR, Hydrogen Cars.
| xondono wrote:
| The doubters are correct _most_ of the time. That's what
| makes VC lucrative.
| wan23 wrote:
| You should consider an NFT to be something like a certificate.
| Some entity has issued you a certificate saying, e.g. you are the
| rightful owner of the Brooklyn Bridge. The value of certificates
| in NFT form is that they are difficult to forge and easy to
| verify. However, like a paper certificate that you might hang on
| your wall, the actual certificate is worthless. It is
| representative of something that may have value, e.g. proof that
| someone who owns the Brooklyn Bridge has transferred ownership to
| you. What matters is if other people believe the underlying item
| is worth something and accept control of the token as being
| sufficient to authenticate you as the owner. Obviously, in this
| case no one will accept this token in place of a deed for the
| bridge, but on the other hand if a government did issue tokens
| this way and recognized them in court then it might work out
| pretty well (until someone steals your crypto keys).
| gerdesj wrote:
| "e.g. you are the rightful owner of the Brooklyn Bridge."
|
| I note that this whole NFT thing is bollocks but you are only
| buying an image of the Brooklyn Bridge not the bridge itself.
|
| This is not the same as a bloke pretending to flog the real
| bridge to you. That is why John Cleese picked that bridge
| because it was famously "sold" several times to victims of
| fraud.
|
| When I say bollocks, that is too trite as well. NFT means non
| fungible token and yet it clearly is "fungible" in some way. I
| generate one and sell it to you. The blockchain "proves" the
| transfer of ownership.
|
| Fiat (let it be) money is on pretty shaky ground as well and
| yet we live with the fibs and outright lies and get on with
| trade. If you look at the recent GME trading stuff and break it
| down into the various components - start with "what on earth is
| a USD?", it all rapidly gets a bit mad. Work your way up
| through what a short is or even what a simple stock trade
| actually means and then perhaps look at how the trades are
| trued up every few days and other weirdness.
|
| Calling out NFTs as bollocks is a bit off. Fiat money and
| stocks n that are basically a game with a lot of rules, a lot
| of rules. It is possible that some of those rules are made up
| on the fly by the banker and the banker may not be who you
| think they are.
|
| That said, I don't see myself using crypto coins. I mined over
| one BT back in the day and lost the wallet on my Pentium II
| when I dumped err recycled it. At the time it was worth a few
| quid - the BT that is. I really won't buy a NFT unless I
| suddenly find my NW in the millions and I get bored.
|
| Now Mr Cleese's piccy of the bridge does look quite tasty ...
| copy, paste .... delete. 8)
| freetime2 wrote:
| He isn't actually selling the Brooklyn Bridge, but a (comically
| poor) drawing of the Brooklyn Bridge:
|
| https://opensea.io/assets/0x9201a886740d193e315f1f1b2b193321...
|
| So this is not really a scam, but rather a legitimate satire of
| recent NFT sales.
| tzm wrote:
| IMO, NFTs are relevant as pop culture artifacts of a tokenized
| economy. It's less about the art, and more about the artist and
| buyers as a collective story. Valuations are high due to
| liquidity, technology and timing as a cultural shift.
| chris_wot wrote:
| "A young, unknown artist (or collective of artists) with a firm
| grasp of Cryptic Currencies and Non Floodable Tokens."
| sn_master wrote:
| I can't imagine any real purpose for NFTs except money laundry
| and the 'I Am Rich' complex.
|
| With paintings, you're at least getting a physical artifact that
| the famous painter touched and painted, stroke by stroke, that
| can never be duplicated.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
| capableweb wrote:
| Let's say we could replicate the painting stroke by stroke.
| Let's say we also use the same painter. Still, it doesn't
| matter. A copy is a copy. It's not the same as the first and
| initial incarnation of that artifact, physical or digital.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you can't tell the copy from the original, both would
| probably halve in value, then quickly rise because of the
| notability of the situation.
|
| Art has its worth because it is difficult to forge, mostly
| through its proof of provenance, but also through the
| certification of designated, well-paid experts.
| manigandham wrote:
| This is not true. Digital items do not have an original. In
| fact creating the digital item itself creates multiple copies
| in the process, and every viewing of it creates infinitely
| more copies.
| sn_master wrote:
| If the painter makes countless copies, the painting would
| lose its value.
|
| The value of an object is associated with who made it or who
| owned it or how unique it is. e.g. Hitler's car wouldn't have
| had its value if it was owned by someone else, despite it
| being no technically different from other Mercedes cars of
| the era.
| worik wrote:
| Is this a scam?
| insert_coin wrote:
| Yes, NFTs are a scam.
| numpad0 wrote:
| But what it is is very clearly communicated
| capableweb wrote:
| Well, if NFTs are a scam, then anything you buy for money is
| a scam. Usually we reserve "scams" for "trickeries", fooling
| someone out of their money, when they don't really want to.
| In this case, people are willingly buying NFTs.
|
| Maybe a better word is to use "hyped" or "mania" or
| something, because it's not really a "scam" as no one really
| own NFTs as a whole and are fooling others.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm myself not into NFTs because it mostly seems
| like hype at this point, I own zero NFTs myself and have no
| interest in buying. But I also care about accuracy.
| ivanche wrote:
| > _In this case, people are willingly buying NFTs._
|
| People being scammed, by definition, don't know they're
| being scammed. Otherwise they wouldn't be scammed. They
| also willingly buy something they believe is real.
| capableweb wrote:
| What do you mean "they believe is real"? NFTs are "real",
| not sure what you're on about. Or is it all fake, no one
| is actually trading NFTs?
|
| Yes, people are stupid. Does that mean they are being
| scammed? No, they're just idiots.
| jsnk wrote:
| Getting scammed by John Cleese has clear value.
| rvz wrote:
| It is ICOs 2.0
| DC1350 wrote:
| It's art
| airhead969 wrote:
| NFTs are stupid. As soon as this craze is over, they'll be
| illiquid and absolutely worthless.
| runeks wrote:
| They are already illiquid. So they will only become worthless.
| prepend wrote:
| Comically, when this is all over society will probably be
| geared around one of these, but hard to predict which one. In
| 500 years, we are just as likely to be using cryptopunks as the
| base of our exchanges as whuffie.
|
| Of course, this is no reason to try to buy any for that
| purpose. It will probably be something silly like the first in
| game item that works across games and platforms or something.
| Having a red hat that will work across all games and be unique
| forever, now that's worth something.
| Animats wrote:
| They may hang on for years, or decades. You can still trade
| Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch dolls on eBay. Three Stooges
| collectable plates from the Franklin Mint[1] don't seem to be
| selling well, though.
|
| Lack of liquidity is implicit in non-fungible tokens. You have
| to find a buyer who wants the exact item you have. That may be
| hard. It may require paying for advertising, which means the
| return can go negative.
|
| With a uniform commodity, there's a market with prices. Non-
| fungible markets don't crash, they stall. You can't sell, but
| that's not visible on marketplaces, especially if they're
| designed to hide listings that are not moving. (This is common
| in real estate; un-saleable property is taken off the market,
| then re-listed, so it doesn't show as "for sale for 72 weeks".)
| What we're probably going to see are markets with huge numbers
| of items that are not selling, but have high asking prices.
| This will create the illusion of value, because someone will
| add up the asking prices and claim that's a "market cap". The
| illusion of volume and liquidity can be created with wash
| trades.
|
| There are getting to be a quite a number of blockchain based
| virtual worlds, where you can pay way too much for virtual
| land. Few people actually log into those virtual worlds and
| spend time there; they just trade land. "The metagame is the
| game", some analyst wrote of Decentraland. (Which, despite its
| name, is totally centralized. You can't run a Decentraland
| server yourself.)
|
| I used to go to art openings in SF, and sometimes we'd look at
| some bad piece and ask "will this be around in 10 years or will
| it have been tossed out?" Years later, I suspect most of it
| went to a Dumpster long ago.
|
| [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/Franklin-Mint-The-Three-Stooges-
| Dec...
| noobermin wrote:
| Careful there, how many degrees removed is it from other
| cryptocurrencies? If people follow this logic it will lead some
| people to be mad.
| lottin wrote:
| Cryptocoins are equally useless in practice, but at least
| they try to serve a purpose. NFTs make no attempt to serve a
| purpose. It's truly bizarre.
| ufo wrote:
| Is that 69.3 million asking price a reference to something or is
| it just a humorously large number with no special meaning?
| nuclearsugar wrote:
| It's referencing the Beeple Christie auction
| runeks wrote:
| Honest question: if I were to buy this, how would I prove to
| everyone I meet that I am the owner?
| tomerico wrote:
| You could generate a signature that proves that you have the
| private key associated with the address
| worik wrote:
| I.e., you cannot.
|
| You can run a piece of mathematics that not one person in a
| thousand would understand, but there is no way to show it
| off, like in a book case or hang it on a wall.
|
| But given that most valuable art is sitting in deep storage
| in free ports, I am not sure it is a problem.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I see NFT ownership quickly devolving to "cool story, bro."
| runeks wrote:
| And how do I prove that this address is associated with John
| Cleese's work?
|
| Does John Cleese post this address in a tweet, or how is it
| associated with him?
| saltminer wrote:
| Does being the winning bidder on this actually make you the
| owner (i.e. transfer all associated IP rights to you) or do you
| just get a higher res version of the image if you win? Both?
| Neither?
| insert_coin wrote:
| You have to ask the vegans.
| [deleted]
| trebligdivad wrote:
| I'm surprised he wasn't selling a Norwegian Blue.
| jMyles wrote:
| it does have beautiful plumage afterall
| cm2187 wrote:
| This one is more in the spirit of the Klein Blue
| toss1 wrote:
| Next up will be a set of data on the wing-flapping rate of
| African swallow and the instructions for the Holy Hand Grenade.
|
| All the comments about supposedly "owning" a copy of an item that
| is trivial to make perfect digital copies... exactly.
|
| If, somehow, the NFTs could be made actually non-fungible, and
| backed by the legal system, the one killer feature would be
| repeating revenue for the artist with every subsequent sale. That
| could truly change the economics for the perpetually starving
| artists in the world. If that came to pass, it might be worth all
| the electricity and carbon footprint.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "wing-flapping rate of African swallow"
|
| Laden or unladen? In a vacuum?
| Tenoke wrote:
| >the electricity and carbon footprint.
|
| That's no longer a concern for an increasing number of NFTs
| minted today[0].
|
| 0. https://svilentodorov.xyz/blog/nft-electricity/
| cphoover wrote:
| brilliant tongue in cheek.
| dentemple wrote:
| Why would you put the punchline in the title?
| omgJustTest wrote:
| Oh comedy, you have found a truly original form!
| squarefoot wrote:
| I'd be willing to throw twice that money at it, but want also
| bundled the original dead parrot.
| didi987 wrote:
| Dan Held on a podcast made the point that NFTs, like ICOs, will
| scale to suck up all of the available [foolish] money and then
| collapse.
| [deleted]
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I am waiting for a OnlyFans creator to sell her bathwater as a
| NFT.
| craz8 wrote:
| I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned that selling the Brooklyn
| Bridge is a very old scam, made famous by this huckster:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker
|
| New technology, same scam
| Tenoke wrote:
| It was mentioned in the original link here, it's just that the
| link was changed to the tweet which doesn't explain the
| backstory.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Would you link this original link?
| brianush1 wrote:
| From further down in this thread:
| https://decrypt.co/62217/monty-pythons-john-cleese-mints-
| bro...
| andybak wrote:
| I'd like to defend NFTs from a slightly different angle.
|
| (Leaving aside the carbon emissions - let's assume everyone
| finally switches to Proof of Stake)
|
| They are stupid. They are pointless. But then so is most of the
| art world - and going a step forward - so is much of what we
| value.
|
| As several people have pointed out they are no less arbitrary
| than a limited edition print vs a commodity print. The value of
| fine wines escalates exponentially whilst the extra utility you
| get from any quality improvements trends towards nothing.
|
| Much of what we value is pointless and bordering on delusional.
| But unless you're a wandering ascetic or superhumanly utilitarian
| in your consumption (hint - you're probably not even if you think
| you are) then the difference is one of degree rather than of
| category.
| insert_coin wrote:
| The critic, which you do not address, is that (most) NFTs
| pretend to give assurance of ownership to an "original" digital
| asset.
|
| The problem with NFTs is a conceptual one not a technological
| or psychological or societal one. The problem with NFTs is
| digital "products" by their nature cannot claim originality.
|
| Art might be stupid, but you can actually make the claim of
| having an original _insert_coin_ drawing, despite its value.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| > The problem with NFTs is digital "products" by their nature
| cannot claim originality.
|
| That's the beauty of it. Yes, the digital good by its nature
| is infinitely replicable [0], but everyone knows and
| (hopefully) understands that, and that is not what it is
| being sold with the NFT. The NFT, as I understand it,
| represents a totally new type of "ownership" that has no
| analogue in previously established forms of ownership. The
| closest thing to NFTs are securities, where the value of the
| security is almost always speculative in nature. NFTs just
| take this to its teleological end. Yes, an artist or John
| Cleese can go ahead and mint another Brooklyn Bridge token,
| but doing this would degrade their reputation and make their
| future work less valuable and attractive to buyers, just like
| a company that keeps minting stock indiscriminately is going
| to have a harder time selling that stock. John Cleese selling
| a token is actually very cool in my opinion, because he
| didn't have to call Goldman Sachs to make it happen. I see a
| future where we have premier blockchains where all the top
| assets will be traded. Someone selling farts [1] and such
| will not be on those blockchains (unless those farts become
| highly regarded, which they might), and the blockchain itself
| will be a sort of crypto-artistic expression. I think this is
| just the beginning.
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/_Lord_Enki_/status/1372976176411578369
|
| [1] https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/nyc-man-sells-fart-
| for-85-cash...
| andybak wrote:
| I thought I had covered this point by talking about limited
| edition prints.
|
| A print is a print is a print. The artist simple decides to
| make a set of 5. If someone later makes a run of 10,000 - why
| is the former more valuable. The artist might never actually
| touch the print. They are simply authorizing them.
| insert_coin wrote:
| Prints are, ahem, "prints", they are not the original.
| First editions of books are not the manuscript.
| andybak wrote:
| That's the point I'm making. I'm not sure I understand
| what counter-argument you're making?
| insert_coin wrote:
| NFTs cannot guarantee the ownership of an original
| digital asset despite its claims because a digital asset
| has no original. They cannot even guarantee the ownership
| of a limited production "edition".
| URSpider94 wrote:
| They can guarantee part of a limited edition, if the
| contract is written such that only x tokens can be
| issued. If a future contract issues more copies, then
| that release will be less valuable by nature of it being
| later/less exclusive, even though it's the same physical
| file.
| insert_coin wrote:
| You don't need contracts to make copies of digital
| assets.
| kgwgk wrote:
| The point is that the token only guarantees the ownership
| of a token from a limited edition of tokens.
| andybak wrote:
| I agree. But my point is that this is only a matter of
| degree more stupid than the concept of limited edition
| prints. Or $10000 cigars you can't smoke. Or a hotel room
| that costs similar amounts per night. The list goes on.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| How about photographs? Even back in the days of silver
| chemistry printing, it was fairly straightforward for an
| artist like Ansel Adams to go into the darkroom and print
| up more copies of his pieces. Most famous photographers,
| in fact, hire assistants who do the actual duplication to
| their formula, and then they sign, date and number the
| prints. Today, when even fine art photographers print
| their results via inkjet, it's incredibly easy to
| reproduce as many copies as you want.
|
| For modern graphic arts, the value has always come from
| being part of a serialized limited edition.
| insert_coin wrote:
| > For modern graphic arts, the value has always come from
| being part of a serialized limited edition.
|
| The value to whom? To the artist the actual negative is
| clearly the most valuable to own. Original Ansel Adams
| negatives are actually very very valuable.
|
| Things, actual things, have value because they are
| physical, and the closer to the original the more value
| they have. Negatives have the most value, prints have
| less value, and a digital jpeg of an Ansel Adams photo
| has almost no value. I know, I "own" several.
| andybak wrote:
| > and the closer to the original the more value they
| have.
|
| Do you see the step you've just taken?
|
| It's no longer about authenticity, it's about proximity
| to authenticity. Would a reproduction from the original
| negative by someone other than Ansel Adams be more
| valuable than a different type of reproduction? If so,
| why?
| insert_coin wrote:
| Of course, it is closer to the author.
|
| I am fully aware of what I am saying: things have value
| not only because of what they are or what they are made
| of, they have value for other reasons.
|
| NFT people claim things only have value because of what
| they are, an art piece has value because it is an art
| piece, because it is beautiful to look at or whatever,
| and that visual property can be stored on the blockchain.
| That is where they are failing. They are missing 99% of
| the reasons things have value, and why they cannot
| understand two seemingly identical things having widely
| different values.
| andybak wrote:
| I think there is a flaw in your reasoning but it's hard
| to be sure because your last sentence is rather hard to
| parse.
|
| > They are missing 99% of the reasons things have value,
|
| Can you clarify?
|
| > they cannot understand two seemingly identical things
| having widely different values.
|
| We're not talking about the value in a piece of art - or
| even the value of owning an original piece of art.
|
| Ownership itself is a social construct. Back to my
| limited edition print comparison:
|
| You own one of a series of 100 prints or a photograph by
| a famous artist.
|
| I "own" a reproduction of the same work that is high
| enough resolution to be indistinguishable from your
| print.
|
| Assuming you can prove the authenticity of your print
| (maybe there's a chain of custody you can verify) - your
| print is worth thousands and mine is worth simply the
| cost of making another copy.
|
| How is this less silly than NFTs?
| insert_coin wrote:
| You cannot "authenticate" the bits 001 are different from
| the bits 001. NFTs claim one is the "original".
| dehrmann wrote:
| > assurance of ownership to an "original" digital asset
|
| So far, "ownership" has meant "vague association." If people
| really wanted to own IP, you'd think there'd be a boom in
| song rights, but there isn't.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Kind of an aside but... there actually is a boom in song
| rights right now.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/7285773/music-streaming-revenue/
| vvanders wrote:
| > (Leaving aside the carbon emissions - let's assume everyone
| finally switches to Proof of Stake)
|
| I don't know how you get to defend something when you're
| sidestepping the biggest problem with NFTs.
|
| I'm fine with stupid and pointless things as long as your
| stupid and pointless things don't wreck the environment. If
| someone decides to poison the local water supply because it's
| an "art project" they still poisoned the fucking water supply.
| andybak wrote:
| Well - Proof of Stake NFTs are already here:
| https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/
|
| So all I'm doing is hoping everyone uses these instead.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Thanks I've been looking for a PoS blockchain in
| production. Will check this out. Do you know any others?
|
| I really enjoy NFTs conceptually, much more than crypto in
| general actually, and I really don't get a lot of the hate.
| If you remove the emissions aspect (which is the non-
| starter for me), I think it's so cool that there is a way
| to create scarcity in the digital world, even if that
| scarcity is totally "meaningless." Yes, there are some
| goods with inherent value: food, shelter, heat sources. But
| NFTs are far from the first type of asset that has no
| inherent value, and that includes both the cyber and real
| worlds. Humans like to curate and collect, and NFTs are
| just an expression of that drive.
|
| What I wonder if why NFTs suddenly took off now. I remember
| hearing about them years ago.
| incrudible wrote:
| Cardano is a production proof-of-stake blockchain. It has
| the fifth-largest market cap.
|
| However, Ethereum has virtually monopolized the DeFi
| space. It is supposed to move to PoS, especially
| considering that transaction fees are insanely high due
| to recent demand.
| bathory wrote:
| You can't even run a hello world on cardano yet. but it
| has that market cap, with the expectancy that all users
| who buy in now will become super rich soon (Tm)
| dgellow wrote:
| > I've been looking for a PoS blockchain in production
|
| Tezos, Cardano, Algorand just to mention a few of them.
|
| Example of creating an NFTs using Algorand:
| https://developer.algorand.org/tutorials/create-and-
| manage-n...
| jebeng wrote:
| It's weird for me to read HN and see people speak of PoS
| as some kind of new cutting edge technology. Maybe some
| of the issues with it may or have may not been solved but
| it is so damn old now that it's 2021.
|
| Like the first live real money implementation of a PoS
| chain was done by SunnyKing back in like...I want to say
| 2012, but maybe 2013. SunnyKing was the same guy who went
| on to make the somewhat interesting PoW function via
| finding largest prime numbers(arguably somewhat useful
| PoW, certainly more than double SHA-256), Primecoin.
|
| Then in a larger scale there was NXT which was like
| 2013-2014ish, full PoS.
|
| I don't care about the merits of these particular chains,
| but PoS was one of the earliest innovations in blockchain
| tech. The lineage was roughly something like:
|
| 0. All the centralised pre-Bitcoin cypherpunk digital
| currency stuff from the mailing list like Bitgold,
| Chaumian ecash whatever.
|
| 1. Bitcoin
|
| 2. Namecoin(decentralized DNS)
|
| 3. Feathercoin/Litecoin(Bitcoin with 0.25 block target
| time and 4x total coins), arguably shouldn't be on the
| list for 'innovation' but Litecoin is successful(at some
| point they changed the PoW work function to scrypt so I
| guess it counts, there were other scam coins around this
| time too doing the same thing. So I don't necessarily
| mean Litecoin was 'third place' overall, just that it
| ended up rising from the pile of shit).
|
| 4. Different forms of PoW functions. ie Litecoin doing
| scrypt so people could still use their ATI Radeon 4xxx to
| mine and not order ASICs from shady companies),
| Cryptonight stuff maybe(lies about it being 'developed on
| the darknet for years and being related that cicada
| thing' before and such, hard to make an accurate timeline
| for that one(ended up forked off as Monero, possibly
| post-PoS tech)).
|
| 5. PoS, 2012-2014ish. Probably didn't come before
| different PoW functions but it might have switched with
| #4's place, hard to remember the exact timelines, but
| people were trolling and making fun of PoS ever since it
| was theorized. Probably because a true fully realized PoS
| that is superior to PoW is a threat to the massive
| investments one must put behind PoW systems, which also
| becomes the root of their 'nothing at stake' arguments
| against PoS, which certainly had merit back then with
| early PoS implementations. I wonder if those truly got
| solved.
|
| This was all like 2014 at the latest. Very old stuff but
| crypto is full of sales snakes(not targeted at you at
| all) who try to sell other peoples old open source tech
| as new modern innovations. It's a familiar pattern.
| People sold Bitcoin as private and anonymous for
| years...like way too long.
|
| I'm imagining now there will be a point when PoS is 10+
| years old and people will acting like it's the newest
| thing on the block still.
| risho wrote:
| nft's don't poison the environment in and of themselves.
| First of all they don't NEED to exist on a proof of work
| blockchain, and second whether or not you make or trade nft's
| people are still going to be mining bitcoin and ethereum.
| your criticism here is of proof of work, not nft's. please
| don't conflate the 2. there are plenty of reasons that nft's
| are silly, but proof of work isn't one of them.
| vvanders wrote:
| Until NFTs move away from proof of work I'll continue to
| criticize them.
|
| It's like expecting good intentions and then being
| surprised when a few bad actors ruin things for the larger
| group. Tragedy of the commons is exactly why stuff like
| this should be called out, each and every single time.
| andybak wrote:
| Which is why I tried to limit my discussion to PoS. Which
| (I'll repeat myself here) already are being used for
| NFTs.
| madrox wrote:
| Do you play video games, then? Because arguably it isn't NFTs
| that consume power...it's the GPUs. GPUs do way more than
| NFTs, and there is data that shows that gaming consumes way
| more than blockchain.
|
| If my mom is any indicator, many consider video games stupid
| and pointless. Value is in the eye of the beholder.
| hatboxreappoint wrote:
| > there is data that shows that gaming consumes way more
| than blockchain
|
| Source?
| andybak wrote:
| If I had to bet I would probably bet that "all the gamers
| in the world" are using more power than "all the crypto
| miners in the world".
|
| I can't think of a way to immediately gather any evidence
| for this either way but it seems like a plausible
| position to take.
|
| (However - I think the value > utility chain is easier to
| argue for with gaming. I'm not making the same argument
| as the parent post.)
| mouldysammich wrote:
| Maybe this is a the case, however there are, I would guess
| at least a billion people on earth who play games. there is
| nothing even close to that using blockchains. If blockchain
| energy usage is even vaguely in the range of games it can
| still be considered an enormous --possibly-- unnecessary
| usage of power
| vvanders wrote:
| If you want to bring the data you mentioned we can have a
| conversation, however I would be very surprised if it came
| close to the 50-130GWh mark for just bitcoin alone[1].
|
| [1] https://cbeci.org/
| kllrnohj wrote:
| A quick search finds that a single bitcoin transaction
| consumes around 773.80 kWh. That's enough to power a video
| game console, like a PS5 for example, for around 3100
| hours. So the simple act of buying the video game to play
| would cost vastly more electricity than playing it ever
| will.
|
| Whether or not gaming as a whole consumes more power than
| crypto as a whole isn't the question, it's whether or not
| crypto would consume more power per person using it than
| per gamer playing games. As in, give everyone a ~fixed
| power consumption quota - where is that power "better"
| spent, gaming or crypto?
| runeks wrote:
| > I'm fine with stupid and pointless things as long as your
| stupid and pointless things don't wreck the environment.
|
| I hang up decorative lights around Christmas time. Is that
| not okay with you, or do you not find it pointless?
| [deleted]
| vvanders wrote:
| If your Christmas lights used the same amount of
| electricity as the whole town? Maybe.
|
| Thankfully we have an amazing new technology called Light
| Emitting Diodes so we don't have to worry about that
| theoretical problem.
| Twisell wrote:
| I think in 1-2 generations people will look back and wonder
| about how dumb we were about our energy consumption
| regarding the environmental challenges we were facing.
|
| Most of ou current Christmas folklore is pretty pointless
| lights being a pretty recent invention when compared to
| christian religion timespan. Same as for Christmas trees,
| they were pretty much on point when everybody had a wood
| stove to throw them in after Christmas and warm the house.
| Pretty pointless nowaday when you live in a flat...
| kvz wrote:
| Ethereum is switching over to proof of stake this year which
| will pretty much solve the environmental issue
| dehrmann wrote:
| At least I can look at art. That, alone is more utility than an
| NFT.
| andybak wrote:
| I can look at the Mona Lisa - either the original or a
| reproduction. Does that mean "owning the Mona Lisa" is
| meaningless? How about "owning the copyright on a painting
| that is on the internet"? Worthless or worth paying for?
| simonh wrote:
| Owning a physical painting grants access to the object, so
| for example you can study the texture of the brush strokes,
| the canvas, take samples of the paint, smell it, destroy
| it, produce copies or images of it at any level of detail
| or resolution you like. None of this is possible with a
| digital reproduction.
|
| If I own the copyright of an artwork, even one 'on the
| internet' I have exclusive rights to reproduce it
| commercially. For example I could sell prints, while it
| would be illegal for others to do so. The existence of the
| latest pop songs on Youtube doesn't stop the copyright
| holders commercialising it.
|
| NFTs don't by themselves confer any of these rights or
| privileges with respect to the thing they purportedly
| represent.
| andybak wrote:
| Which is why I think my comparison to limited edition
| prints is the most useful.
|
| 1. A limited edition print doesn't confer copyright
|
| 2. A limited edition print isn't the original
|
| 3. A limited edition print may never have been in the
| presence of the artist.
| bawolff wrote:
| I can go to a library to use a computer, does that mean
| owning a laptop is meaningless? This seems like a very
| silly comparison.
| andybak wrote:
| Your analogy is flawed. The laptop has utility in terms
| of access and convenience.
| ori_b wrote:
| Owning an NFT is not the same as owning copyright. It's
| just owning the right to transfer the NFT.
|
| There can be as many NFTs for the same thing as the (edit:
| anyone) artist feels like producing.
|
| [1]
| https://nitter.eu/joshmillard/status/1370088760663179266
|
| [2] https://blog.erratasec.com/2021/03/deconstructing-
| that-69mil...
| roywiggins wrote:
| There can be as many NFTs for the same thing as _anyone_
| feels like producing. We could all mint a different Mona
| Lisa NFT.
| andybak wrote:
| Well yes. But anyone can make a reproduction of a Warhol
| print. But there is a chain of custody that adds value.
|
| I'd like to reiterate that I think the value in a Warhol
| print is also stupid. It's less stupid than NFTs but the
| point I'm trying to make (apparently unsuccesfully) is
| that these differences are matters of degree rather than
| type.
|
| We humans have a multitude of ways to invent value that
| is built on sand.
| ori_b wrote:
| > _Well yes. But anyone can make a reproduction of a
| Warhol print_
|
| The point is that an NFT only shows a chain of custody
| for the NFT. It does not imply anything about the
| originality of the Warhol.
| andybak wrote:
| See my other comments throughout this thread.
|
| We have many fictions we indulge in about authenticity
| and value.
|
| NFTs are a new fiction. They might even be dumber than
| other currently accepted fictions.
|
| But the discussion is "which of these fictions is the
| most stupid?" rather than "NFTs are stupid". We are
| already a long way from genuine utility or intrinsic
| value and into the realms of social consensus and value-
| through-association.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I was actually starting to accept NTF's, until I noticed the
| price---$69 to register your bits. This stopped me flat.
|
| To all you pumped up to be the next Zuck, I would be coding a
| NFT site.
|
| Oh yea, I heard these companies take your word that the bits
| are yours. People are ripping off online artists/originators.
| andybak wrote:
| > $69 to register your bits. This stopped me flat.
|
| I've briefly looked into a NFT markets and the cost was a few
| 10s of cents. Where were you looking?
| miguelmurca wrote:
| I've never really seen anyone heavily take issue with the
| _concept_ of NFTs. Everybody 's just taking issue with the PoW.
| andybak wrote:
| You obviously follow different people on Twitter to me. The
| entire topic has become very polarized - well beyond the
| discussions around C02
| ayngg wrote:
| I think the majority of the value in art nfts will be derived
| from being part of the provenance, or being part of the history
| of the beginning of 'owning' digital art, much like owning a
| famous painting. By extension it could be applied to digital
| culture, for example the tiktok guy riding his skateboard is
| selling that meme as an nft. So if collectors are good (and
| lucky), they are basically able to buy their way into a niche
| of history by being associated with works that represent
| periods of cultural significance.
|
| Sure that may seem stupid to most people, but most people don't
| even get why regular art is significant or can be very
| expensive. Personally I would attribute it to my lack of
| understanding rather than dismiss it outright.
| hatboxreappoint wrote:
| Some people in this thread talk about "bragging rights". I am
| genuinely curious if anyone would be impressed by someone
| bragging about purchasing this NFT, or know anyone who would be
| impressed.
|
| I wouldn't and can't think of anyone I know who would, the
| emotional response would probably just be of frustration at the
| absurd amount of money being spent, much like bragging about any
| large value novelty purchase.
| sbarre wrote:
| I think you're missing the point of bragging rights in the
| first place.
|
| It's entirely about the audience. Without even talking about
| NFTs in particular, you don't brag about something to people
| who don't care about that something.
|
| I mean shit we have this page here that wouldn't exist if
| people didn't care, right?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
|
| There clearly is an audience that cares about NFTs, just like
| there is for plenty of other types of
| goods/accomplishments/ownership...
|
| Don't get me wrong I'm not advocating for, or against, this
| stuff, just pointing out that there's nothing new about the
| motivations or desires of people getting into the NFT game.
| vidarh wrote:
| A whole lot of other goods are only expensive because people
| want to show off their ability to buy expensive things, and for
| a certain subset of bragging rights, the _ability to throw away
| huge amounts of money on something totally useless_ is a
| particularly extravagant demonstration of wealth, because
| spending money on something useless is a more direct
| demonstration of the magnitude of your wealth than buying
| something that you can safely sell again to recoup most of your
| expense.
|
| For what it's worth, I agree with you in general. It's a
| ridiculous waste of money. But at the same time it's very clear
| that some people _are_ impressed by this kind of thing.
| jspash wrote:
| If someone bragged about spending 50 grand on the idea that
| they own something that doesn't exist if the lights go out, I
| would use that as signal that said person would be a good mark
| for a scam. Highly gullible, a bit dim and has money to burn.
| frongpik wrote:
| Elon Musk can make another 100 billions by claiming a chunk of
| Mars territory and selling NFTs backed by 1 acre lots of Mars
| land. The NFTs will be real so long as Elon gets the US gov to
| recognize his landlord rights on Mars, at least near the location
| of his first rocket landing. The thing is, he can start selling
| NFTs right now, as his promise alone is this valuable.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Just as was done a generation above with selling off lots in
| the desert west ...
|
| Barring any international treaties that would probably prevent
| any such claims, the general rule is that you or a physical
| representative have to set foot and survey before you can make
| a claim. And stepping onto Mars in one spot would not be
| sufficient to claim the whole planet.
| frongpik wrote:
| Ah, you're being nitpicky. Buyers of those NFTs will be
| betting on Musk setting the foot first, and thus claiming a
| big enough chunk of Mars land. Potential returns are very
| large when there's a lot of ambiguity and risk. By the time
| Mars is regulated by a pile laws, returns will be low and a
| million dollars will buy a tiny lot. Buyers of NFTs will also
| speculate on finding expensive minerals under the Mars
| surface. If you have billions rotting in stock market,
| investing 1% into this, backed by the Musk's reputation and
| potential, is a no brainer.
| trhway wrote:
| almost 40 years too late :) These ones have been selling Moon
| and Mars real estate for all that time
| https://buymars.com/mars-land/ . I'd say it is original NFT.
|
| The current legal regime of the space is based on the notion of
| Earth sovereign states - kind of oxymoronic if you think about
| it. Basically the modern space treaties is an attempt to repeat
| that division of the world like Portugal and Spain did back
| then - which worked for some time only because of the strength
| of their Navies at the time. I dont think it would work this
| time as even at such early stage as today the private
| corporation space development beats any state one, and once we
| are more and more into space the governments will be falling
| behind in the technical development and more importantly - in
| the thinking, not being able to digest and adapt to the fast
| coming paradigm shifts and different mentality of the space
| farers and long time dwellers. The primary government advantage
| has historically been armed force, and any space faring private
| corporation will possess what is de-facto equivalent of state-
| level strike capabilities - ie. interplanetary rockets and
| nuclear/fusion reactors. Thus the future laws in space is just
| whatever force-based relationships will be established between
| corporations - i.e. what we call international law on Earth
| just substituting corps for states.
| toyg wrote:
| It's not just USGOV who has to approve that claim, it's every
| country on COPUOUS : https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html
|
| It's more likely that Musk will have to settle for his Earthen
| technokingdom.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Who enforces this? Elon can just say he refuses to follow any
| gov mandates. If they try to penalize or jail him, he is
| going cause a massive uproar from the public that will
| prevent any such shenanigans. Power is in people that follow
| you.
| vidarh wrote:
| I think it's total folly to bet on that staying unchallenged
| once someone has the ability to transport sufficient mass and
| volume back and forth to create sufficient financial
| interests in changing it.
|
| If someone with sufficient odds of establishing a transport
| stranglehold started selling promises of land even with the
| giant caveat of it being subject to substantial changes in
| relevant treaties and laws, I'd suspect they'd find lots of
| people willing to take the risk, simply because even if it'd
| be extremely high risk, the potential payoff could be
| immense.
| frongpik wrote:
| I'd add another use of NFTs that follows the letter of the law,
| but violates its spirit: a trust fund whose beneficiary is an
| owner of a specific NFT. This allows to conceal the identity of
| the beneficiary and pull out various tricks, such as tax free
| transfer of wealth (e.g. to heirs) or outright illegal stuff
| like getting your life insured, then faking an accident and
| living off the payments under a different identity.
| wrs wrote:
| Given there's a $50k bid for this, I can't decide if the joke
| backfired, or succeeded brilliantly. It's a no-lose proposition
| for Cleese, I guess!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Normally, when these kind of things happen, the receipient of
| that money tends to do something cool with it like dontating it
| to causes. However, I think it would be very apropos for Cleese
| to just keep any earnings.
| a4isms wrote:
| (Cleese collects fifty million dollars, goes to the bank and
| takes the entire amount out in cash.)
|
| "I won, I won, I finally came out ahead!"
|
| Prunella Scales appears.
|
| "Thank you, Basil!"
|
| Yoink.
| koonsolo wrote:
| This is already a famous NFT.
|
| "Remember when John Cleese sold the Brooklyn Bridge? Look, I
| have that NFT that he sold!".
|
| Heck, I would even pay money for that. First of all for the
| bragging rights, and second of all because I'm sure plenty of
| people would pay for it.
|
| But $50k is a bit over my budget ;). But in no way am I
| surprised that there is somebody out there that wants to pay
| this amount.
|
| If anyone is surprised by this, you probably also don't
| understand any other collectibles.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Just tell people you own it. Venmo me $5 and I'll put your
| name down on the blockchain (a public Google sheet). It'll
| have the same effect.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| But it won't.
|
| This is the key conceptual leap you have to make to
| understand NFTs, or cryptocurrency for that matter.
|
| The blockchain is a consensus mechanism, with the emphasis
| on consensus.
|
| A lot of people agreeing on something having value means
| that it has value to those people. They can then exchange
| that thing among themselves and thus transfer the value.
|
| One person saying something has value means it has value to
| them. If no one else accepts it has value, it can't be used
| to transfer value.
| SwimSwimHungry wrote:
| And a standard database transaction that can be done with
| pre-existing technology already can do this too? Like
| seriously, NFTs are not breaking new ground. This is just
| an excuse to piss away something that could be converted
| to objectively far more useful fiat.
|
| The fed needs to raise interest rates and get the free
| dumb money out of the system as soon as possible so we
| can suck these schemes dry.
|
| Frankly, I think John Cleese is trolling all of the NFT
| fans.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Clearly not.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| So the idea is to pay money to claim involvement in a
| cultural moment in which you played no role? Sounds sad and
| hollow to me.
| eloff wrote:
| Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about
| ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make
| unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people really
| care who pretends to own it?
|
| I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton
| (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said bragging
| rights.
|
| As someone who's always mocked those brands and the people who
| buy them, it seems so strange to me though.
| scambier wrote:
| > Do people really care who pretends to own it
|
| They absolutely don't. There's no art collectors or amateurs in
| this game, only speculators.
| Theodores wrote:
| Christie's commissioned the Beeple work to sell as an NFT.
| Why would an auction house do that?
|
| There is more to it than speculation. There is a con where
| something went on. Maybe the auction house commissioned the
| money to pay for it and had a 69.3 million fee.
|
| It saddens me that journalists have chosen not to follow the
| money and ask the questions.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Christie's commissioned the Beeple work
|
| Did they? I thought it was his investor "Metakovan" who
| commissioned it. Following the money is rather hard in an
| all-pseudonym system.
| lukifer wrote:
| Accelerating inequality has led to a conundrum for the rich in
| addition to the obvious consequences for the poor: what do you
| actually _do_ with that obscene wealth? [0] You can only
| consume so much luxury, and sitting on dollars results in tax
| liability and /or gradual depreciation. Gambling it on
| speculative assets and bragging-rights positional goods
| (whynotboth.gif) is pretty much the only game in town,
| especially when everyone else is doing it, and you can tell
| yourself a Greater Sucker story (which may or may not resemble
| a game of Chicken / "Push Your Luck").
|
| NFTs and crypto are obviously realms for this to play out, but
| this same force is at work for speculative investing in
| startups as well. For every startup with a value prop, a
| market, and a revenue model, there are a dozen who are flush
| with cash solely for the purpose of attracting Greater Suckers,
| fueled by the same motive to park and/or gamble an asset
| portfolio.
|
| [0] https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/karen-petrou-wealth-
| inequal...
| meowface wrote:
| Yeah. Cryptocurrency and "Web 3.0" is absolutely not all
| zero-sum, and I'm overall optimistic in the long-term, but
| much like the existing finance industry, a high percentage is
| definitely zero-sum or close enough on net.
|
| People compare NFTs to trading cards. But if you already
| think those things are basically useless zero-sum speculative
| Greater Fool insert-other-overused-but-apt-buzzwords
| bullshit, your opinion of NFTs won't be improved much.
|
| NFTs, in their current state and hype wave, are probably a
| little like the dotcom bubble. It definitely doesn't imply
| the internet and the world wide web are bubbles, but it
| implies a major disconnect of some kind. I'm more interested
| in the future of semi-fungible tokens and novel, creative
| uses of NFT/SFT smart contracts. Plus just smart contracts in
| general.
| valuearb wrote:
| DeFi is actual DeSpec, tools for decentralized speculation
| on things with no intrinsic value.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mdoms wrote:
| If I knew anything about Roman history I'm almost certain I
| could draw a parallel to the fall of Rome here.
| hellothrow4418 wrote:
| Just FYI. There's 'The History of Rome' podcast by Mike
| Duncan [1]. 'AntennaPod' is a great FLOSS podcast app.
| Available on Fdroid too [2].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast)
|
| [2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/
| jb1991 wrote:
| I find this quite a beautiful analysis.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > what do you actually do with that obscene wealth? [0] You
| can only consume so much luxury, and sitting on dollars
| results in tax liability and/or gradual depreciation.
|
| I'm not so sure. Owning $10-$50M homes in major world cities,
| flying in a private jet, summer homes, winter homes, no car
| cheaper than $200k, no car older then 5 years, private school
| for your kids, private tutors, etc. adds up fast. Not to
| mention the effort that goes into make sure you never have to
| fly business class again.
|
| The obscenely wealthy seem to either be content (Buffet),
| focused on charity (Gates), or all over the place (Musk).
| Anything less than $100M is less interesting thank you'd
| think.
| zokier wrote:
| If you think it more like as Patreon then it makes much more
| sense. The ownership of the artwork (or whatever) is
| irrelevant. Similarly that Patreon members might get their
| names in the credits of a youtube video, token owners get their
| name in the blockchain. The key here is that both are public
| displays of support to the artist and not much more.
| prepend wrote:
| It's the natural extension of luxury branding where just having
| LV would raise the price from $100 to $1,000. So may as well
| strip away all vestiges of reality and just allow the bullshit
| signaling part to be sold by itself.
|
| Perhaps with people focusing on that, we can get more quality
| products IRL. I went to an eye exam where the optometrist was
| wearing arcteryx gear during my exam. Perhaps she was going to
| jet off to some location where that stuff was needed, or
| perhaps she just liked it for fashion. But nonetheless, when
| people start wearing things that need real quality for non-
| quality reasons eventually brands start wising up and selling
| at the same price but with worse quality.
| jancsika wrote:
| > optometrist was wearing arcteryx gear during my exam
|
| Arcteryx pieces _feel_ great on, the same way avocados taste
| great in your mouth. And just like you 'd likely be
| misleading people by using an avocado as an example of the
| average fruit, you are misleading people by using Arcteryx to
| stand in for technical outdoorwear.
|
| Hell, that holds even if your optometrist was wearing a
| fucking rain shell in the office. Compare:
|
| 1. jacket made of mostly straight, rectangular pieces of
| material sewn together, then taped at the seams (which can
| rub against your skin) in order to make it waterproof,
| probably with long arms so it doesn't ride up when you raise
| yours (e.g., you end up with wrinkly, noisy sleeves)
|
| 2. jacket with fused seams, made of pieces that are
| fabricated to fit together and follow the contour of the
| human body, with thicker material fused only in those areas
| that were measured to be high abrasion
|
| Number 2 is obviously the wrong garment to wear inside a
| climate controlled building. But it feels _so much better_
| than your run-of-the-mill slicker that I could see someone in
| and out of a building deciding to simply leave it on for a
| bit.
|
| In other words, the technical specs responsible for those
| differences match "real quality reasons" for someone to
| decide to wear it for longer periods, even in conditions for
| which the garment wasn't designed.
|
| And if it wasn't a rain shell, it's likely the piece was
| comfortable, breathable, didn't look like the average piece
| of outdoorwear, and was perfectly fitting for the conditions
| of an optometry office. (I own probably four of their Delta
| LT fullzips which are so light I sometimes forget to stop
| wearing them in the early summer.)
| blueline wrote:
| at least a louis vuitton bag can actually hold things in it,
| and you can't get an identical free one by right clicking an
| existing one and clicking "Save image"
| dylan604 wrote:
| or you can go to that part of town where you can get much
| cheaper knock offs of the LV bag. actually, there's several
| apps that are filled with these sellers that make it
| practically as easy as right clicking
| seibelj wrote:
| > _Is it just me_
|
| Given every post on crypto / blockchain / NFT on HN is full of
| these exact same comments showing utter disbelief and
| bewilderment, for the past 10 years, the answer is "No,
| everyone here thinks like you."
| masklinn wrote:
| > Is it just me, or NFTs is just useless bragging rights about
| ownership of digital goods which can't be owned? You can make
| unlimited indistinguishable copies of an image. Do people
| really care who pretends to own it?
|
| In my understanding the NFT doesn't even cover the ownership of
| anything except the NFT itself. It's like owning a sheet of
| paper you write "certificate of authenticity" at the top on in
| sharpie, then sign yourself. You should probably write the bits
| in the middle in crayon.
|
| > I mean I guess if you look at show of brands like Luis Vuiton
| (sp?) There are plenty of people willing to pay for said
| bragging rights.
|
| Merch is at least an actual thing you can own and use, or get
| pleasure from by looking at (for works of arts e.g. prints &
| posters, limited run or not), sometimes tied to life events or
| memories (e.g. band, museum, or tourism spot merch).
| koonsolo wrote:
| I would much rather own this (now famous) NFT that John
| Cleese sold, than anything from Luis Vuiton.
| quesera wrote:
| It is not just you.
|
| But, NFT's are selling "participation". You are not John
| Cleese, and you're not even all that funny. But you're an
| enormous fan, and happen to control an adequately-large amount
| of cash.
|
| In the same way that you can hire Elton John to pretend to be
| your friend for a few hours, and play at your wedding, etc, you
| can also "buy in" to a very public partcipation in some art, or
| joke, or both ... at no meaningful cost to you.
|
| Surely the market is limited. But people have paid a lot of
| money for a piece of toast, too.
|
| In this case, it's no weirder than Cleese selling his socks for
| charity. Or profit! Who cares? Eat the rich, it's all good.
| sharpneli wrote:
| They're even more useless than that. They're exactly like those
| webpages that sell you a certificate that you own a particular
| star.
|
| It's literally that. Someone giving you a slip of paper "You
| own Mona Lisa" and nothing more. The actual piece of art is
| elsewhere. Copyrights are not affected etc.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| The issue is that everyone equates NFTs with NFT art. NFT art
| can't have a tie in as part of a virtual world where people
| want to show ownership of specific digital items, but NFTs in
| general are more useful, especially for all-digital items.
|
| Something like cards in Gods Unchained is a better NFT example
| than a picture.
| drcode wrote:
| Some people would love to pay for a direct connection to an
| artist and their work.
|
| It has emotional value.
| basch wrote:
| All of the replies to you didnt really touch on what they are,
| a store of value. It's fair to think of them more like savings
| accounts.
|
| You can buy a replica of a piece of art to look at it. You buy
| the original to store value. You hope it may appreciate as
| well. It could end up worthless. But until someone says
| otherwise, it has the value stored in it.
|
| It's just like baseball cards. You can make unlimited
| indistinguishable copies, but you don't. The date they are
| printed matters for some reason. Who owned it previously, its
| last sale price at auction is part of its history and thus its
| value.
|
| Sorare/ubisoft also has a much better value proposition. Theyve
| combined draftkings and pokemon into a live betting market with
| collectable cards that you can use to play a game, to win more.
| The early generation may be simple digital art, mostly
| worthless, but there will be more innovation to come. Part of
| the reason I think NFTs are the real deal is because I think
| the value of art is often stupid, and yet it still has value.
| Even if 99% of NFTs turn into nothing, there will be some early
| art from people that arent famous yet, that is someday found. I
| have no doubt there is an immense amount of mystery being
| planted, waiting to be uncovered. Whatever stupidity and hype
| and storytelling and history around artwork, that I dont
| understand, will translate to this realm as well. The lack of
| decay, fire damage, traditional theft, and loss will be an
| interesting wrinkle.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Why would you store value in something as unstable as an NFT?
| NFTs are 100% speculation so the price is basically
| arbitrary.
| prepend wrote:
| Because I own 1,000 of them and convincing bigger idiots
| than I to buy them will make me lots of money.
|
| I get that all "store of value" are arbitrary and that gold
| could be other things. But it seems funny to just pick
| random things and then try to convince others that it's
| worthwhile. There are at least certain characteristics
| needed for a store of value and something completely
| arbitrary has a bootstrap problem.
|
| I can at least look at art or play with a Black Lotus.
| Holding an NFT of a piece of art is stupid as a store of
| value because there are so many better stores (eg, an NFT
| that conveys ownership rights to a piece of art for
| example).
| basch wrote:
| Is physical art any different?
|
| If anything this is a democratization of the wealthy
| auction scene. A new tier of field to play.
|
| Alternative assets come in all shapes in sizes. I can store
| wealth in gold, comics, wine. Why not my name on a ledger
| listed as owner of nothing in particular other than the
| price I paid for it? The amount of hate they get on HN
| should be a clue that everyone is being over analytical and
| logical, and missing out on analyzing them through human
| behavior. They arent a robotic math problem, they are
| behavioral economics.
|
| I can't wait to see an investable etf of sorts that lets
| people invest in a collection of NFTs like they would
| bonds. Youll have "curators"/"fund managers" assembling and
| storing a vast array of art, allowing people to diversify
| and own fractional shares of a bunch of art.
|
| Does it sound stupid? Absolutely? Which is why it's just
| crazy enough to work.
| yoz-y wrote:
| > Is physical art any different?
|
| Yes, physical art, baseball cards, gold and whatnot all
| have a long history and vast amount of people who
| participate in the trade.
|
| NFTs in comparison are super new, and the only people who
| seem to chip in are those who either have some stake in
| there or bored.
|
| NFTs might be a good store of value eventually. But right
| now dumping millions in there seems like a huge gamble.
| quesera wrote:
| Physical art is different. (hang with me here, but..)
|
| "Investing" in a Picasso is an investment in a long-term
| store of cultural value that you speculate will
| appreciate more quickly than the S&P. Probably because
| you bet that the 1% will see outsized gains compared to
| the 99%. Maybe you also like the art and want to be the
| only person in the world who can display it. Also it can
| be very useful as a tax dodge.
|
| "Investing" in a new and unknown artist is several
| things: a) speculation that they will become more famous
| and that you are tasteful enough to know it early (see:
| angel investing), b) patronage and participation (see:
| friends & family rounds), c) conspicuous consumption
| (see: conspicuous consumption), and finally d) purchase
| of an expression of art that you enjoy, which may or may
| not have resale value in the future if your priorities
| change.
|
| NFTs are confusing because any persistent value is
| completely dependent on the continued agreement that
| exclusivity of relationship is valuable and transferable.
| What's it like to be the eleventh owner of an NFT?
| Presumably, it'd be pretty meh.
|
| But to your point -- it's psychology not logic. Today's
| buyers are not looking for a store of value. It's just an
| exercise in one of two things: vanity or speculation.
| These are powerful things!
| mnouquet wrote:
| > Physical art is different. (hang with me here, but..)
|
| No, it is not. Picasso died dirt poor, he never
| beneficiated in large sums from his paintings. It just
| happen he was crazy enough to make a name and now people
| brag about him.
| gilmore606 wrote:
| This is famously not the case. Picasso was quite famous
| during his life and died wealthy.
| Normille wrote:
| Methinks mnouquet is confusing Picasso and Van Gogh
| kgwgk wrote:
| It's all clear now.
|
| Everyone understands that baseball cards are just like
| savings accounts!
| chartpath wrote:
| Wasn't there an app on iOS way back at the start that was just
| an image of a ruby/gem of some kind that cost $999? Some people
| actually bought it before Apple took it off the App Store.
| lukifer wrote:
| This story is also a good parable of why Veblen goods [0]
| distort GDP as a measure of value creation. If Apple had
| decided to lean in to that market, raising the maximum app
| price to $1M, and those same 8 purchasers who bought the
| original I Am Rich purchased I Am Rich 2.0: would anyone
| really believe that that $8M of real-world value was created?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
| Someone wrote:
| $999.99 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I always thought the natural follow up/copy cat app name
| should have been "More dollars than sense"
| pfortuny wrote:
| In "the bonfire of the vanities" by Tom Wolfe, this is
| ridiculed with the auction for an absurd statue which will
| become priceless because the author has suggested is going to
| commit suicide (or has alreay, I forget). The auction is
| hilarious.
| playingchanges wrote:
| I think the idea is that a lot of these come with publishing
| contracts built in so the artist receives a royalty if the
| token changes hands and the current owner has the rights to
| license the art.
|
| For example if I sell you a song as an nft you could then
| license the song to Budweiser to use in a commercial and we
| both get paid. Think about how difficult this would be to
| arrange without the nft to handle the contract.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| Song publishing seems like a bad example here -- it's
| insanely easy to make that arrangement in practice because
| there is an existing real world payment / licensing structure
| for exactly that transaction.
| sneak wrote:
| > _I think the idea is that a lot of these come with
| publishing contracts built in so the artist receives a
| royalty if the token changes hands and the current owner has
| the rights to license the art._
|
| I've not seen a single NFT that comes with an associated
| copyright license to the underlying work.
|
| Additionally, the artist only receives a royalty if the token
| is sold on these marketplaces that enforce the royalty.
| There's no such thing preventing a private sale that doesn't
| pay it.
| djoldman wrote:
| Isn't it possible to actually code it into the ethereum
| contract to send eth to a wallet when it's traded?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| How would that matter if it's traded off chain?
| sneak wrote:
| In theory. I've not seen a contract that does that,
| however.
|
| This doesn't mean they couldn't exist, just that (in my
| current understanding) it's not part of the ERC-721 spec.
| sago wrote:
| I don't disagree with your conclusions. But I think it is easy
| to oversimplify this. Until it is obviously just... obvious. I
| think reality is more interestingly complicated.
|
| > ownership of digital goods which can't be owned?
|
| One interesting fact it is what the ownership means legally. If
| there was a successful image that an expensive NFT owner had,
| it wouldn't surprise me to see some legal shenanigans. This has
| not been tested yet. Capability does not give you the _rights_
| to make copies of digital art. "Can't be owed" is a rather
| brave claim I think.
|
| > You can make unlimited indistinguishable copies
|
| Interestingly it is not dissimilar to a lot of physical art. To
| the extent that some 'restorations' of damaged art contain a
| lot of paint of the restorer rather than the original artist. I
| believe there are many professionals who are capable of
| creating something visually indistinguishable from the Mona
| Lisa, say.
|
| Without specialised equipment you would have a very hard time
| telling reality from a good copy. So I am forced to conclude
| (what dealers will say quite explicitly) that most of the value
| is in the provenance not the physicality. "NFT is rubbish"
| becomes less obvious, to me.
| manigandham wrote:
| No physical item can be copied exactly with the same
| arrangement of atoms. There will always be an original.
|
| Digital items have no original. The bytes are constantly
| copied, even in the creation itself. And every viewing
| creates another copy. And these copies have perfect fidelity.
| That's the difference.
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| it remembers me the italian classic scene of the "selling of the
| Trevi fountain" from "Tototruffa '62" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQNPg5-hgk
| kgwgk wrote:
| Not sure if you are aware that the choice of the Brooklyn
| Bridge is not accidental:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker
| dleslie wrote:
| There are children going hungry at school, people with trivial to
| fix but prohibitively expensive medical issues, and silicon
| valley millionaires are spending more than many will make in a
| year by purchasing bullshit.
|
| Shit's on fire, yo.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| > Shit's on fire, yo.
|
| Let them eat cake.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Buying it from such a Legend is what gives it value.
|
| It's like Cleese is _personally_ making fun of the buyer!
|
| I'm pretty sure this will go down as the Pet Rocks of this era.
| But... I'm not _entirely_ sure.
| vl wrote:
| He is only one of the very few people who can pull it off.
| notahacker wrote:
| tbf if I was stupidly rich and not particularly
| philanthropically inclined, I'd see far more value in an NFT
| John Cleese personally mocks me for buying than any others
| tartoran wrote:
| Having that it's John Cleese this may truly become a very
| valuable NFT even if that wasn't the intention. The only thing
| John can do to at this point is get this event as public as
| possible then denounce it as a big scam and refusing to cash in
| a very large bid. Alternatively he may actually help jumpstart
| the NFT
| mcrittenden wrote:
| For anyone else wondering what NFTs are:
|
| > Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital assets that are
| indivisible and provably unique. They can be used to represent
| both tangible and intangible items.
|
| https://decrypt.co/resources/non-fungible-tokens-nfts-explai...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That's a hip target to skewer for such an elder humorist.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Dada of NFTs, the future is going to call this Cleese's bridge
| for NFTs as we call Duchamp's urinal. It will probably sell,
| that's why he didn't just tell us the joke but also listed it.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I don't really see the downside (oh yeah, planet's burning,
| but as the dog in the cartoon said, this is fine), if some
| rich jerkoffs buy it then Cleese can put the money into
| charity. I suppose one downside is that the NFT ponzi
| peddlers can now say "See, we're legitimate, even the founder
| of Monty Python is here!", but Cleese's comments about
| terminal insanity isn't exactly support.
|
| I suppose everyone knows the emperors are naked, but hey, it
| seems like that's not stopping megabucks being made, and why
| should you miss out?
| rcxdude wrote:
| NFTs have already started mocking themselves, almost as soon
| as any money has been spent on it (for example banksy's "I
| can't belive you morons actually buy this shit: https://opens
| ea.io/assets/0xdfef5ac9745d24db881fef3937eab1d2... selling
| for $350k). This is just another high-profile example (though
| I think it's a slightly pointier critique at NFTs).
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| If it's NFT, it MUST be true and the transaction MUST be legit!
|
| Sigh. NTF is just more nonsense.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This young chap (or collective of chaps) has a bright future.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| This is a perfect example of what NFTs really are, a mechanism to
| monetize attention, not ownership. Yes, they could be used to
| represent ownership; but, that's not what the current incarnation
| actually is.
|
| Anyone could have made a Brooklyn Bridge NFT (I've seen many make
| this joke). But, the value of the NFT is based on who is selling
| it and how compelling the narrative around the NFT is.
|
| The valuation of the NFT is going to be based entirely on
| expectations of growth of future attention to the minter of the
| NFT. The market for them is going to consist primarily of a
| person that is a speculator first, collector second.
|
| With that said, I think that people are wildly overpricing
| expectations of future attention for most of these. So there will
| be a correction. But, I don't think they are a fad, as long as
| gamblers exist so will NFTs.
| atweiden wrote:
| This could easily turn into a situation where Twitter / IG
| profiles contain NFT inventories, which is scary to think
| about.
|
| Social media looks to be on the verge of transitioning into
| something catastrophically superficial. The pendulum will fully
| swing to "capturing the moment" then selling it on the way
| pornographers do, and it will be equally smutty.
|
| Everyone might as well soon be doing what CNN and Fox News are
| doing, and profiting from it on an individual level powered by
| NFTs.
|
| We are staring down at the proliferation of digusting levels of
| objectification of social interactions powered by the
| financialization of everything.
|
| The people responsible for pushing this for profit should be
| shamed and disgraced, but will instead likely by rewarded with
| billions in newly created -- and unseizable -- wealth.
|
| Truly, humanity is a cancer.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-21 23:01 UTC)