NFTs

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plodder
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NFTs

Post by plodder » Fri Oct 08, 2021 2:17 am


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Re: NFTs

Post by bjn » Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:38 am

It’s all part of the crypto b.llsh.t, so yeah, it is. Don’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:43 am

I think the fact there’s no way to prevent copies of the thing you’ve made a token of renders them pretty meaningless.

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Re: NFTs

Post by secret squirrel » Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:55 am

When I first heard about NFTs I thought they were stupid, but I looked into it and got to understand the technology, and then I realized they're actually way more stupid than that.

The actual NFT contains just 3 pieces of information. The (cryptographic) signature of the creator, the signature of the current 'owner', and something else, which due to the massive inefficiency of the relevant blockchains is necessarily very small, so in practice is almost always just a url, which may or may not point to something stored on a centralized server elsewhere, and which may or may not go down without any warning or recourse for the 'owner'. So the fact that you can copy the images or whatever that an NFT may point to is really beside the point, because you can literally get the url information by checking the blockchain entry, and then you have exactly the same thing as the NFT 'owner'.

It's essentially as if someone sold you a signed piece of paper with directions to the Louvre written on it and told you you now owned the Mona Lisa.

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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:50 am

But can the people who "sell" them cash out?

When the headlines say a meme sells for $70,000 can that money reach a bank account? Or is it tokens with a $70,000 face value stored on another computer?

It's not a scam if you can get real world money for them. It's just a bad investment.
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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:55 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:50 am
But can the people who "sell" them cash out?

When the headlines say a meme sells for $70,000 can that money reach a bank account? Or is it tokens with a $70,000 face value stored on another computer?

It's not a scam if you can get real world money for them. It's just a bad investment.
Yes, you can turn them into real cash. I would still never buy one. There's no technical fix that will stop people who don't really own the copyright to things turning them into tokens, or previous owners just making copies before selling the token on to you etc..

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Re: NFTs

Post by secret squirrel » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:13 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:50 am
But can the people who "sell" them cash out?

When the headlines say a meme sells for $70,000 can that money reach a bank account? Or is it tokens with a $70,000 face value stored on another computer?

It's not a scam if you can get real world money for them. It's just a bad investment.
As with all crypto, there's obviously real money going in, as otherwise it wouldn't be worth it for the miners and other interested parties. However, most people are not cashing out, and the number of people who could hypothetically cash out at the same time without tanking the market appears to be quite small.

With NFTs as well a lot of the headline grabbing stuff is people buying from themselves using crypto and multiple accounts. Wash trading in general is a big thing in cryptocurrency, as most exchanges allow it. This is firmly in scam territory in my book. People can cash out from traditional Ponzi schemes after all, and they are certainly scams.

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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:30 am

I'm talking about sellers, not idiot buyers.

Do sellers like burning house girl and side eye girl get real money when they "sell" their meme?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-zoe-roth

If real money is flowing out of the b.llsh.t crypto ecosystem to real people with real college loans to pay off, what's not to like?

The twitter thread referenced at the start of the thread glides straight over this.
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Re: NFTs

Post by bjn » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:36 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:30 am
I'm talking about sellers, not idiot buyers.
Before a ponzi scheme falls apart, you can sell your 'investment' to bigger fools. No idiot buyers without less idiotic sellers.

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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:38 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:30 am
I'm talking about sellers, not idiot buyers.

Do sellers like burning house girl and side eye girl get real money when they "sell" their meme?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-zoe-roth

If real money is flowing out of the b.llsh.t crypto ecosystem to real people with real college loans to pay off, what's not to like?

The twitter thread referenced at the start of the thread glides straight over this.
If somebody is paid for their NFT in crypto, they can sell the crypto for normal government-issued currency on an exchange fairly easily.

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Re: NFTs

Post by secret squirrel » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:38 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:30 am
I'm talking about sellers, not idiot buyers.

Do sellers like burning house girl and side eye girl get real money when they "sell" their meme?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-zoe-roth

If real money is flowing out of the b.llsh.t crypto ecosystem to real people with real college loans to pay off, what's not to like?

The twitter thread referenced at the start of the thread glides straight over this.
They are bought using crypto, usually etherium, but it is currently possible to cash this out at list price so long as you don't try to do too much at the same time. So yes sellers can make money.

What is not to like about this though is that it involves several blockchain transactions that waste a lot of energy.

Edit: Another cost of NFTs is that they are not free to make for the seller, though the exact price depends on which particular blockchain is hosting it, so a lot of 'sellers' will find they just waste their initial investment and get nothing back.

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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:12 am

So is the scam that person A tells artists and meme owners to pay him $1,000 to "make" an NFT? In return he will sell this NFT for them, hopefully for big bucks. A then conspires with B, C and D to run a fake auction and between them they spend $500,000 of real cash to buy a famous meme. It gets global publicity. A then uses this loss-leader to rake in loads of commissions from artists and meme owners at $1,000 a time, none of which sell.

Or is the scam to create fake prices by A, B, C and D trading to each other at silly prices, hoping to sell to idiots who've got lucky trading crypto? The age-old ramping up of a market to big figures then offering "bargains". And real people like burning house girl are just side-effects, the fake market enabling a short window where they can transact a real sale.

The twitter guy in the OP clearly hasn't identified what the scam actually is, which is why he keeps gliding over things with confused language. He's gone badly awry with the star naming thing - that's just a novelty gift market thing. People pay £25 for a star and get in return £5 worth of a nicely presented gift box and a pretty star map and a certificate on heavy paper, and everyone has a laugh about it on Christmas morning. I've no idea why he thinks this gift market is like NFT trading.
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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:18 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:12 am
So is the scam that person A tells artists and meme owners to pay him $1,000 to "make" an NFT? In return he will sell this NFT for them, hopefully for big bucks. A then conspires with B, C and D to run a fake auction and between them they spend $500,000 of real cash to buy a famous meme. It gets global publicity. A then uses this loss-leader to rake in loads of commissions from artists and meme owners at $1,000 a time, none of which sell.

Or is the scam to create fake prices by A, B, C and D trading to each other at silly prices, hoping to sell to idiots who've got lucky trading crypto? The age-old ramping up of a market to big figures then offering "bargains". And real people like burning house girl are just side-effects, the fake market enabling a short window where they can transact a real sale.

The twitter guy in the OP clearly hasn't identified what the scam actually is, which is why he keeps gliding over things with confused language. He's gone badly awry with the star naming thing - that's just a novelty gift market thing. People pay £25 for a star and get in return £5 worth of a nicely presented gift box and a pretty star map and a certificate on heavy paper, and everyone has a laugh about it on Christmas morning. I've no idea why he thinks this gift market is like NFT trading.
Imagine I have a jpeg of a puppy and make an NFT from it

1) How do you know I really 'owned' the original puppy image ?

2) How do you know there weren't already a practically unlimited number of copies of it around the internet even if I did in some way own the original image?

3) You buy the NFT, what's to stop you making copies before you sell it on, or even creating a new NFT of the same thing on a different blockchain. ?

4) rinse and repeat

I can see why somebody who really needed money would sell one, but buying one as an 'investment' seems completely insane to me.

etc..

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Re: NFTs

Post by secret squirrel » Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:22 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:12 am
So is the scam that person A tells artists and meme owners to pay him $1,000 to "make" an NFT? In return he will sell this NFT for them, hopefully for big bucks. A then conspires with B, C and D to run a fake auction and between them they spend $500,000 of real cash to buy a famous meme. It gets global publicity. A then uses this loss-leader to rake in loads of commissions from artists and meme owners at $1,000 a time, none of which sell.

Or is the scam to create fake prices by A, B, C and D trading to each other at silly prices, hoping to sell to idiots who've got lucky trading crypto? The age-old ramping up of a market to big figures then offering "bargains". And real people like burning house girl are just side-effects, the fake market enabling a short window where they can transact a real sale.

The twitter guy in the OP clearly hasn't identified what the scam actually is, which is why he keeps gliding over things with confused language. He's gone badly awry with the star naming thing - that's just a novelty gift market thing. People pay £25 for a star and get in return £5 worth of a nicely presented gift box and a pretty star map and a certificate on heavy paper, and everyone has a laugh about it on Christmas morning. I've no idea why he thinks this gift market is like NFT trading.
Both those things are done, though it's not so much a meme 'owner' as 'person associated with the meme'. I assume there's also potential for money laundering too.

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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:26 am

sheldrake wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:18 am
lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:12 am
So is the scam that person A tells artists and meme owners to pay him $1,000 to "make" an NFT? In return he will sell this NFT for them, hopefully for big bucks. A then conspires with B, C and D to run a fake auction and between them they spend $500,000 of real cash to buy a famous meme. It gets global publicity. A then uses this loss-leader to rake in loads of commissions from artists and meme owners at $1,000 a time, none of which sell.

Or is the scam to create fake prices by A, B, C and D trading to each other at silly prices, hoping to sell to idiots who've got lucky trading crypto? The age-old ramping up of a market to big figures then offering "bargains". And real people like burning house girl are just side-effects, the fake market enabling a short window where they can transact a real sale.

The twitter guy in the OP clearly hasn't identified what the scam actually is, which is why he keeps gliding over things with confused language. He's gone badly awry with the star naming thing - that's just a novelty gift market thing. People pay £25 for a star and get in return £5 worth of a nicely presented gift box and a pretty star map and a certificate on heavy paper, and everyone has a laugh about it on Christmas morning. I've no idea why he thinks this gift market is like NFT trading.
Imagine I have a jpeg of a puppy and make an NFT from it

1) How do you know I really 'owned' the original puppy image ?

2) How do you know there weren't already a practically unlimited number of copies of it around the internet even if I did in some way own the original image?

3) You buy the NFT, what's to stop you making copies before you sell it on, or even creating a new NFT of the same thing on a different blockchain. ?

4) rinse and repeat

I can see why somebody who really needed money would sell one, but buying one as an 'investment' seems completely insane to me.

etc..
Mate, that's all obvious, even the twitter guy could understand that.

What I want to know is what the scam actually is. Who is losing, who is winning. Is it crypto bros losing, women who as girls became cute memes winning? Or artists losing, bros winning? Or crypto bros losing, crypto bros winning?
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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:31 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:26 am


What I want to know is what the scam actually is. Who is losing, who is winning. Is it crypto bros losing, women who as girls became cute memes winning? Or artists losing, bros winning? Or crypto bros losing, crypto bros winning?

Depends on your definition of a 'crypto bro'. These women might object to the term 'bro' https://cryptoweekly.co/crypto-female-50-awards

If you're talking about people who work for tech companies in the crypto space, broadly speaking this benefits them in the short term.

If you're talking about people who breathlessly pump real cash into any new trend, whether it be NFTs of random gifs or new cryptocurrencies with no interesting new features to set them apart other than branding, a lot of them will lose big time.

Artists who sell them win. Very cynical/quick witted crypto speculators who bought in early and get out early enough might win.

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Re: NFTs

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:07 am

I'm glad somebody asked the question in the OP, because it all seemed so obviously b.llsh.t that I couldn't work out if I was being stupid and missing something really clever by thinking that.
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Re: NFTs

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:08 am

Is the scam essentially creating value out of the IPR of memes?
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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:17 am

sheldrake wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:31 am
lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:26 am


What I want to know is what the scam actually is. Who is losing, who is winning. Is it crypto bros losing, women who as girls became cute memes winning? Or artists losing, bros winning? Or crypto bros losing, crypto bros winning?

Depends on your definition of a 'crypto bro'. These women might object to the term 'bro' https://cryptoweekly.co/crypto-female-50-awards

If you're talking about people who work for tech companies in the crypto space, broadly speaking this benefits them in the short term.

If you're talking about people who breathlessly pump real cash into any new trend, whether it be NFTs of random gifs or new cryptocurrencies with no interesting new features to set them apart other than branding, a lot of them will lose big time.

Artists who sell them win. Very cynical/quick witted crypto speculators who bought in early and get out early enough might win.
You don't actually know anything about it, do you.

The starting point for scams is identifying the players. Grifters, shills and marks. Usually the apparent players aren't the real players.

There's clearly a serious amount of investment going into this long game. Are artists or "owners" players or just accidental side effects used as the convincer? Are grifters paying meme "owners" directly? Are the purchasers shills or marks?

If we don't know, it's fine to say we don't know. Making presumptions on what's happening - like the twitter guy - is almost certainly going to miss the real picture. In the long con it's the con artist who create the picture and leads us to make presumptions.
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Re: NFTs

Post by plodder » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:19 am

I think one of the scams is that person A, B and C in lpm's example can be the same person, trading under different names. This creates a completely false impression of how the market is operating. Person D is the mark. The person creating the NFT in the first place is the only one guaranteed an income (not the artist, the techbro)

I still don't understand how crypto is helping solve any problems except for mumble mumble global finance leveraging power away from banks libertarians have it all worked out mumble mumble but I guess that's one for another thread. The jargon is also completely impenetrable which for me is a major warning sign. When people can't translate concepts into plain language it always means they don't have a f.cking clue what they're talking about. See also quantum physics etc.

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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:25 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:17 am

You don't actually know anything about it, do you.
I've worked in the space a little bit, but it's not my main job. What do you know about it?
The starting point for scams is identifying the players. Grifters, shills and marks. Usually the apparent players aren't the real players.

There's clearly a serious amount of investment going into this long game. Are artists or "owners" players or just accidental side effects used as the convincer? Are grifters paying meme "owners" directly? Are the purchasers shills or marks?
Oh, you think it's just memes. I see. Carry on LPM.

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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:27 am

plodder wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:19 am
I think one of the scams is that person A, B and C in lpm's example can be the same person, trading under different names. This creates a completely false impression of how the market is operating. Person D is the mark. The person creating the NFT in the first place is the only one guaranteed an income (not the artist, the techbro)
That is the wash trading referred to above. Yes, it happens all the time in crypto markets.
The jargon is also completely impenetrable which for me is a major warning sign. When people can't translate concepts into plain language it always means they don't have a f.cking clue what they're talking about. See also quantum physics etc.
There are good online guides which don't try to obfuscate anything. It's much less complicated than quantum physics.

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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:53 am

sheldrake wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:25 am
lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:17 am

You don't actually know anything about it, do you.
I've worked in the space a little bit, but it's not my main job. What do you know about it?
I've worked on cons. No, not doing them, unpicking them.

Which appears a lot more relevant than tech experience.
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Re: NFTs

Post by sheldrake » Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:02 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:53 am
sheldrake wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:25 am
lpm wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:17 am

You don't actually know anything about it, do you.
I've worked in the space a little bit, but it's not my main job. What do you know about it?
I've worked on cons. No, not doing them, unpicking them.

Which appears a lot more relevant than tech experience.
I've had to think through product roadmaps involving NFTs and whether it's okay to advertise them and to whom. My answers at the time were 'lets not do this' for the answers above. I would not be able to name the big players (institutional or otherwise) that might be doing wash trades at the moment, though, for example. I do understand risks, but not identities of current participants. That's why I talk about 'cynical/quick witted speculators' rather than 'Deutsche bank owned hedge fund in Cayman islands'. I don't think I needed to know that stuff to see the problems though. Do I still have permission to speak?

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Re: NFTs

Post by lpm » Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:06 am

Don't bother talking about the problems, a child of 5 can see them.

I'm trying to determine if it's a scam, i.e. an orchestrated long con. Or if it's an overheated irrational market, similar to GameStop.
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