Being anti-crypto like this is similar to being an anti-vaxxer for tech. You’re analysing everything through an ideological reality-confirmation bias instead of acting like a scientist and looking for the truth. You don’t want something to be true because you don’t like mRNA/Bill Gates or Bitcoin/Libertarians are at its origin.

Instead you should face the truth that this is a marketplace for digital art and that it works. Far simpler than concocting wild theories about 5G or NFTs being performance art.

It just works, it’s real and people are using it. Saying “NFTs have no value” is like saying “Bitcoin is not money”. It has been the equivalent of money for 10 years now, so when are you going to give it up?

I think you deeply misunderstand how NFTs work, as most people seem to. They're not digitally watermarked.

The only thing you buy with an NFT is the watermark itself (so to speak). It's very similar to buying a trading card of a certain work of art. There is no ownership involved (digital or otherwise). You just get your "name" on a list of "owners" that is public and non-editable.

Among the problems with NFTs is that you can copy the art bit-for-bit. It's not like the Mona Lisa -- you can't take a real painting a copy molecules that are 300 years old.

Worse, you can also just copy the list of "owners"! You have no way of knowing if you "own" the "official" NFT or not.

You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from.

You can copy the digital piece and distribute it as much as you want. An NFT is just a record on a blockchain saying that [wallet address] is the current owner of [URL]. It has absolutely nothing to do with ownership.

The creator of an NFT can legally create a contract saying "whoever the blockchain says owns [URL] is the owner of [piece of art]," but that is a minority of cases and it also depends on the legal system. Ownership relying on a legal system is not new and it doesn't require NFTs.

> saying clonability invalidates something as art would also invalidate music, video, and any other fork of digital content

I didn't say clonability invalidates something as art. I said clonability invalidates NFTs as a meaningful form of ownership in and of themselves.

> You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from.

You can sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. I can also sell it. That means there are two NFT ownership records for Mona Lisa.

In fact, there can be infinite ownership records. The only way to tell that a certain ownership chain is the original is by checking timestamps, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether the original seller of the NFT is also the owner of the work of art.

That’s literally a _record of ownership_.

> You can sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. I can also sell it. That means there are two NFT ownership records for Mona Lisa.

You don’t seem to grasp the concept of digital content. The Mona Lisa you sell as part of contract A is not the same you sell as part of contract B. Even if you’re selling two exactly identical jpegs, they’re different _digital objects_.

Very simple example: there’s many clones of the Bored Apes across many blockchains, including Ethereum itself. Only ONE of these contracts grants you access to their bar in Miami. That person is also the only one who can sell their Bored Ape for hundreds of thousands of dollars - nobody will pay that for the copies in other contracts, because _they’re not the original_. How is that not a proof of ownership?

The creator of the artwork could legally assign rights to the tokenholder. But that would be a special case, and that is extra.

Anyone is free to give privileges to tokenholders of specific contract that they recognize as authentic, but that is not the same as ownership of the artwork.

Smart Contract maximalists may argue it should all be code - and maybe we’ll see more and more becoming code, including TOS, DRM, etc. Maybe one day there’ll be a way to fully model and enforce ownership of a digital object, but I’m not holding my breath for that.

If you opened a bar in Tampa and called it the same as someone else named theirs, and stole their branding, you’d be exposed to the same copyright laws one would in Florida, with or without NFTs involved. That’s a completely orthogonal issue, NFTs aren’t a mechanism for copyright enforcement, they’re just a ledger that’s easier to verify because it’s public and distributed.

> You can just check the artist website at this point, it can be more trustworthy than a timestamp in a ledger and just as open.

How do you know the artist's website you're visiting is the actual artist? How do you decide which of the many sites is The Real One? By asking the artist? How do you know if they're the right owners? What if I open a site and claim I'm the artist, and sell a copy of their content?

In the art world NFTs are now ubiquitous.

By the way, care to support with any links at all? So far these are empty words. Googling Venice NFT does not point to some reputable gallery adopting tokens, just a post from some cryptocurrency promoting media outlet about some token promoters who set up their own gallery on a beach.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/09/tezos-brings-arti...

My bad for thinking NFTs were in Venice officially.

Here’s a good overview of what’s happening even though it’s an article critizing Frieze London - https://www.google.com/amp/s/decrypt.co/84466/london-nft-sce...

There was of course the huge gathering in NYC a short time ago. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/tech...

Christie’s, Sotheby’s are selling NFTs. The art fairs are adopting. Visa has purchased a major NFT for their art collection (Cryptopunk). Multiple major brands and celebrities are minting and joining NFT platforms ie Pharell in Music. As far as artists go I’m finding that most have heard of NFTs and many are adopting.

But partially I hope that some people here see the problems not as "this is never going to work" and more as "hey this seems like an interesting challenge to solve". The space needs developers, so if I convince one person a week to take a look at it, that's a big win. If it doesn't happen, well my foot is still broken.

As for NFT's, sure - a lot of things have value to some people. Right now it appears as if NFT's are valuable for luring in suckers and enabling very stupid people to try to launder money. Now, will NFT's be widely valuable to a lot of people in the future? Perhaps, but it strikes me as far from a sure bet.

El Salvador is also using Algorand to build upon.

This demonstrates that the blockchain promises of decentralization and avoidance of government is generally impossible in countries with functioning governments.

If there's a real non-bubble use case, it will have to be around making a bad but much less expensive version of something that's already possible offline, but that requires lots of lawyers to set up.

You’re clearly out of the loop so. Just do more research.

There are still ICOs for instance there are auctions happening right now on Polkadot.

Can I buy my groceries with it? I haven't seen an option to pay my rent, either. What about my water bill?

I wouldn't exactly say it's the equivalent of money.

Also, can you pay your rent with Euros? Does that make it not money? That’s not a very principled definition.

Uh, yes?

I mean, assuming the rent is for a place somewhere in the Eurozone, I imagine that's usually preferred.

They do provide another mechanism for signaling riches, so cryptocurrency holders, who tangibly profit from the inflow of money into the pyramid, are understandably all over them.

It’s getting to the point where saying “NFTs don’t work” is like saying “ebooks aren’t real books”. It’s just a philosophical position that ignores reality.

I am not saying any of this is uncertain. But assuming it as a guarantee (unless you are personally working to help create this tech, which I gather you are not) is naive.

That's holding the digital world to a far higher standard than meatspace, where fraud happens.

Youtube has a huge problem with re-uploading of videos where multiple accounts will download and re-upload a video of anything they can get away with. Does that make Youtube useless?

I'm aware of YouTube's specific issues and almost brought it up as a point against NFT's. YouTube is not useless, no. But, its automated copyright system is draconian and serves elites and lawyers more than it does individual content creators (who it often actively harms). This issue arises specifically because YouTube operates at massive scale and because Google refuses to hire enough people to deal with content moderation and copyright complaints _properly_ and would prefer to automate things as much as possible.

I don't think NFT's would present these exact problems; but I guarantee you similarly horrible inequities surface in NFT markets.

I don't believe currency should be less regulated. I believe financial regulation should be drastically increased as e.g. tax loopholes is one method that the ultra-wealthy use to remain that way - at the expense of everyone else.

I would be _substantially_ more interested in cryptocurrencies if institutions were up to the task of regulating it to prevent abuse. I've seen a bit of this lately but it's honestly not enough.

In fact it’s likely that both utopian and dystopian outcomes will all happen simultaneously.

I do like NFTs as a way to support digital artists and I think they’ve gotten a really bad rap in the press. But they’re not going to empower some kind of utopia. They just allow digital artists to profit from their work directly in a novel way.

That’s good to me. The fact that they have problems doesn’t stop them from being an innovative solution with real usage.

The decentralisation aspect of it is only interesting from my POV insofar that it’s allowed this market to exist.

NFT people act like art is some unattainable mythical artifact that their JPEGs have somehow liberated.

Digital art couldn’t be “shipped” to anyone. Having a gallery means you have to be featured in one in the first place - ie gatekeepers. Not permissionless.

You have to be not working in the arts to think like this. NFTs were a revolution for digital artists.